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By Alex Hamilton
For his first conservation-oriented project, Brooklyn, New York-based photographer and filmmaker Erik Goldstein knew he wanted something big. The American Prairie Reserve (APR) turned out to be that thing—it is big, both physically and symbolically. “I knew I had found something special [in APR],” Erik says. “Here is a program on the ground floor of becoming the largest protected wildlife area in the US.” By Hendrikje Schröder Montana. Big Sky Country. Bison herds, counting hundreds of animals, running down a hill in this vast, harsh and extreme environment. In my time on the Prairie, the big, wide open skies of Montana are by far what fascinated me the most. There are no words to actually describe the diverse and unique atmospheres created by the sky out here. Always beautiful. Always different. Constantly changing. Always interesting, dynamic and mystic. But let the pictures speak for themselves… Hendrikje Schröeder was born and raised in the north of Germany. She is about to finish her master’s degree in Sustainable Resource Management, specializing in Wildlife and Protected Areas Management in Munich. Hendrikje is also an environmental educator working with stakeholders affected by the conservation of Europe’s three large carnivores. Her hobbies include rock climbing and hiking. Story and Photos by Jen Pate On November 16, our all-female team, eXXpedition, will set sail across the Atlantic Ocean on a mission to explore the connections between ocean and human health—specifically plastics, toxics and cancer. The Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation Marine Microplastics Project is a perfect fit with our expedition. We will take water samples on our crossing to help expand ASC’s global data set, where microplastics have been found in almost every liter of water analyzed.  The eXXpedition team and boat, the Sea Dragon. Clockwise from top left: Lucy Gilliam, Emily Penn, Laura Coleman, Jennifer Pate, Constanca Belchior, Malin Jacob, Caterina Falleni, Anne Baker, Shanley McEntee, Elaine McKinnon, Maria Arceo, Diana Papoulias, Sue Weaver, Jenna Jambeck By Emily Wolfe Before the new year, crewmembers from 100 sailboats are set to collect 600 ocean water samples from a 602,000-square-nautical mile area in the Atlantic Ocean for ASC’s microplastics research. “It’s huge for science, for really getting a picture of this part of the Atlantic,” said ASC partner scientist Abby Barrows. “[This will give] us the fuller picture of how plastic concentrations may or may not fluctuate closer to land and in the middle of the ocean.”  Rodney Bay, Santa Lucia, the final destination of the ARC (Photo courtesy of Ocean Conservation) By Nikki Mann We spent hours and hours walking a tropical beach in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica… in the dark… without headlamps. As the surf pounded the beach to my left, invisible and insistent, I tried to decide if I looked weak—or, really, if I looked like the weakest of our group. This is a worry I often have, doing physically demanding work in remote locations, but in Costa Rica, it was not the opinion of the four other guys I was concerned about. It was the opinion of the jaguars.  This image, captured by photographer Alonso Sánchez of ACR Wildlife Photography on a beach less than a mile away, is what we were hoping to see—a jaguar eating a sea turtle. Although jaguar tracks appeared on the beach almost nightly, the cats remained invisible shadows. |
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