George Melendez Wright

George Wright, a Salvadoran-American naturalist, pioneered wildlife biology and conservation efforts in Big Bend National Park and elsewhere. He was the first chief of the National Parks Service’s Wildlife Division and pressed for protection of predators in the federal parks. He died in a car accident in 1936 returning from Texas, where he had been studying a potential international park to be sponsored by the U.S. and Mexico along the Big Bend of the Rio Grande. Wright Mountain in Big Bend National Park is named in his honor.