Inland Rainforest and Wildlife Habitat

8 07 2011

As many of you know, one of my favorite areas to go hiking is the Rogers Pass area in Glacier National Park. The Selkirk Mountains run almost north–south through the park and it is a wonderland of mountain peaks, glaciers, and alpine meadows. Aside from being an amazingly majestic place scenery wise, it is also an important area for wildlife habitat. Grizzly and black bears, mountain caribou, mountain goats,  moose, cougar, and elk all call Glacier National Park home. Many of these animals naturally cover a huge area over the course of a year they are unaware of the arbitrary park boundaries established by humans. It has often been argued that small islands of park are not effective in maintaining populations of larger migratory animals, or complete ecosystems, and it would be preferable for parks to connect to form large contiguous corridors.

The Valhalla Wilderness Society is proposing  the Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park to create an extended wildlife corridor and to protect unique habitat. The park would extend from the southern boarder of Glacier National Park down into the Kootenays and connect with Bugaboo Provincial Park and Goat Range Provincial Park. According the the society, the park would add over 27,000 hectares of wilderness connected to Glacier National Park. The park would not only provide much increased protected habitat for the endangered mountain caribou, it would also include an area of rare temperate rainforrest around the Incomappleux River. The forest is largely unprotected at the moment and is being actively logged in many areas.

The Incomappleux is a unique area of inland temperate rainforest. According to the Valhalla Wilderness Society, the area is home to 2,000 year-old trees , newly discovered species of lichen, and abundant biodiversity.  A Kelowna resident, Riel Marquardt, recently release a documentary on the Incomappleux area and it is well worth viewing to understand of why this area is so amazing. Riel’s movie can be viewed on-line at Culture Unplugged or it can be rented from Leo’s Video here in Kelowna.

So, what can you do to help save this area? Well, there is a bunch of stuff you can do.

  • Get educated about the area.
  • Read about the rainforest on the Valhalla Wilderness Societies website.
  • Watch Riel’s video on Culture Unplugged.
  • Like the Incomappleux on facebook.
  • Sign the petition supporting the formation of the park (contact me directly to get a copy).
  • Contact your MLA and tell them why this is so important.

Lets make our voices heard!!!


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Categories : Activism, Environment, geography, Habitat Destruction, Mountains

Sustainable by Nature

18 11 2010

Below is a copy of a short address I gave at the Building Sustainable Communities conference held by the Fresh Outlook Foundation here in Kelowna. Following the address there was a 6 minute slide presentation of my photography. I have included the video at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy it. Dont forget to use full screen mode and turn up the volume!

The American writer and activist Muriel Rukeyser wrote: “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” While the physicists in the audience may not entirely agree with this statement, I think it rings true for at least how we perceive the world around us. That is to say, that the narrative of our society influences how we perceive our universe. The value that we place on our planet comes from stories created by us, and from the generations before us. So when we consider Sustainable Communities, it is these narratives that we need to review.

Because of my limited time, I ask to be forgiven for the broad and blunt generalizations I am about to make. These are that we live in a society whose stories are compelled by a model of economics that is outdated and broken. A model that measures prosperity only by the amount that we consume and does not consider what we destroy. A model that does not value anything it does not know how to measure in dollars.

You see, the stories from our European past tell us that this planet is an enormous ball of inexhaustible resources and that continual growth is good for everyone. These stories often ignore the very processes and resources that keep us alive. Things like the natural purification of water; the pollination of plants by insects; plant life that turns carbon dioxide into oxygen so we can breathe; the decomposition of wastes by insects and fungi; the list goes on.

These processes are referred to as Ecosystem Services—stuff nature does for us, for free. Of course, some have tried to put a dollar value on these services and an average figure is approximately $38 Trillion dollars annually. That is, if we had to manually pollinate the fruit trees, replenish the oxygen, break down our wastes, it would cost us $38 Trillion dollars every year. Clearly, this is not a viable option.

But knowing these things is not enough. History is filled with examples where information was available, but the dominant culture would not accept it. Galileo comes to mind. That is why cultural change, changing our narrative, is possibly as important as the science itself.

As a photographer and a student of geography, I realized there was a role I could play in re-telling the narrative. The slide show you are about to see documents some of the amazing things that nature does for us. But, as nature does so well, the intricacies are hidden in the simplicity of the scene. Some of the locations are exotic, like the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains; the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon; the coastal areas of the Olympic Peninsula and Long Beach. Visiting these places has always filled me with awe and wonder at their beauty, but now I add to that wonder the amazing things these landscapes do for us. Some of the locations are not so exotic; indeed, some of the images are from my own back yard. Thankfully, the gifts of nature surround us everywhere.

While I hope you enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the images, I want you to think about how these places make life possible. I have added some text to each image to help with this, but it is not the whole story. Please consider: “to keep these ecosystems intact, what can I do without?” And ask yourself “how does this fit into the narrative of my world?” I hope that these images will also renew in you a feeling of wonder for the amazing place that is planet Earth.

I would like to leave you with one last thought:    The planet is, by nature, sustainable.

Thank you.


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Categories : Activism, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Consumption, Environment, GDP, geography, Habitat Destruction, kelowna, Mountains, okanagan, Philosophy, photography, Politics, Video

Just feeling lucky

3 08 2010

Photo of Bighorn Sheep in the Canadian Rockies.

After returning from a trip to the Rockies I am reflecting on what a lucky person I am. First, I was able to do this trip with my lovely partner Shaunet and our dog Summit. Shaunet’s idea of a good time is sleeping in a tent with me, drinking wine around a campfire at night, and spending the day hiking in the mountains. Like I said, I’m a lucky guy! Summit’s idea of a good time involves sleeping, lying in glacial-fed streams, sleeping, scrambling on rocks, and wondering when we are all going to sleep in that tent-den thing.

I have now been in Canada for twenty years and I am still awe-struck by the beauty of the Canadian Rockies. On this trip we concentrated on a stretch of the Icefields Parkway just north of Lake Louise. As we traveled through this area, and hiked into the alpine, we met tourists from all over the world that have come to marvel at the beauty of this place. It is then I feel really lucky because I live here! Western Canada is simply one of the most stunning places I have been on the planet. OK, I have only been to a few other countries. And, I am sure there are other prettier places in the world. But, for the moment, this is tops for me and I feel really lucky to be here.

I also have to feel lucky for some of the great people I have met recently. One person in particular allowed me to borrow his Nikon 80-400mm VR lens. It is quite a beast which I lugged to every location we went. Some times I was questioning the wisdom of this as it is certainly not a landscape lens. It’s real purpose on this trip is wildlife. Then, we crested an alpine bench in Wallace Pass and in front of us was a herd of Bighorn Sheep. Out came the big lens and it all became worth-while. Then I was just thankful for the amazing wildlife that still inhabits these mountains.

The image above was shot at the short end of the focal range. I have some other images at full zoom, but they will have to wait for another post. As you can imagine, I have a lot of photos to work though. Not sure if I am feeling so lucky about that!


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Categories : Environment, Journey, Mountains, photography, Travel

Hermit Meadows in Rogers Pass

3 05 2009

I am going to start from the fourth most popular shot as voted by viewers of my recent photo display. That is the image of the Illecillewaet valley from Hermit Meadows. I wanted to include this one for two reasons; first, it is the only shot in the top four that is from Canada, and the second reason is that I really like this picture – always a good reason to write about something! Nine percent of people voted this picture as being their favorite.

In August of 2008 I decided to hike into Hermit Meadows on the north side of the trans-Canada highway in Rogers Pass, British Columbia. Rogers Pass, and the Selkirk Mountains in general, is one of my favorite places in western Canada. Hermit Meadows is also quite the grueling hike in. The trail is only 2.8 kilometers long one-way, but the elevation gain is 770 meters – that’s steeper than 1 in 4! Yep, with tent, food, and camera gear, it is quite a slog. This is definitely one of these occasions however, where the effort is rewarded at the end. The trail finishes in a beautiful alpine meadow at the edge of a series of glacial moraines. Turning around and looking back the way you came, there is an incredible panorama of the southern Selkirk Mountains. Amongst the rocks in the lower sections of the moraines Parks Canada has constructed a series of wooden tent pads. On ones of these pads is where I slept for two nights after arriving.

A large cirque of mountain peaks swings from the south-west of the camping area in a northerly arc, finishing with one of the more imposing peaks in the area, Mt Tupper, to the north-east. The terrain in this area is a veritable playground for the hiker, mountaineer, or, of course, photographer. I spent most of my time photographing on the slopes of Mt. Tupper. To access this area I would walk through the meadows to access the eastern moraines. The image presented here is what I found the first time I walked though one of these meadows, but this particular shot was from later in the trip. It really was quite amazing; I was hiking along with my day pack and camera gear and looked over to my right. I saw this image and was just stunned. I stopped, looked, took it in, and let it out. It was big and represented everything I love about being in the mountains. It also represented everything that is challenging about effectively creating images that convey that feeling. I stood and looked and considered how my camera would see it – lens, perspective, lighting. Thinking that I would not do the justice to the vision, I walked on and headed for easier subject matter.


Later in the day I was returning to my tent for a mid afternoon siesta and I walked through the same meadow. I was hit with the same feeling. For me it is an “oh my god this is so beautiful and nothing in the world matters more than what I am looking at right now” kind of feeling. I stopped and took in the vista once again. This time I just had to do something about it and started unpacking my camera and tripod. It definitely needed to be a wide angle shot and so I fitted my trusty Nikkor 12-24 mm f/4. I haven’t told you yet how much I love this lens, but, I love this lens! On the business end of the lens I also fitted a B+W circular polarizer filter. Mounted on the tripod I cranked the focal length down to 12 mm and pointed the camera towards the ground so as to use lots of foreground for perspective. The stream serves as the perfect lead-in that draws you through the picture to the Asulkan Valley off in the distance. Exposure on this image was 1/160th at f/6.3. ISO 100. I feel quite satisfied with this shot, and from the comments I received from people, it conveys some of the emotion I felt on the day. I am looking forward to practicing on these kinds of shots a lot more!

So what is your critique? I would love to hear what you think.


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Categories : Critique, Display, Fine Art, Mountains, photography


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