A foundation carrying on the legacy of a legendary Alabama scientist has given an inaugural conservation award to one of the stars of the “Star Wars” movies.

The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation announced Thursday that Harrison Ford was the recipient of the first E.O. Wilson Legacy Award for Transformative Conservation Leadership. Ford received the award during the foundation’s “Half-Earth Day” celebration at the Field Museum in Chicago on Wednesday.

Wilson, who died in 2021, was an Alabama native who was born in Birmingham and lived in several of the state’s cities during his youth. These included Mobile, where he identified the first known colony of fire ants in the United States while still in his teens. The Nature Conservancy recently named an 8,000-acre tract of the Mobile-Te

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