Kieran Suckling

Kierán Suckling (born 1964) is an American environmental activist who is one of the founders and the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group known for its protection of endangered species, wilderness, clean air, and clean water.

The New Yorker dubbed the Center as "the most important radical environmental group in the country" and Suckling a "trickster, philosopher, publicity hound, master strategist, and unapologetic pain in the ass." The LA Weekly calls the Center "pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the most effective conservation organization in the country," and says of Suckling: "Rimbaud reinvented poetry. Kierán Suckling would do the same with environmentalism."

The Center, which has secured protection for over 700 endangered species and 475,000,000 acres (192,225,680 ha) of habitat in the U.S., works towards environmental protection. Suckling founded the Center for Biological Diversity while working on his doctoral dissertation in 1989. He has examined the implications of the global homogenizing of biodiversity, language and culture, and the relationship between environmentalism, the arts, and the rights of indigenous peoples and poor communities.