Changing perspectives of our planet…
            one location, one story, one photograph at a time.

 

 

What started as a personal mission to see the world, quickly turned to a mission to help educate and make others aware of the impact each person has on our fragile planet.

Capturing and sharing photos of endangered species and environments is a crucial step in educating people and showing a world that is worth saving. So many are unaware how lengthy the endangered list is ranging from the tiny Salt Creek tiger beetle to the 100 foot long Blue Whale. There are currently around 1100 species listed on either the threatened or endangered list, some of them are too far gone and have no hope, others are slowly making a comeback through heavy protection and care.People often ask how/why we choose the locations of our trips and the answer is quite simple: We want to go to places or see things (animals and habitats) that may not be there in five or ten years.Borneo is a top priority for us right now, it saddens me, that an island with some of the oldest trees/rainforests in the world, that have been here basically forever, will be virtually deforested in less than 100 years. Why does it matter? Because animals like the orangutan, pygmy elephant, proboscis monkey (already down to less than 7,000 animals), gibbons, etc call this home and when the forests on Borneo are gone, so is their home.

Take tigers for example…there are approximately 3,200 animals left in the wild…almost all in national parks/reserves. Despite these protections, they are being poached at a rate of one per day. It doesn’t take a mathematician to point out these majestic animals won’t be around long in the wild if we don’t do something about it.

By visiting these locations we hope that local people will begin to see the economic benefit these areas/animals bring to the economy, not just once, but forever. A poached tiger may bring a couple thousand dollars in instant reward to a single individual, however a living breathing tiger has the potential to bring hundreds of thousands of tourist dollars to an economically depressed region…think how many people are employed to serve tourists-guides, drivers, hotel staff, restaurants, etc. Our actions do make a difference!

Showing and selling my work, telling the stories of the places we go and why will hopefully encourage others to spread the word, think twice about their personal impact on the environment and to travel the world injecting tourism dollars to many of these third world countries showing them that preserving the habitats of these critically endangered species can be beneficial to them in the long run. I want everyone, and their grand-children to have the opportunity to visit the Mountain Gorillas or Tigers or Lions in their natural habitat. However if care is not taken of our fragile planet, those opportunities to see these amazing species are diminishing quickly.

I’m certainly not perfect in everything I do. I could buy smarter, I could recycle more actively, but I make every effort to travel to places of concern to show them that its a world worth saving and then to share my work back home to send the same message.