Laszlo B. Hadik-Barkoczy

Laszlo B. Hadik-Barkoczy

JAHP Board Member

USA

Laszlo B. Hadik-Barkoczy was born in Redwood City, California in 1983. As a young man, his interest in biology and natural history led him to read extensively about the unique biological diversity of South America. His interests in science eventually led to a fascination with politics and international relations, and he attended the College of San Mateo in 2001 as a biology and political science major.

In 2005, he attended San Francisco State University as an international relations major. While at San Francisco State, he conducted a specialized research project under the direction of Profession Yansane PhD, focusing on the role of international institutions in global biodiversity conservation in the Guiana Shield. In 2008 he received a B.A. in international relations focusing on security and development.

In 2009, he started the blog Biokryptos to continue his research from SF State. In 2012 he began correspondence with Alberto Pomares, Paul Graham Stanley, and Vittorio Assandria regarding wildlife biology and conservation on Auyántepui. These conversations turned to friendships, and a pilot project to study the unique endemic wildlife of Auyántepui was born and initiated in 2012. The goal of the project was to test the effectiveness of trail cameras to monitor the biological diversity of a tepui summit. The study successfully captured the first evidence of the crab eating fox Cerdocyon thous thous on the talus of Auyántepui, and the results were published in the “IUCN journal of Canid Biology” in 2013.

In 2014, Laszlo and his wife Mary Reite participated in an expedition to the summit of Auyántepui with Alberto Pomares, Paul Graham Stanley, Vittorio Assandria, and Arturo Berti. The expedition highlighted the need to monitor the summits of the tepuis to preserve and catalog their unique biodiversity, and Biokryptos went from being a blog to a 501 ( c) (3) nonprofit organization in 2016.

Laszlo currently lives in San Carlos, CA with his wife Mary and three children. He is the founder of Biokryptos and has served on the boards of Fundación Etnika and Angel Conservation since 2019. He was elected to the JAHP Board of Directors in 2022.