Ricardo Clark

Ricardo Clark is 54, lives in Salta at the foot of the Andes in northern Argentina and is the managing director of Reserva del Huaico, a private reserve protecting cloudforest habitat in San Lorenzo mountains. A graduated Park Ranger with biological and conservation training from the National Park Administration, he worked for seven years in different National Parks throughout the country before founding the first Natural History tour company in Argentina, Clark Expediciones. Devoted to conservation and environmental education, he published in 1986 the first field guide in Spanish to the Birds of Tierra del Fuego with own pencil drawings originally conceived as a tool for school teachers, although it soon became a popular local field guide.

Always a keen traveller, his obsession with Neotropical birding reached alarming level during extensive bird tours in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay co-leading with his mentor, the legendary Davis Finch, and others. During the last ten years he has extended work to the Pantanal and Amazonia in Brasil.

Ricardo spends perhaps half of the year overseeing operations at the reserve and his company and the remainder guiding or scouting new destinations in South America.

With a gaucho-style sense of humour, exceptional enthusiasm and a deep understanding of wildlife behaviour he is one of the most popular leaders in Argentina.