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News from BDSJS and Facing Climate Change
On the outside
A short, uplifting postscript on our Connecting Prisons with Nature video we produced two years ago for the Sustainable Prisons Project:
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 Annual Report
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.
Paddle to Swinomish
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
My brother, musician Nick Drummond, is a frequent contributor to our multimedia projects. But his real work is as a song-writer and performing artist. In recent months he began a new collaboration with fiddler/violinist Tyler Carson. They were in need of a few promotional images, and I happily obliged.
Nick and Tyler have a busy touring schedule this fall. More details at nickandtylerband.com.
TEAM in Tanzania
It’s been a busy spring for us. Days after we returned from a story in Mozambique, we were invited to return to Africa for a week’s work in Tanzania. TEAM (Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring) is a Conservation International project designed to provide an early warning system on the status of biodiversity in the tropics. The network generates real time, publicly available data through a rapidly growing global network of field stations. In early April, project staff from around the globe gathered outside of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania for a Network meeting and training.
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.
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