The American Botanical Council recently presented its 2025 ABC Champion Award to Chris Kilham, a botanical medicine hunter, author, educator, and yogi.

The award is given to individuals who have donated significant time and/or funding to support ABC’s research and educational mission, publications, and programs.

For more than 25 years, Kilham has donated his time, experience, and expertise to support ABC’s mission, the organization noted. He served as a source and peer reviewer for many articles in HerbalGram and other ABC publications, and has authored several feature articles.

Several of these are reader-friendly travelogs in which Kilham provides firsthand accounts of the status of various medicinally and culturally important plants from diverse locations around the world. He also often contributes original photographs for HerbalGram.

Some of Kilham’s articles in HerbalGram include “Tamanu Oil: A Tropical Topical Remedy” in issue 63; “In the land of Kesum” in issue 115; “Ayahuasca Vine Harvesting in the Peruvian Amazon” in issue 120; “A Preliminary Sustainability Report of Ayahuasca Vine in the Peruvian Amazon” in issue 123; “The Rising and Falling Fortunes of Vanuatu Kava” in issue 128; “Rhobiola Harvest in the ‘Mountains of Heaven’: The Uighur Traders of Xinjiang” in issue 131; and “Close Encounters of the Hops Kind” in issue 143, which is forthcoming this year.

“It is my great delight to be awarded the 2025 ABC Champion Award,” Kilham said. “It means a great deal to me. For many years, I’ve had the good fortune and privilege to contribute to some of the publications and programs of ABC. This is not only an organization, but it is also a mission: a mission that brings together many people from around the world with diverse abilities, experience, and visions, all moving to help establish botanicals in their rightful place. I’m delighted to be part of the mix, and I can’t adequately express how much this honor means to me.”

In 1995, Kilham founded Medicine Hunter Inc. “to promote natural, plant-based medicines, to protect the natural environment, and to support indigenous cultures.” He has conducted medicinal plant research and sustainable botanical sourcing in more than 45 countries and works with botanical companies to develop and popularize traditional plant-based food and medicinal products.

The New York Times has called Kilham “part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones,” and he has appeared on more than 1,500 radio programs and more than 500 TV programs worldwide. As a TV correspondent and guest, Kilham speaks about medicine hunting, traditional botanical medicines, nutraceuticals, psychoactive plants, environmental and cultural preservation, and related topics for broad and diverse audiences. He was a special guest, correspondent, and weekly contributing writer for FOX News Health for nine years and a regular guest on The Dr. Oz Show.

His latest book, The Lotus and the Bud: Cannabis, Consciousness, and Yoga Practice, is a guide to combining the practice of yoga with cannabis.

He is a consultant for Groupe Berkem, a botanical extraction and science innovation company in Bordeaux, France, where he works on chain of trade, botanical field exploration, new product development, marketing, and communications.

Kilham also works with the London-based Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he provides images from his decades of field research for the Kew digital image database, with a focus on medicinal plants and the people who work with them.

Kilham is an explorer-in-residence for Purity Products, a company that offers health-promoting herbal concepts he supports, which are largely based on Kilham’s findings.

He served as brand ambassador for KSM-66 Ashwagandha.

For 21 years, Kilham conducted medicinal plant research for PureWorld Botanicals and Naturex.

“In the course of his work, Kilham has traveled more than 4 million miles and spent thousands of days and nights traveling,” ABC reported. “He has fire-walked in the South Pacific, has been made an honorary chief on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific, enjoyed a post as Honorary Consul to the United States on behalf of Vanuatu in the late ‘90s, has made good friends all around the world, roamed rainforests and mountains, made friends with a prince, embarked on ceremonial journeys with shamans, and explored wild places from deserts to rivers.”

Kilham and his wife Zoe Helene travel the world on Medicine Hunter expeditions and work together to promote plant medicines, environmental protection, and cultural preservation.

“I have known Chris since our early years in the herb and natural products industry in the late 1970s,” said Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of ABC. “I had a wholesale herb company in Austin, Texas, and Chris worked in the herb department of a large natural food store, Bread & Circus, in Massachusetts. That later became the first Whole Foods Market store in New England. During that time, I remember Chris’ passion for herbs and medicinal plants. He created various formulas, which were ahead of their time, for the fledgling industry.

“Over the years, I’ve watched him grow his interest in and passion for herbs — now for more than 40 years, and during much of that time, Chris has been a strong and energetic supporter of the nonprofit research and educational mission of ABC, to the point where he has become one of the most frequent contributors of articles for ABC’s publications. There is no question that Chris is a true champion for the herbs and rightfully deserves to be recognized with the 2025 ABC Champion Award.”