Mark J. Palmer is Associate Director of Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project, focusing on protecting whales and dolphins, with emphasis on legislative advocacy, legal research, grassroots organizing, and media relations. He is also Director of Earth Island Institute’s Wildlife Alive Subproject, dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places throughout California and the West.

Palmer graduated with a BA in Zoology from the University of California at Berkeley, and spent two years of graduate work at San Francisco State University in the Department of Biology. While at UC Berkeley, Palmer founded and led the Endangered Species Committee of California.

Palmer has since served as Regional Vice President for the Sierra Club for Northern California and Nevada; Chairman of the Sierra Club’s National Wildlife Committee; and Chairman of the Sierra Club’s Arctic Campaign Steering Committee, which successfully blocked oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. He has been Executive Director of the Whale Center (1986-1990) and the Mountain Lion Foundation (1990-1995), before coming to Earth Island Institute. His articles have appeared in several national publications, including Sierra Magazine, Pacific Discovery (now Wild California), USA Today, and Earth Island Journal.

Palmer has more than 39 years of experience lobbying in the California State Capitol in Sacramento and in the U.S. Congress in Washington DC on wildlife and wilderness issues, as well as international experience with the Japanese-American Environmental Conference, the International Whaling Commission, and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. He is editor of the daily newsletter ECO distributed at International Whaling Commission meetings.

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