JOHN RYAN

''This thrill of the unknown, the sheer mystery of this ancient land, has haunted me many a decade. This immense thirst for knowledge was destined to be quenched by venturing to these parts. And so, it happened.''

John Ryan is an Australian conservationist, zoologist, evolutionary biologist and explorer, and also the CEO & Founder of The Urgent Priority Management Program, a not-for-profit organisation created to halt the current mass extinction.

With an uncontained enthusiasm for the Natural World and its creatures, at his young age, John often ventured out for long excursions to the surrounding bushland following the lives of resident wildlife. The intricate complexity of Nature, governed by the simple law of Natural Selection, was too hard to resist. Soon, these humble excursions began to expand into other corners of Australia and eventually overseas.

But it wasn't until his late teens that a brief encounter with a Professor at the Natural History Museum of London changed the course of his journey and planted the seed for The Dragon's Territory expedition. Suddenly, the sheer mystery of the unknown, the perilousness of the true lost world, was engraved in his mind. The ultimate expedition to land, once marked as Hic Sunt Dracones - Here Be Dragons. The foreboding words of early pioneers who sailed by the volcanic archipelago ruled by large man-eating lizards.

As a literary enthusiast, John immersed himself in old Victorian adventure novels, expedition books and scientific literature from a very young age. Amongst the most influential books that inspired his career were The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, and The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. But as John says, the most important and most incredible book of all time is On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
John often refers to The Dragon's Territory as his 'Voyage of the Beagle', the very expedition that determined his entire career and shaped him into the person he is today.

Since The Dragon's Territory expedition, John has undertaken many conservation endeavours and other expeditions. From studying and living with crocodiles in the Northern Territory, catching snakes and rescuing wildlife around Australia, to an undercover survey of the sea snakes on a pirate ship in the Indian Ocean, and much more.

John now lives in Ireland, where he runs his conservation not-for-profit organisation, writes more books and prepares for yet another expedition.

A Photograph of the Author at the House of Oakbank, South Australia, where he did most of the writing.