Harrison Ford’s next big role? ‘Saving life on Earth, basically’

It may surprise you to learn that Harrison Ford has a species of snake named after him. Tachymenoides harrisonfordi. A rare breed of slender snake, native to the Andes, just 16 inches long. Harmless. Researchers found it in 2022, sunbathing in an alpine swamp. There’s an ant named for Ford too (Pheidole harrisonfordi, found primarily in Central America), and a spider (Calponia harrisonfordi, mostly in California, eats other spiders). He could have had his name on a Tanzanian butterfly but demurred, suggesting scientists name it instead after his daughter, Georgia (Mimacraea gelinia georgia).

“It’s hard to come up with Latin names for all the new species being discovered,” Ford says, half-grinning and half-grimacing, sitting in his home office in Los Angeles. “I guess they have to pin it on somebody.” Ford is 83, and by now, nearly 50 years since coming to fame playing Han Solo in Star Wars, his incapacity to take a compliment without a gruff wisecrack is the stuff of legend. But come on—there’s no Tachymenoides markhamilli or Pheidole carriefisheri. That’s because scientists in the field know that Ford has spent decades championing biodiversity. For the past 35 years, he’s served as the public face of Conservation International, where he’s currently vice chairman and whose mission he describes as “saving life on Earth, basically.”

Instead of enjoying a restful retirement, Ford is working harder than people half his age. He spent much of last year shooting the third season of his Emmy-nominated therapist sitcom Shrinking. When he’s not acting, he’s joining his CI colleagues in boardrooms with high-profile leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron, petitioning for urgent resources to fight wildfires in Brazil, for commitments to conservation frameworks like the UN’s High Seas Treaty, and more. His superstar clout helps bring to the table the kind of state-level decision-makers necessary to accomplish anything of global consequence. And the depth of his commitment—the knowledge that he’s no one-off celebrity spokesperson, that he’ll be back in a year to follow up—helps hold them to account.

Both the Amazon fires and the High Seas Treaty were at issue last fall when CI leaders met with Macron and other international delegations during the Climate Week NYC conference. It was Ford’s first time in high-level meetings alongside CI’s interim executive director, Daniela Raik, who took the position last summer and was struck by Ford’s knowledge and preparation.

“He wants to sit down before each meeting and go through what are our priorities ... What is the outcome we want for this meeting?” Raik says. “He wants to game out and even sort of rehearse how that’s going to go.” Does that sound an awful lot like running lines with the guy who played Indiana Jones? Raik laughs. “It’s not quite that, but it does feel like his day job is about being prepared, so that’s how he engages with Conservation International as well.”

Ford is shrewdly aware of his utility to an organization like CI—he knows that even heads of state want to say yes to Han Solo. But he also knows his star power “ain’t enough,” that it’s on him to do what Han Solo can’t, to articulate the urgent stakes of conservation work. “People are sick to death of celebrity, I believe,” he says, “but they recognize truth when they see it, when they hear it.”

One truth he is espousing often lately: that it’s time for the older generation of climate and conservation warriors to make way for a new crop of leaders with new ideas about advancing the cause. “They are more fearless, more connected to the Earth, and more capable of changing power than we ever were,” he told an audience last fall, accepting a legacy award from the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, where he’s also been a board member since 2010. “We just need to get out of their way.”

The curmudgeonly Ford emerges only when pressed to describe why he feels such passion for conservation, seemingly loath to come off corny or sentimental. He rubs his eyes. Pauses. “We simply cannot provide for ourselves the things that nature gives us for free and that sustain our lives,” he says finally. Then he drives home the point. “Fresh water, clean air, pollinators for our crops, potential new undiscovered medicines and cures for things that ail us, food on our tables. They’re not things that we can provide for ourselves.”

As for what’s on his docket with Conservation International in the year ahead, he finds it much easier to reply. “Everything,” he says. “Everything that needs to be done.”