Florian Schulz is a professional nature photographer and a founding member of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). His Freedom to Roam Project chronicles wildlife migration corridors and shows how each piece of the conservation puzzle connects with the others. This project documents the affects of global warming and human encroachment on wild spaces and makes clear the need for protected wildlife corridors to allow migrating species to be able to move throughout their ranges safely and freely.
Phase one of the Freedom to Roam project documents the wildlife corridor that runs from the arctic down along the coast and through the mountains of North America. The photography from this phase, known as Y2Y or Yellowstone to Yukon, was compiled into a book and selected photos are also on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Schultz is now starting work on phase two, B2B or Baja to the Beaufort Sea.
The stunning video above puts a face to the conservation efforts and shows just what it is scientists and other conservationists are working to protect. The caribou in this video migrate over proposed oil drilling land, pristine wilderness that the oil companies would have us believe is barren and purposeless but for the oil that lies beneath it. With the effects of global warming diminishing arctic habitat it is more important than ever to protect that habitat, and to make more habitat accessible to arctic wildlife.
For more information on the Freedom to Roam project and award-winning photographer Florian Shulz visit visionsofthewild.com. The NY Times article Home on the Range also provides information on the proposed protection of the Y2Y wildlife corridor.
A few weeks ago I read this New York Times article about major brands marketing their foods as local to the area where they are either grown or processed, and it got me thinking about what shopping and eating “local” means to me. If I shop at Target, which is headquartered here in Minneapolis, is this shopping local? Or do the goods AND the services have to be here? What about buying Mexican tomatoes at the local food coop? Is this more or less “local” than buying locally grown tomatoes at Whole Foods?
Ultimately, how we each define “local” is up to each of us. For me, I look for locally grown foods and have a preference for smaller farms that use sustainable practices. I prefer grass-fed beef from a local ranch, milk from local grass-fed cows, and organic fruits and veggies from local small farms. But if I can’t find what I’m looking for, or the local organics are out of season, then I have to start making choices. In the winter I choose locally grown hothouse tomatoes over the organic imported varieties. I also shop at Whole Foods over the local coops, and this works for me because I use less gas by driving to fewer locations (yes, I know I should ride my bike, and I’m going to work on that for trips with fewer items) and our Whole Foods stocks a lot of the locally grown meats and produce.
But what about the bigger brands? General Mills is headquartered just outside of Minneapolis. Do their products count as local? For me, I have to say no, and yes. From an ecological standpoint, no, because I know that they’re shipping in raw ingredients from all over the world; the food is not entirely locally grown and quite a large amount of fossil fuels are being used to get all those ingredients to MN. But from an economic standpoint, I know when I’m buying General Mills products I’m helping my neighbors to keep their jobs, and that’s important too.
If you’re a non-vegan in MN and haven’t tried Thousand Hills Cattle beef or Cedar Summit Farms milk, you should check them out. Grass-fed is the best! We’ve also got great farmer’s markets for locally grown fruits and vegetables – my favorite is the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market under the freeway near the North Loop in Minneapolis. It’s open every weekend day in the summer.
If you’re outside of Minnesota and would like to find local farmers and ranchers near you, check out Sustainable Table’s Eat Well Guide.
Today is World Oceans Day, a day to honor our oceans and all they have given us, and to raise awareness for the current plight of our oceans and those that live there. Our oceans are facing issues from global warming to pollution, and the truth is that we cannot survive on this planet without everything the oceans give us.
“The End of the Line” is a documentary about the issues of overfishing that was released in theaters today. This film, hailed by “The Economist” as “The Inconvenient Truth about the oceans,” shows the appalling overfishing that is currently happening in our oceans and will make you think twice about what you order the next time you head out for seafood. Visit the film’s website for more information on tickets or the campaign to prevent overfishing.
Global warming is considered the biggest threat to the oceans (overfishing is number two), with wide ranging impacts from the warming of the oceans, creating inhospitable conditions for fragile ecosystems including coral reefs, to ocean acidification. Thus the more we do to prevent climate change, the better the oceans will be protected.
Greenpeace has a plan to protect 40 percent of the earth’s oceans as marine reserves. This plan would help to protect the oceans against overfishing and pollution and would allow our marine ecosystems a chance to recover. You can sign the petition or learn more about the plan at the Greenpeace campaign page.
This film by Nick Broomfield tells the story of a small group of Greenpeace activists that shut down the UK’s Kingsnorth power station to protest the government’s plan to build new coal-fired power plants. The six activists climbed through the tower to the top and then two members lowered themselves over the side to write a message on the tower. Their actions brought national and international attention to the issue, but the attention they brought wasn’t the real victory – their acquittal of criminal damage was. The message this acquittal sends is clear. The people of the UK will not stand by and allow their government to ignore the issues surrounding climate change.
While I tend to agree with the ideals of Greenpeace, I’ve always had mixed feelings on direct action campaigns. I’ve often wondered if they have any real impact. Often actions of small groups of activists are seen as a bit crazy, and sometimes they even generate sympathy for the opposition. But this is one case in which it’s clear that direct action can make a difference. As of April 23, no new power plants will be built in Britian that do not have carbon capture technology in place. Would this have happened without the shutdown of Kingsnorth? I think not.
Photographer Patrick Farrell has won the Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of Haiti in the aftermath of the hurricanes that ravaged the country last year. If you haven’t seen these photos, you should. While we usually see the destruction of buildings in hurricane photography, Farrell’s work shows the human destruction. The images are very moving and sometimes disturbing. I watched the slide show, with Farrell’s voiceover, three times in succession as, sitting in my living room, it’s hard for me to comprehend what it must have been like to be in Haiti during these storms.
Patrick Farrell, I commend you on your courage in taking these photos and I congratulate you on your win.
This past weekend I went back to Michigan to spend some time with my parents. I didn’t go down into Detroit on this trip, but from what I saw from the highway back to the airport, things haven’t changed much. There has been a lot made of the impact of the economic downturn on the inner city, but Detroit has looked like this since the 70s. Burnt out and abandoned homes and warehouses are the norm rather than the exception, and many of these structures haven’t been touched in 40 years other than to provide shelter for the homeless in the winter, or as kindling on Devil’s Night.
I don’t know the history of this particular building, but it stands as an example not of our current economic downturn, but of what happens when a city can’t rebuild itself after social and economic destruction. It is a reminder that while things are tough right now, we as people cannot allow ourselves to turn on each other, to riot in the streets and to destroy our cities. If we do, we all pay the price.
French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre created a photo essay on the Detroit ruins that Time Magazine calls “haunting”, and I have to agree. It is a shame what has happened to my home city, but Marchand and Meffre document it with an eye for beauty in the decay. The DetroitYES Project also has a photo essay showing the ruins of major city landmarks, with small write-ups on each location in the photo tour.
In honor of the end of the longest US election season in history, Paste Magazine has set up an “Obamafier” on their website where anyone can upload a photo of, well, anything, and have it Obamified. After you’re been Obamified you can move your image around in the box to center it however you want, and even adjust the color balance in the image. Then you can select one of the captions or make up your own. There are quite a few interesting custom captions on the site… There are options to share the image on Facebook and to send it to friends with the click of a button, no need to download (although that’s an option too).
As you may know I was not on the Obama bandwagon during the election, but I am cautiously optimistic about the next four years. So I’ve chosen the “Hope” tagline, hoping that in the next few months I’ll see some great decisions being made and I’ll be Obamified for real. But whether you support or loathe Obama, the Obamifier is just plain fun.
I drove out to the Barnes and Noble at The Galleria with the intention of buying the book Light: Science and Magic, which provides instruction in lighting for photography. I’d checked online and I knew they had it in stock. I found my book, but stayed to browse some of the other photography books on the shelves, and my mood started to change. I became very contemplative and present in the book browsing, lost in the pictures and the book synopses. This has happened to me before – it’s why I like going to bookstores, actually – and so felt as if I was digging into a big bowl of homemade macaroni and cheese; comforting and fulfilling at the same time. After some time I found the book A Year of Mornings. This book of photography came out of a blog project where the two women author-photographers, both living in cities named Portland but on opposite sides of the country, each took one picture every weekday morning for a year. When viewed together the pictures often seemed to complement each other, as if there was some connection between them even though the women did not discuss the pictures before shooting them. Sometimes the colors seemed to go together, and on some mornings they each took a picture of the same items. I was also struck by the beauty of such simple items, a cup of coffee or half-eaten grapefruit, a flower in a vase or an unmade bed. Looking at the pictures reminded me that to find beauty in the everyday I must be present in the moment and open to the possibilities.
Somehow this time of year I always come upon this realization. Sometimes it’s through the beauty of the first snow, or a something that happens in my yoga practice. Sometimes it just comes out of the rush that is the holiday season; the visiting of family and friends, the bustling of shopping, decorating and baking, and this strange need to feel jolly in what is ultimately the darkest time of the year. This time of year always makes me feel like I need to slow down, and being present is my way of slowing things down. This year the feeling has taken me a bit by surprise as I haven’t been working, and thus in theory I shouldn’t feel so rushed. But still, I’ve needed the reminder, to remember to get on my yoga mat, to enjoy my breakfast and my brisk walk each morning with Cooper. To notice the little things, like the way Storm joins me in the bathroom each morning with a purr, and the way the sun fills the living room on clear winter days. As the year comes to an end I need to make the most of my time off from work as I’m sure the new year will bring with it a new job that will take up most of my time, and I will have to work harder to find the good stuff.
So I left the bookstore without the book I planned to purchase, but with my own copy of A Year of Mornings and a nice dose of inspiration. I’ve been trying to take at least one “keeper” picture each day in preparation for a 365 project on flickr that I was planning to start formally in 2009. I’ve had a block with my photography as I feel like I have nothing interesting to say or shoot, that I need a theme outside of myself to make things interesting for others. But I’ve been reminded of a purpose – find something each day that interests or inspires me, or that tells a story. Simple, right? Well, it probably won’t be, as I know from others who’ve gone down the path. But I know it will be worth the effort.
Addendum: A Year of Evenings is currently in progress at the 3191 blog. The pics are beautiful!
One of the many things that I hope our new president has on his to-do list, after re-energizing the economy, is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil in a manner that does not destroy our ecosystems here in the U.S. I am a big advocate for sustainable energy and believe that wind and solar energy are highly underutilized here. So when I picked up this month’s copy of Outside Magazine and read about the Pickens Plan, I was intrigued, and then let down.
The Pickens Plan, developed by T. Boone Pickens, is a new energy plan for the United States that is designed to limit our dependency on foreign oil. The plan advocates the use of wind farms over oil, and natural gas over gasoline to power automotive vehicles. The plan also advocates drilling and using the remaining local reserves of oil. While I support the use of wind power, I can’t get behind the rest of the plan. Why would we want to switch to natural gas, another fossil fuel, over fuel cells, plug-in hybrids (powered by wind and the sun) or other sustainable resources? To me that sounds redundant. It’s just going from one scarce and non-renewable resource to another. It just doesn’t make sense when there are sustainable options in the works now.
I’m also not a fan of using up the remaining oil as fast as possible. Some of that oil is in pristine wilderness that would likely never recover from drilling. And even if that wasn’t a consideration, it’s never a good idea to use up any resource. As an oil tycoon and former corporate raider, T. Boone Pickens ought to know this. We need to move towards energy independence in a sustainable manner, not a destructive one. So while this is an interesting plan, I’m not going to be backing it. I think know we can do better. We deserve better.
June 30, 2009, at 7:50 am
