To be sure, one of our many objectives while streaming thru America was spotting and capturing photos of as much wildlife as serendipity would allow, for it’s rarely nature’s way for wildlife to wander into my camera frame and pose at will. So the game of being at the right place at the right time, and putting ourselves in position to witness the spectacle of earth’s mighty creatures became somewhat of an obsession.
Yet, seemingly, whenever Leah and I set out to search for a particular species, we invariably turned up empty. For instance, lying low at Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley for a chance encounter with bighorn sheep escorting their new babes down from Mt. Washburn at the beginning of summer season never happened, despite a solid hour of wait time, and occasional reassurances from park rangers that the prospect was highly likely since no wolves had been sighted in the meadow where the mares prefer to congregate to lick the salt from the rocks by a Yellowstone River runoff.
Instead, when we were least expecting them, we’d found them gathering by a trailhead parking lot in the Canadian Rockies,
and worshipping the moon on the cliffs of Muddy Mountain while returning from a hike through Nevada’s Valley of Fire.
and surveying the brutal Badlands while cruising the Loop Road in our air-conditioned F-150.
Related cliff dwellers included mountain goats from Glacier National Park…
and the Columbia Icefields of Alberta.
In the early months of our journey, our frustrating search for elusive alligators along the bayou and delta landscape led us to create a call that crocodilia were apt to ignore: “Here, gator, gator, gator!” (see Where Have all the Gators Gone?)
However, we would not be denied while airboating through the Florida Everglades…
Lesser evasive reptiles encountered along the way ranged from a bloated rattler…
and a horned toad camouflaged against a terrain of cholla cacti within Joshua Tree…
to a greater earless lizard basking on a Big Bend boulder…
a lounging iguana from the tropics of Quintana Roo…
and an angry gopher tortoise from Hobe Sound.
On the other hand, squirrels and chipmunks were ubiquitous throughout the entirety of our trip…
and never shy, if there was the faintest chance they could scavenge a meal discarded by humans.
Although, their close cousin, the prairie dog was less apt to wander from the safety of its network of burrows at Prairie Dog Town in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Equally as omnipresent, and just as opportunistic were the many ravens that crossed our paths: from Bryce Canyon;
to Arizona’s Painted Desert;
to the perch atop the Cathedral of St. Helena.
Other fowl that caught our attention included a variety of cranes and herons from multiple coastal habitats…
and pelicans fishing from the Gulf of Mexico…
to the Pacific Ocean.
But what really captured our imagination were the wild horses that always stood out in a crowd;
the Yellowstone black bear that we’ve never grown tired of beholding;
and the beasts that have defined our heritage as a nation–whether it was the descendants of Death Valley’s Twenty Mule Team…
or the mighty bison on the open range.
Yes, the animal world is prolific; it’s divided between domestic…
and wild;
common…
and sublime.
But regardless of the patience required to collect this anthology of imagery, it pales in comparison to the understanding and energy that must be required to keep our environment intact. Of the approximately 2 million animal species identified on our planet, over 16,000 species are rapidly dwindling, due largely in part to habitat destruction and climate change.
According to Endangered Earth,
“There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List, and 16,306 of them are endangered species threatened with extinction. This is up from 16,118 last year. This includes both endangered animals and endangered plants.
The species endangered include one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one third of all amphibians and 70% of the world’s assessed plants on the 2007 IUCN Red List that are in jeopardy of extinction. The total number of extinct species has reached 785 and a further 65 are only found in captivity or in cultivation. In the last 500 years, human activity has forced over 800 species into extinction.”
We must be resolute and vigilant as conservationists and global citizens to ensure that future generations share the same joy of experiencing wildlife in their lifetime, lest we only have these and other photographs to offer them by default.
Happy Earth Day!
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Streaming thru America 