Mark Aspelin

Mark Aspelin is a writer, conservation biologist, and author of Profitable Conservation: Business Strategies That Boost Your Bottom Line, Protect Wildlife, and Conserve Biodiversity and How to Fail at Life: Lessons for the Next Generation.

He is also the creator of the New Mexico Travel Guy blog, where he writes travel stories rooted in New Mexico, along with occasional stories from elsewhere in the Southwest and overseas.

Mark is currently working on his third book, the upcoming Moon New Mexico travel guide (Fall 2027), published by Moon Travel Guides. He also wrote the Northeastern New Mexico chapter for the 2026 edition of Fodor’s New Mexico.

His writing and interviews have appeared in GreenBiz, Inside EPA, Perceptive Travel, and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Half-Earth Project.

Mark has visited over 100 countries and all 50 U.S. states, just enough to qualify for the Travelers’ Century Club and make choosing a favorite place nearly impossible. He’s currently on a questionable mission to visit every town in New Mexico (there are over 500) and write a story about each one, with plans to wrap it up sometime in his early to mid-100s.

His background includes more than two decades of program and project management work across conservation, healthcare, international security, and information technology.

Mark lives in the East Mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.