Outdoor Scene Special Author Guest 6-6-21

 Posted By Wayne G. Barber  

                                                     Jim Kern, Hiking Trails of America

Kern’s interest in hiking grew. In 1966, he founded the Florida Trail and the Florida Trail Association. In 1976, he co-founded the American Hiking Society with Bill Kemsley, founding editor and publisher of Backpacker Magazine, and Paul Pritchard, then president of the Appalachian Trail Conference. In 1990, he founded Big City Mountaineers. He was the president of the Florida Trail Association for its first 12 years, president of the American Hiking Society for its first nine years and president and board chairman of Big City Mountaineers for its first six years.

His quests for wildlife have also taken him to Ujung Kulon in Java; Baffin Island, Canada; Kenya and Rwanda; the Parks of India; Luzon in the Philippines; Kalimantan in Indonesia; the Ryukyu Islands in Japan and many other places closer to home. Kern also solo-sailed Wanderoo II, a 31’ Pacific Seacraft, to Bermuda. See Sail magazine, October 2007. His pictures have appeared in major magazines and books. He has written for Audubon, Backpacker, National Geographic and others. He has lectured on wildlife and conservation subjects throughout Florida since the late ’60s. As a naturalist, he published a scientific paper in Zoologica: “Observations on the Habits of the Proboscis Monkey, Nasalis larvatus (wurmb), Made in the Brunei Bay Area, Borneo.” The year 2008 was his 50th anniversary as a wildlife photographer and he celebrated the event by publishing a coffee table book entitled The Wildlife Art & Adventures of Jim Kern Photographer.

Kern was the executive producer of the documentary Saving Face, completed in 2008. The film was awarded world premier status at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival in October 2008. It’s the story of Kern’s wayward son Matt, who got into serious trouble with the law and spent 12 years in prison by the time he was 27. In 2003 Matt wrote and his father published FACE, the story of Matt’s life up to and including his clemency, granted by Governor Lawton Chiles. Currently he is in talks with a film production company about doing a feature film about Matt.