D. Jeffrey Wright

David Jeffrey "Jeff" Wright (born 1962) is known for his work as an American conservationist, naturalist, and activist of the environmental movement during the 1990s. He got started in the non-profit sector and green causes in the late 1980s through prominent people he came to meet working as a communications installer and electrical protection engineer installing lightning rods, auctioneer, and pastor in Wilmington and Greenville, Delaware.
Wright is a goodwill ambassador for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by virtue of his honorary Kentucky Colonel designation and serves as the Executive Officer of Fundación Panamericana (FUPAVEN) which is located in Caracas, Venezuela where he also works independently as a freelance business consultant and policy analyst for foreign governments, organizations, and within the private sector.
Green pioneer of the 1990's
In 1988 Wright founded a charitable non-profit foundation called the Endangered Turtle Protection Foundation (now defunct) that protected endangered turtle species. The organization was well received at the time as a serious conservation group working with the IUCN and leading research scientists like Peter Pritchard and Roger W. Barbour. It offered rewards for poachers of species listed in CITES and violations of the Lacey Act. He also established a companion organization that catered to those who advocated turtles and tortoises as pets called the which continues today after being re-instituted under different leadership and new charter in 1997.
He began as an advocate for a healthy planet after publishing a journal on turtle conservation called the "Chelonian Conservationist". As a result of filing his publication in the Library of Congress several months later he was asked by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to provide several hatchling turtles from his captive breeding program as requested by President George H.W. Bush for his grandchildren. Then the following spring his foundation took on the task of regional coordinators for the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day under Denis Hayes the poster was sold to raise funds to support their events. By the time Earth Day came around they had recruited the personal support of Delaware politicians Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Bill Roth, Hon. Tom Carper, Gov. Mike Castle, and additional support from corporations like DuPont and Johnson Controls they coordinated and publicized over 100 "Earth Day" and "National Celebration of the Outdoors" events all over the State of Delaware in Louisville where he met Vice-President Al Gore who was the keynote speaker.
Reforestation of disaster areas in the United States
In 1994 he developed a reforestation program for the city of Lexington that helped homeowners affected by weather related disasters replace trees at their homes. The free tree distribution was being held as a result of the ice storms that destroyed approximately 20% of Lexington’s urban forest; the program distributed almost 100,000 trees to 3000 homeowners. Later that year with the support of his friend, Pennsylvania tree farmer Dave Johnston he performed a similar program near his hometown in Southern New Jersey at Orol Ledden and Sons Nursery and founded the Ecology Crossroads Cooperative Foundation.
To celebrate for the 25th Anniversary of Earth Day the organization distributed over a million trees throughout the Mid-Atlantic seaboard with free tree distribution events in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Wilmington, Delaware he was touted as a modern day Johnny Appleseed.
By 1996, his organization was giving away millions of seedling and sapling trees through several nationwide tree planting programs. Following Hurricane Bertha and Hurricane Fran that affected North Carolina his organization rushed to help residents and distribute 500,000 trees free for a special "Disaster Re-Leaf" program sponsored by government, businesses in the Research Triangle and individual contributions. The program was part of a Thanksgiving Day feature program on NPR called "All things considered".
According to a published newspaper article, an organization called the National Arbor Day Foundation said that Ecology Crossroads had failed to deliver on a number of tree orders, in one case stiffing 50 underprivileged children who had hoped to plant the trees at their Chicago housing project. When Ecology Crossroads' use of the name Arbor Day and their implied association with the National Arbor Day Foundation caused the public to blame the wrong organization, a suit was filed by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Wright, as the owner of the websites freetrees.com and arborday.com chose to fight the suit in a federal court saying that Arbor Day was a public holiday and part of the public domain, "that the 25 year old National Arbor Day Foundation could not trademark the words Arbor Day anymore than they could trademark Mothers Day or Christmas Day." In 1999 Wright settled the trademark infringement case by selling the arborday.com website to the Arbor Day Foundation and held his last free tree program in Reno, Nevada on the 30th Anniversary of Earth Day. In less than seven years he had distributed over 10 million trees.

Personal life and education
Wright was born in New Jersey in 1962. He grew up in the Philadelphia and South Jersey area. He attended several colleges and universities most often as an academic audit studen In 1988 he obtained a Doctorate in Biblical Studies from the Universal Life Church and worked as a pastor, auctioneer, and electrical contractor for the next twelve months after moving to Wilmington, Delaware, l In 1989 he became a student once again to earn a certificate in non-profit management from the University of Delaware.
A few years later he moved to Kentucky. After coming to Kentucky and performing notable work in conservation and environmental stewardship, he became recognized as a goodwill ambassador for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by being honored with the title of Colonel by Governor Paul E. Patton and joined the lifetime ranks of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels to promote goodwill for Kentucky.
Hearing about the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela , he decided to start the Pan-American Foundation where he currently works. In 2001 he had his second son, in a Caracas maternity clinic and began to expatriate to Venezuela; since then he has been living in Caracas.

To better his Spanish and meet people he worked Saturdays in a Caracas flea market in the heart of city, in front of the Quinta Crespo farmers market. Wright became an observing member in the Fifth Republic Movement in 2003 to review and support revolutionary agricultural and international trade reforms.

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