WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, October 27, 2005
John Horning, Executive Director Speaks at WildEarth Guardians' Annual Gala Event Celebration

These are difficult times for all of us who care deeply about the natural world and our place in it. One of the ways I find the strength to do this work is because of the WildEarth Guardians community.
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

Thanks, Jess. And, thank you all for coming out this evening. It is inspiring to see so many new faces as well as the familiar faces of the long-time members and supporters of WildEarth Guardians.

An evening like this is the result of the hard work and generosity of a lot of people. I want to particularly thank two people -- Rosie Brandenberger, our office manager and Victoria Seale, a board member -- for their hard work in putting this beautiful evening together. They each have a ton of energy, and an incredible spirit and I’m thankful for your work to make this event such a success. And, I want to thank the entire staff and board for their hours of hard work and dedication to our cause.

These are difficult times for all of us who care deeply about the natural world and our place in it. One of the ways I find the strength to do this work is because of the WildEarth Guardians community.

WildEarth Guardians is a lot of things, but as much as the headlines, the ancient forests protected, the rivers restored, the legal precedents established and the politicians that we’ve held accountable, WildEarth Guardians is a movement of people. Because it’s people like you and me that are creating and affirming the popular support for lasting environmental protection. So thank you all again for strengthening and deepening our community.

I’d like share to a personal anecdote as a way of introducing our presenter this evening. About a decade ago, I saw an image in National Geographic magazine that captured the beauty, fragility and fertility of a desert river. The image was of a vibrant stream with ancient cottonwoods along its banks in Canyon de Chelly at sunrise. There is a magic to cottonwood forest along a stream when the translucent leaves capture the light of an early Spring morning. It was a simple but breathtaking image.

I called the photographer immediately and asked if I could incorporate his image into a slideshow that I had created. At the time, I was traveling frequently around the state and the SW informing people about the negative consequences of cattle grazing on streams on public lands. And that’s how I first came to know Adriel Heisey.

That image is also relevant because it captures one of the central values that guides WildEarth Guardians’ work-and that is the value of the diversity of life and the need for constant vigilance to protect endangered habitats. Our waterways -- whether headwaters streams on our national forests, the cottonwood-willow bosques along our major rivers, or the rare playa lakes and sink holes -- are ecological hotspots. They’re some of the most diverse ecosystems in all of North America and they’re also some of the most endangered.

Which is why the work of WildEarth Guardians is so important. For 16 years WildEarth Guardians has been consistent in articulating our moral and ethical obligation to safeguard the diversity of life and to protect the health of our homeland. Whether we’re working protect spotted owls and their ancient forests, silvery minnows and the Rio Grande, wolves and their wilderness, or prairie dogs and prairie chickens and their desert and grassland homes-each of our efforts are inextricably linked by a recognition that the entire web of life is sacred and should be safeguarded.

The Endangered Species Act is a beautiful articulation of that moral promise. It is, by far, the most effective mandate to conserve the ecosystems upon which all of life, including human life, depends. It is the ethical clarity and the legal strength of the Endangered Species Act that explain why this visionary law is under attack from powerful anti-environmental forces.

These forces in the oil and gas, development, logging, ranching and mining industries seem to have forgotten that we actually have an intergenerational responsibility to leave a healthy planet and they see no problem with the increasing environmental and economic inequity that is a growing problem in our society today.

If you do take one piece of inspiration from an evening like this I hope that it leads you to re-commit to exercise your voice to energize the institutions that are at the very heart of our democracy. Write a letter to the editor. Attend a city council meeting. Send Senator Domenici a nasty gram. He needs to know that we’re watching.

I know you know that it’s not just the laws that safeguard our waters, our wildlife, and our wildlands that are threatened, but the very core of our participatory democracy that is at stake.

I want to return to the image of that beautiful stream in Canyon de Chelly. As it continued to work its magic on me and my audiences I began to think more and more about how we might marry Adriel’s talents for flight and photography, with our desire to protect the much maligned and mythological Rio Grande.

At the time WildEarth Guardians and our environmental allies we’re in the midst of a still very difficult campaign to protect the Rio Grande. Though we’d done pretty well in making the ecological and legal case for restoring the Rio Grande, we hadn’t done nearly as well in making our public case that the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow is a metaphor for the river itself. What was clear to us-that we needed to protect the silvery minnow in order to save the Rio Grande-was not clear to everyone.

As a result of those difficult days, we came to the obvious conclusion that we needed to do a better job of re-connecting people with the Rio Grande if we were to going to be able to implement the difficult changes in water management that are needed to protect the Rio Grande. It was out of this desire-really a desire to inspire people with the beauty and fragility of the Rio Grande-that a new partnership was borne.

Beginning in 2000, for more than five years now, WildEarth Guardians and Adriel Heisey have been collaborating to build a body of photographic images of the Rio Grande from its headwaters in Colorado down to Texas. These images will be the basis for a book and traveling gallery exhibit that will be out in the Spring or Fall of 2007.

Though that body of work is nearly finished it is not yet complete, but tonight-for the first time publicly-Adriel is going to provide us a brief glimpse of the Rio Grande as seen though his eyes, through his lens and from his self-built ultralight plane. Those select images of the Rio Grande will actually be our dessert. The main course is a passenger seat on many of his intimate aerial journeys across the Southwest.

If you’re not acquainted with Adriel’s images, I promise you’re in for a breathtaking experience!! If you’ve already seen some of his work, I hope tonight reignites your imagination and your appreciation for our incredible homeland.

And as you get inspired by Adriel’s work, think about the ways you might wish for your own voice to be heard, and think about how you can engage in our work-whether its planting a tree or writing a letter or attending a meeting with your law makers-to protect the threatened lands and wildlife of the Southwest.

So, please join me in welcoming Adriel Heisey as he takes us on a visual journey across the Southwest.

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