Alastair Bland was born in San Francisco, where he grew up with two brothers and a sister. With his family, Alastair explored forests, rivers and mountain ranges across the United States and Europe. Alastair often took fishing gear on these outings, but over time he leaned toward cameras, sound recorders and notebooks. Increasingly, he traveled alone on a touring bicycle. Today, Alastair works as a freelance reporter and has published thousands of articles. He writes about climate change, drought, river conservation, fisheries and agriculture. In 2010, Alastair followed a team of plant geneticists seeking new varieties of wine grape, fig and walnut in the Republic of Georgia. In 2012, he visited with river conservationists trying to protect the salmon runs of northwest Spain. In 2013, he and his brother Andrew cycled from Lima to Quito. Along the way, Alastair reported on the deadly interactions between Andean cattle ranchers and the imperiled spectacled bear. Later that year, Alastair wrote for NPR about the remarkable food canning culture of southeast Alaska. In 2014 he cycled through Romania to research the impacts of road development on brown bears of the Carpathian Mountains. Today, Alastair lives in Sebastopol, California on a property planted with more than 50 fig trees. When he isn’t working, he tends to a large garden, cycles on country roads and ponders the possibility a world without plastic.