Naturalist, educator and artist John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural world and sharing this love with others.  For six years, John Muir Laws backpacked the Sierra Nevada to research and illustrate The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada, a pocket size field guide to over 1,700 species found in the Sierra Nevada. The guide includes 2,710 original watercolor paintings was reviewed by educators, naturalists, and scientists throughout the country, and was intensively field tested by adults and youth. This guide helps visitors or residents of the Sierra understand and appreciate the biodiversity of the region. This comprehensive and easy to use guide allows botanists to identify the insects that come to their flowers, birders to identify the trees in which the birds perch, or hikers to identify the stars overhead at night.

Laws is deeply committed to stewardship of nature and collaborates with organizations throughout the state. He initiated Following Muir's Footsteps, an educational program to engender a passionate love of nature, a personal understanding of natural history and a commitment to stewardship. This program gets students out in the field, learning from their own observations and using field guides and nature journals as the basis for discovering nature around them. As a part of this project, he is working secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every middle and high school in the Sierra Nevada. Learn how you can help.

Laws has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming, and Alaska.  He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. His illustrations capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. In the summer of 2004, Laws published Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide. He is also a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column. See full resume. In 2009, he received the Terwilliger Environmental Award for outstanding  service in Environmental Education.

Sketching Tule Elk in Point Reyes (photo Credit Cybele Renault)

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