May 1: AMFF Honors Oliver White with the 2025 Heritage Award

AMFF is pleased to announce that Oliver White, chair of Indifly and general manager and partner of South Fork Lodge, is the recipient of the 2025 Heritage Award. He will be honored at the New York Yacht Club on May 1.

“Oliver’s life story exemplifies the power of fly fishing to captivate and inspire,” said AMFF President Gardner Grant Jr. “His passion for fly fishing, coupled with strong doses of curiosity and tenacity, have made him a renowned practitioner and teacher of the sport, a tireless explorer of new frontiers, an accomplished builder and operator of world-class angling lodges, and a visionary proponent of empowering indigenous communities around the globe to thrive by protecting sport fisheries and other natural resources. He is an accomplished and admired leader in the fly-fishing community.”

After a serious skiing accident during college, Oliver took up fly fishing as part of his rehabilitation. He fell in love with the sport, became a guide, and ultimately met Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman in Tierra del Fuego. Bill saw something in Oliver and offered him an opportunity in New York to pursue a career in finance. After a few years, Oliver left to open Abaco Lodge in the Bahamas, which would become one of the most-loved fly-fishing destinations in the world. He ran both Abaco Lodge and Bair’s Lodge (host of the 2015 season of Buccaneers and Bones) for the next fifteen years. In 2020, he and fellow angler Jimmy Kimmel became the new owners of the South Fork Lodge in Swan Valley, Idaho. The lodge—carefully expanded and remodeled to exacting standards while preserving its storied history—is a haven for dry-fly anglers visiting the legendary South Fork of the Snake River.

In 2020, Oliver became part of the Indifly Foundation, first as vice chair and then as chair. Formed out of a Costa project to help a village deep in the heart of Guyana’s rainforest conserve its resources and arapaima fishery, the project and its success created a natural roadmap for other areas of need and conservation importance. In addition to the Rewa Eco Lodge in Guyana, current projects include the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Anaa Atoll in French Polynesia, and the Makhangoa Community Camp in Lesotho.

In 2019, Yeti and Felt Soul Media brought Oliver’s life story to the screen in the acclaimed documentary A Thousand Casts. Against the backdrop of a fishing trip to the Kingdom of Bhutan in pursuit of the rare and elusive golden mahseer, Oliver narrates the extraordinary, dangerous, and, in the end, serendipitous events that took him from philosophy student at UNC Chapel Hill to financier to fishing lodge entrepreneur to the ecotourism champion and devoted husband and father he is today. Oliver White is truly the embodiment of AMFF’s Heritage Award ethos.

Please contact Sarah Foster (802-362-3300 x201) for more information.