Stanley Heckadon Moreno
Stanley Philip Heckadon-Moreno (born October 9, 1943) is a Panamanian anthropologist, conservationist, writer and educator who has dedicated his work to protecting Central America’s forests and Indigenous lands. He helped create protected areas in Panama, especially in the Panama Canal Watershed, and contributed to laws protecting Indigenous territories. Since 1983 he has been a research associate with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and he led the Galeta Point Marine Laboratory from 2000 to 2020.
Stanley Heckadon-Moreno was born in Puerto Armuelles, Panama, the son of an American Mennonite farmer and a Panamanian teacher who was an early women’s rights advocate. He grew up on his maternal grandparents’ farm and learned farm work and fishing from a young age. After his parents’ divorce, his mother moved the family to Panama City for better healthcare and education.
He studied at Colegio Javier in Panama City and the San Vicente de Paúl School in David. On a professor’s recommendation, he studied anthropology at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, earning a BA in 1970. He was the first Panamanian to receive a British Overseas Council scholarship for social sciences, which enabled him to obtain an MA in Sociology in 1973 and later a PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex in 1983. His doctoral work examined how cattle front expansion and slash-and-burn agriculture affected tropical forests.
In Panama he worked as a senior social scientist at MPPE from 1972 to 1980, studying Indigenous rights and land demarcation, as well as rural poverty and agrarian reform. He helped establish many national parks in Panama, notably in the Panama Canal Watershed. He played a key role during the El Niño drought of 1982–1983 by leading a national task force to study the watershed; his team urged protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of jungle to preserve biodiversity, water, and tourism potential.
In 1986 he became a senior social scientist at CATIE in Costa Rica, researching social forestry and the use of fast-growing tree species by hillside farmers. He led a Central American task force for the IUCN, and his work contributed to the idea of the Paseo Pantera, a corridor to safeguard rainforests from Belize to Panama. He served as director general of INRENARE around 1990, overseeing Panama’s protected areas, forests, water, and environmental education. From 1991 to 1994 he collaborated with international organizations such as FAO, IFAD, USAID and FES on environmental projects and land demarcation, and helped establish international centers like CIFOR and CATHALAC in Panama.
Since 1983 he has been with STRI, shifting toward research and writing for the public about natural history in Panama and Central America. From 2000 to 2020 he led the Galeta Point Marine Laboratory on Galeta Island, a hub for marine research and environmental education. He has published extensively, with many works in Spanish or English and some freely available online. Beginning in 1995, he wrote a historical and cultural series for the Panamanian newspaper La Prensa, and he has authored more than 70 articles for Panamá América since 2014.
Stanley Heckadon-Moreno married Sonia Martinelli Tono in 1976, and they have two children, Monica Isabel and Diego Antonio.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 03:09 (CET).