Cristina is headed to San Francisco January 26, 2010 to speak on ecosystem services and the 17th tome in the CEMEX conservation book series, The Wealth of Nature: Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity and Human Well- Being.
There are few smells I love more than that of my daughter’s skin and the early morning air in the tropical forest. There is no other smell like it. It hits you with the power of a thousand different blossoms, promised rain, and the musty scent of moist dirt and mossy shade. It truly fills your lungs and your soul with the rich aroma of mother earth at her very best.
Images from the Yucatan 
Although I was raised in a pretty observant Mexican Catholic family, it has been a couple of decades since I last sat through mass. Today, however, we waited on two masses and one rosary to get our shooting done; more than my fair share for at least another 20 years.
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Learn More about the Yucatan RAVE
hased the bull around for a few minutes and it looks tired enough, a gang of up to 20 horses erupt into the rodeo and compete to lasso the bull. The bleachers explode in cheers every time the bull comes near a horse. The lady sitting next to us explains that the previous weekend four horses were gored and gutted by the bull; all of them died.
Images from the Yucatan RAVE will be highlighted at WILD9 November 6-13, 2009
The assignment Jenny and I have for this part of the RAVE deals with the fishing communities in this area and their intimate dependence on healthy marine ecosystems. Octopus is the main catch this time of year. Hundreds of small boats carrying 3-4 four men leave the port every morning. They spend the whole day fishing off the coast in tiny satellite boats, called “alijos” that are lowered from the larger vessel. One man sits in each alijo, under a murderous sun, baiting lines with large crabs. Their prey is a small species of octopus, which most be very plentiful, as the fishermen come back with load after load of the wiggly creature.
People are immensely nice here. Everyone offers help and information without much nudging and despite the troubles that dominate much of the rest of Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula remains safe and very pleasant. As I move around the various fishing villages, people are quick to smile and show me their catch. They take the time to explain how they fish and the travails of their profession. The only real dangers are the police barricades we encounter every once in a while. They are more dangerous because they have poor signage and are difficult to see when traveling fast on the highway. The officers assure me it is safe and that the barricade is just a way to maintain a close eye on shady characters that might be transporting drugs. Apparently, this is not a big issue in this part of Mexico.
The best part of being assigned to shooting people during a RAVE is that we get to sleep in little towns where it is possible to find a hotel with clean sheets and a fan. Water, as we are finding out is intermittent and optional.
"As someone whose work explores the edge between healthy ecosystems and healthy people, I am most often confronted with the opposite. A planet that is rapidly losing the functionality of the very ecosystems that provide the water, food, air, shelter and medicine that we all need, but that the poorest of the poor intimately depend on. It would be easy to exploit this drama, but with my images I refuse to fulfill the prophecy of their desperate situation. I am often reminded that despite the worse challenges, people, and especially children often have reasons to be happy and that is how I choose to portray them. I want my work to bring back the dignified, hopeful attitude of the people I meet. The common thread in their lives and mine is that they too rise up every morning hoping things will get better. " - Cristina MittermeierImage taken in Madagascar, January 2009
Cristina and I are here in San Crisanto, México on the iLCP Yucatán RAVE! This RAVE started July 2009 and will culminate at WILD9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Merida Mexico November 5th 2009. Over the course of the Yucatan RAVE, the iLCP (International League of Conservation Photographers) will be deployong over 25 world class photographers to locations all over the Yucatan Peninsula. Learn more here! 
Cristina has breathtaking images in the Saatchi Gallery in London. These larger than life images wowed viewers and presented an intimate portrait of community and conservation in Madagascar. Images taken January 2009.
An important part of the job of the photojournalist is to find a way to gain access into a community -- to become a trusted, invisible witness that can report unadulterated opinions and facts. This is not easy, especially when you only have a couple of days to get the job done.
In this rural corner of British Columbia life is simple: fishing and boating in the summer, skiing and hunting in the winter. A “frontier” lifestyle that has been supported for over a hundred years by the coal mines in the region and more recently by a growing tourism industry. Today, no fewer than 5 mines operate in the region and employ a large segment of the population.
As the days go by we meet some of the most inviting, friendly people we have ever met. As widely different as people’s opinions are, there are a few ideals that strike us for their similarity. Almost unanimously people speak of their desire to maintain their traditional frontier lifestyle and access to the resources; they also speak about the wilderness values of the Flathead and a strong desire to see the place remain pristine into the future. The commonality of these desires is far more striking than the concerns and differences of opinion. To outsiders, like ourselves it sounds like the people of Fernie would like to have their cake and eat it too. I hope the government of Canada can come up with a way to make that wish come true.
Shade Grown, Cristina Mittermeier from iLCP on Vimeo.
We are Wai Wai, photography by Cristina Mittermeier from Jenny Nichols on Vimeo.
I see them smiling with their sunburned cheeks and bald spots – American and
It is hard to tell if this is part of the natural infighting that occurs in small, contained societies, where conflict and gossip are the preferred way of conducting business and where maintaining ones power and social standing is more important than doing ones job, or if there has been a real lack of vision and leadership to set parameters and establish order in one of our planet’s most beloved “special places”. Either way, the loss of the experience has been lost. I wonder what would happen if instead of opening cheap tourism to the masses, the Park authority charged visitors the real cost of seeing something so unique, endangered and special. The $100 that every visitor pays to enter the park hardly reflects the cost of managing, maintaining, studying, understanding and protecting such a vast archipelago. Just recently a new species of land iguana (a pink creature the size of cat…..not a small, drab beetle!) was discovered. Think about it: new species are still being found in the place where we first learned about evolution and natural selection. Maybe maintaining nature’s experiments isolated should be more important than making a few bucks??
is shared by some of the movers-and-shakers in the Galapagos), the park entry fee should be closer to $500 US per foreign tourist. This is what tourists who want to spend 20 minutes in the presence of wild Mountain gorillas in Rwanda must pay to see these animals -- and there is a waiting line extending at least a year into the future, so there is no lack of people willing to pay to see something special! What about all the people who won’t be able to afford it? Well, I cannot afford to go many places so I must settle for what I can afford; that is just the nature of capitalism. We cannot please everyone all of the time and the priority should be on maintaining an irreplaceable ecosystem, not on making tourists happy.
Five and a half miles does not seem like a long trek, unless you are walking in the rainforest. The undergrowth is barely contained by the edges of the trail, and in the least traveled portions, the vegetation slowly creeps over the trail, making walking difficult. Add to that the oppressing heat and humidity, the uneven terrain, the many depressions that tend to fill with water every time it rains, and you have the perfect recipe for slow going. The good thing is we are in very good company. Jenny and I are traveling with my husband, Russ Mittermeier, who is an expert in tropical biodiversity and who spent his youth (and indeed much of his life) running around in these forests chasing monkeys for his scientific studies. We are also with my 12 year-old daughter, Juliana, who is in 7th grade and has already visited over 30 countries and all 7 continents but has never been to Suriname before! Traveling with us is also an enthusiastic and dynamic group of people from Seattle and British Columbia. They are all friends of Renee Harbers, a young and energetic photographer whose husband was instrumental in saving this millenarian forest.
ort level for his family but he saw the opportunity to do something remarkable and he took it! Sadly, Jeff died in a plane crash before ever having a chance to see this amazing place, and today it is a pleasure to bring his beautiful young widow, photographer Renee Harbers here. Renee has always known about Jeff’s generous gift, but today is the first time she gets a chance to see it first hand and to meet some of the people who live here and who, thanks to Jeff, will be able to maintain a traditional way of life (with or without western clothes) for as long as they want.
We walked all afternoon in the village, talking to the women, the warriors and the elders. We went on canoes on the Sipaliwini River and we marveled at the giant trees that still line its shores. There are not many places like this left in the world and today I feel really lucky to be able to go for a walk in the woods in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, one of the most untouched wilderness left on the planet. Thanks Jeff Harbers, wherever you are.
I have made my career as a photographer by working with conservation groups like Conservation International and the WILD Foundation. Most of the time the work takes me to remote villages and research projects where it is possible to find sanctuary in nature. More and more often, however, some of the areas in the world that harbor the lion's share of our planet's biodiversity and that have seen the most environmental degradation, the biodiversity hotspots, are also the stage for violent conflict. In a recent article I co-authored with other scientists on the subject of Warfare in the Biodiversity Hotspots we outline some of the effects of warfare on biodiversity. I however, would like to write about a couple of areas where I recently have worked where violence has exploded around us.
trading partner after Canada, and that Mexico-U.S.
