Before the snow began to fall, I made a quick trip out to Hagerman, Idaho to revisit the Bell Rapids agricultural development for Facing Climate Change. Sara and I completed most of our fieldwork for that story in 2010, but it’s a tale of change in Big Sky Country and I knew I had to get above it. (Field notes from our first trip are here.)

Once again I turned to LightHawk for help. LightHawk is an organization that supports environmental initiatives with mission-based flights and this was our third collaboration for Facing Climate Change. With beautiful clear weather, pilot Dennis Fitzpatrick and I spent several hours in his Cessna working our way up the Snake River and over the 25,000 acres of abandoned fields.

What had been missing from our coverage – the scale of this economic shift and landscape-level change – was easily captured from the air. I made images of ghost pivots (the abandoned tracks of irrigation systems) under the shadows of new wind turbines, empty potato barns with their roofs blown off, and the Snake River winding its way through the dry plain.

A big thanks to Dennis and LightHawk and stay tuned for the release of this piece and the rest of our new climate change series later this year!

Joel de Melo Bambamba and Suzete Guina are studying to become two of Mozambique’s first optometrists. After a series of civil wars left their country one of the poorest in the world, the population of almost 24 million is just beginning to recover. Yet, there are zero optometrists in Mozambique, and poverty and blindness are inextricable.

The Mozambique Eyecare Project aims to provide a sustainable solution to the problem of avoidable blindness through optometric education. There are 56 students enrolled in the project, thanks to a partnership between the Dublin Institute of Technology, Lúrio Univeristy in Mozambique and the International Centre for Eyecare Education.

This past spring, we spent two weeks in Mozambique to tell the story of Joel and Suzete and the project’s work at UniLúrio. We built an image library, a 10-minute video and a new website, mozeyecare.org, all launched for World Site Day. Our frequent collaborator Darin Reid did the design and built the multi-language site on WordPress. And a big thanks to the amazingly agile Nick Drummond who wrote and recorded most of the music in the piece.

Mozambique is one of five Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, and as such, is somewhat disadvantaged when it comes to foreign aid. In fact, the optometry faculty at Uniúrio are all Spanish speakers because it has been difficult to find Portuguese or Brazilian staff. The similarities between Portuguese and Spanish also made our job significantly easier as Sara was able to communicate with almost everyone in Spanish.

A few behind-the-scenes photographs are below. Explore the “Stories” on mozeyecare.org to view more images from the project.

We made one final trip to Africa this year. In August, we returned to Tanzania’s southern highlands for Conservation International and the TEAM Network to build an image library and exhibit in support of the project’s next chapter.

“Most conservation science today isn’t ambitious enough,” says TEAM’s Sandy Andelman. “We are informing battles, but we are not providing the knowledge needed, at the scale needed, to win the war.” To meet this challenge, Conservation International, the Earth Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation envision a monitoring network that combines ecological, agriculture and socioeconomic data from around the world. The approach is similar to TEAM’s biodiversity monitoring work, but the focus is ecosystem services and the scale is huge: 400 sites within two or three years.

To help bring this vision to life, we visited southern Tanzania to produce an image library and exhibit. We accompanied researchers collecting micro-climate data from farmers’ fields, installed camera traps on the steep slopes of Udzungwa National Park, and tried to show the link between intact ecosystems and the foods, fuelwood and clean water that communities depend on.

Though successful, the trip was not without challenges. Many of the “services” on our shot list were either highly restricted or illegal. A huge thanks to Joseph Martin, Emanuel Martin and Miller Sanga who went above and beyond to help us find what we needed. (Most tourists are looking for lions, not people doing laundry or making charcoal.)

Upon our return, we quickly produced a dozen large-format prints for a donor meeting in New York. (More details on the meeting can be found at nature.com.) The exhibit will continue to travel in 2012.

View a portfolio of favorite images »

TEAM currently has 18 site managers from tropical forests in 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This diverse group of scientists gathered in Dar to network, train and solve shared challenges from their home sites. Similar to the Natural Histories Project, our job was to find a way to bring this group of voices to a wider audience.

Over a few days, we completed short interviews with each site manager along with a high-key portrait. We pulled quotes from each that, when read together, help explain the researchers’ work and why it’s important. The issues TEAM is tackling are serious and the data significant, but it’s the dedication and passion of the people in the network that makes the project compelling.

The resulting piece, The Faces of TEAM, is distributed as a printed-on-demand magazine (order here) and an iPad-optimized PDF.

Excerpts below:

PATRICIA ALVAREZ
“Your days can go really crappy. Trust me. I got this scar here. I’ve been stung by a sting ray, a scorpion… You can have a really, really crappy day. You lost a boat. Your gasoline was taken by the river. It’s raining. Your tent is invaded by ants. You have the worst day of your life and you’re ready to cry and say I hate this place. I hate the jungle. They should burn the jungle and put cement on it. I’ve said it. And then you see this little monkey looking at you. It can be a little frog, it can be a fungi that I’ve never seen in my life. And that’s it. That’s the magic of Cashu.”

DAVID KENFACK
“The most exciting for me is the camera traps. The camera trap data is going to be very important for the management plan of the park because so far there is no clear picture of what is in the park as far as animals. Sometimes when we go to town we have encounters with elephants, but we don’t know how many elephants are there. We don’t know where they are. So with the camera trap studies we are going to have a better understanding of what is in the park, where it is, how dynamic the population is and so on. It’s also important for the entire country because it’s going to set an example for how to monitor wildlife. I think it’s the first time that this type of equipment has been used in Cameroon.”

BADRU MUGERWA
“I find it amazing that a small group of people came up with this idea. Now it has grown to a global scale and it’s an honor to be part of this network. It’s already part of the team vision, expanding more, having 40 sites. So I think my work is to keep it going. It’s not all about collecting data for a PhD study over three years and then keeping your data on a shelf. We need something long-term going on, and data shared on a global scale, just the way TEAM does it.
I think if we’re going to help other life survive, regardless of all the threats we are facing, it has to be a joint collaboration. We have to join hands to help other species to live, to continue existing.”

Daniel Travatte, the bee-keeping inmate, was recently profiled in the Kitsap Sun. He was released from prison last June and is now raising 70,000 bees professionally. Read the full story at the Kitsap Sun.

The captive-rearing program for the Oregon-spotted frog continues to exceed expectations. Earlier this year, egg nests were found at the release site, indicating that the frogs had survived and were beginning to reproduce in the wild. Last week, 163 new frogs were taken to Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Harry Greer was able release the frogs himself. Harry, an inmate who has worked on the project since its inception, is now on work release. Read more on the SPP Blog.

LightHawk’s View From Above annual report just came out and I was honored that a photo from my Skagit series was featured. The organization provides donated flights to conservation organizations and has been a huge help with our work. A big thanks to LightHawk and pilot Linda Chism for their continued support.

Read the report.

In late July over a hundred tribes and First Nations from the US and Canada paddled towards the Swinomish reservation near La Conner, WA. The Tribal Canoe Journey takes place each summer in the Salish Sea, and this year the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community was the host. On the first day of the event, the host tribe formally grants the visiting canoes permission to come ashore to eat, rest, and share songs, dances and stories. Most of the canoes are paddled by youth, and for many of them the journey is an opportunity to learn and reconnect to the traditional ways of canoe culture.

Nick and Tyler have a busy touring schedule this fall. More details at nickandtylerband.com.

On the last day of the workshop, Nancy Baron – a naturalist featured in our From Decline to Rebirth project – led a communication training on the “risks and rewards of science communication.” Her book, Escape from the Ivory Tower is a fantastic resource designed to help academics and researchers strengthen their communication skills and effectively reach non-scientific audiences. We were honored to join Christopher Joyce from National Public Radio, Ken Weiss from the Los Angles Times, and Nicola Jones from Nature as the journalist trainers. Side by side, we interviewed the participating scientists in front of the group, and then collectively deconstructed the conversations. Our favorite part was watching seasoned science reporters such as Chris and Ken work their magic; I think we learned as much as anyone.

(Check out this recent piece from Christopher Joyce on nuclear peril in Japan. And Ken Weiss was behind the LA Times Pulitzer Prize winning series Altered Oceans.)

We’ll have more to share from our work with TEAM in the coming weeks. Below are a few photos from the workshop and overnight trip to the Udzungwa National Park field station.

View the full gallery »

Our frequent musical collaborator (and my brother), Nick Drummond, is about to release an impressive new solo album. I spent the weekend designing the disc packaging and other collateral. Listen to the first single from the album or join us at the release party at Seattle’s Triple Door on June 3.

The practice of natural history – focused attention to the non-human world – is in decline. But it’s definitely not dead, and the profile of modern day naturalists has been a recurrent and important topic for us over the years. Last month we began a six-month assignment to chronicle the future of natural history and we’re excited to launch phase one of the project today at declinetorebirth.org.

The Natural History Network, with support from the National Science Foundation, is producing a series of four workshops in 2011 dedicated to re-imagining natural history. They’re convening groups of thought leaders to explore natural history and society, education and research over four working meetings in Arizona and Washington.

We were asked by the Network to document these meetings so that the discussions could be brought to a larger audience. However, watching conference video is about as exciting as watching bristlecone pines grow. The challenge was to find a way to capture the ideas, people and conversations in a way that was interactive, exciting and could bring new people into the discussion.

Our solution has four parts:

AUDIO BOOTH
We set up a recording booth where participants could sit down in pairs to ask questions, share ideas and tell stories to each other. Modeled after StoryCorps, these “interviews” were largely self-directed, and followed the participants’ interest and topics. Sara only facilitated when necessary to keep things on track.

PORTRAIT STUDIO
After each conversation was complete, we’d make a black and white portrait of each individual as well as the pair. By using a simple background and portable studio lighting, we’ll be able to keep the series cohesive throughout the workshops.

BROADSIDES
At night, we’d parse the audio for short quotes that captured some of the big ideas from each conversation. Thanks to support from Canon USA, we were able to print 13 x 19 broadsides from each conversation and hang them in the common room by the next morning. Though it made for some long days, the instant feedback became a way of charting the discussion as it happened, valuing the contributions of participants, and making our work more transparent. Plans are in the works to exhibit these prints at a number of venues in the coming year (there will be over a hundred of them by June).

INTERACTIVE WEBSITE
Finally, we’ve just launched From Decline to Rebirth, a multimedia website that we designed to present the audio excerpts and portraits from these conversations. Built by our friend and frequent collaborator Darin Reid using a custom PHP framework, the site allows visitors to explore the content using a freeform, non-linear interface. You can browse conversations by theme, person or workshop and even search for specific words in the transcript. We’ve also built in social networking tools to comment on and share specific content. Find it at declinetorebirth.org

The website currently features over 25 portraits and excerpts gathered from the Natural History and Society meeting. In March we’ll be collecting material from the Education and Research workshops, and in June we’ll do the same at the Synthesis meeting. There will be over 120 naturalists included by the end. Stay tuned as we launch new content in the coming months!

For more behind the scenes, see our Fieldnotes from Sasabe post.

However it was difficult to ignore the impact of the border. A dozen miles from the line, we were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint, where our rental Kia packed to the ceiling with large black bags was apparently not suspicious. Border Patrol trucks comprised about two-thirds of the traffic on the road, and when we went birding outside the rancho our binoculars would often find other lenses looking back at us. It was impossible to ignore the cultural artifacts that littered the high Sonoran Desert. Walking in any direction from the ranch revealed water bottles, gloves and children’s shoes. The modern migration and predator-prey relationship that goes on here is dramatic and disturbing. We left feeling that spending a week along that wall is an experience more Americans should have.