Conservation Photography
Pristine landscape and wildlife photography may unintentionally communicate abundance—a narrative that everything is fine. When we see images of wildlife it’s easy to assume the animals are healthy and plentiful. When we see National Parks, or trending vistas, it’s easy to imagine the land beautiful.
The reality is that our earth is struggling, and unmarred landscapes are increasingly small pockets in a world that’s rapidly losing her wild.
Exposed earth from a land decimated by logging.
Oregon trees stacked at port to be shipped internationally. Most of Oregon's trees are not used locally, more demand can be found elsewhere.
From the sky, we see the enormous influence we have on the earth; our story is being carved onto the land.
More efficient machines make quick work of the land and trees. Given time, I wonder when we will consume our mountains.
When I started flying I was drawn to photographing the beauty, but from this new perspective I began to notice more.
Working as an aerial firewatch pilot I began to notice how fast we can harvest the land and how we have spread ourselves into every portion of it. As David Attenborough says:
“We have replaced the wild with the tame. We regard the Earth as our planet, run by humankind for humankind. There is little left for the rest of the living world. The truly wild world–that non-human world–has gone. We have overrun the Earth.”
Aerial view of a train on railroad tracks loaded with Oregon's forests, these are the veins that feed empires.
The land exposed to the sun from deforestation is dry and barren. From the sky I wondered how this land would handle fire.
And in 2020 we got to find out when just over 1,200,000 acres burned nearly overnight. Much of that land was deforested and looked like the prior photograph.
For days afterward smoke blanketed the land and we couldn't see the scale of the destruction from the air...until a couple days after...
...Here a charred landscape from the Santiam Fire spread from where we are flying (around Mill City) to Seekseekqua (Mt. Jefferson) partially obscured by clouds on the distant horizon. A fellow pilot turned conservationist, who noticed and spoke to this in the 90's, died in this fire.
A closer look at part of the burn at Mt. Nebo. Here the trees could've been left to be absorbed back into the land and as resources for nesting animals.
However, even after the fire, the land was decimated further. There was now an excuse for more logging in what would be called a "salvage operation".
The land would be stripped. Destruction in the wake of destruction.
Today the deforestation continues but at a higher rate. Many logging jobs have already been lost to more efficient machines and one day soon, the forest will run out. I fathom those logging jobs won't exist at all in the near future.
There are natural causes for wildfire but even those are becoming more frequent and unnatural as our climate warms. I've worked as a certified aviation weather observer for a decade now and I witness trends that cannot be denied. Our glaciers are melting and draught is becoming more prevalent. The climate is not going to be helped by ripping at the lungs of the earth.
Without the forest we also noticed this air was 10° warmer at altitude. The trees no longer exist to absorb the heat here. And we are continuing to race through resources for short term profit. Future generations will be dismayed at what we refuse to acknowledge now.
Having served in the USCG I witnessed plenty of natural disasters such as hurricane Irene (pictured above), Sandy, and more. However, the most alarming disasters were human caused. In 2010 I responded to the BP oil spill "Operation Deepwater Horizon". I witnessed the destruction of land and wildlife from 4.9 billion barrels of oil being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Working alongside the EPA I learned how unprepared we are to handle ourselves and how, one way or another, our continued pursuit of more will lead us right back here.
1937 World Population: 2.3 billion Carbon in the atmosphere: 280 parts per million Remaining Wilderness: 66%
2020 World Population: 7.8 billion Carbon in atmosphere: 415 parts per million Remaining Wilderness: 35%
When left alone and respected the land can heal itself. The answers have been known by those before us, we just need to reconnect with them and listen to those voices.
“The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things, soon led to a lack of respect for humans too." – Luther Standing Bear
“At the heart of this story, I think, is a simple, abiding belief: it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well. And in behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.” – Barry Lopez, an Oregon author who lost his home on the Mckenzie River in the 2020 Holiday Farm fire. He passed away that December from cancer.