Go Wild! A Night of Fashion + Celebration to Save Elephants

Ready to get wild this holiday season? Well, look no further. Break out your uber-hawt jungle safari costumes and boogie on down for a night of fashion and celebration to save elephants.

Portland’s fashion elite have joined forces with the conservation community to throw a wild couture fashion show featuring local, eco designers in an effort to save wild African elephants from the illegal ivory trade. So, paint yourself up like a zebra, grab some cash money for a hot limited-edition Looptworks elephant t-shirt and make your way to Boothster on 521 NE Davis for the party of the season.

Who: Elephant Ivory Project — fueled by EP Films

What: Go Wild! A Night of Fashion and Celebration to Save Elephants! Here’s the gist: Elephants are being killed by poachers at a rate of 10 percent per year. That means that in just a few years wild elephant populations may not exist anymore. So, in January, EP Films is embarking on a forensic biology expedition to the remote jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the goal of saving wild elephants from the illegal ivory trade. You can learn more here. And do your part — come to the party!

$10 gets you a cup and beer for the night, $5 glasses of wine

$15 gets you a sweet limited-edition Looptworks elephant t-shirt

$5 gets you 3 raffle tix for great prizes from Sierra Designs, SPOT Messenger, NAU and more!

Photo booth — strike a pose and get wild for photos by RM Photo! All images will be uploaded to Flickr and Facebook the next day for free download.

Costume contest! That’s right, we know you like to dress up. So find your inner animal and do it up right. Best contest gets a fabulous prize!

When: December 10 – Doors – 8pm, Fashion Show – 930pm, Party – All the time!

Where: Boothster – 521 NE Davis in PDX

Why: Hawt fashion, drinks, dance party, safari costumes, photo booth… All in the name of a good cause. Need I say more?

Friday Photo: Bugs, Rain + More Rain With National Geographic on the Rio Roosevelt

Rio Roosevelt, Brazil. End of an expedition. Destroyed by bugs. Trying to pack everything up in the wet, wet, jungle rain. At least if we can’t look glamorous, our boots can.

Nat Geo Filmmaker Searching for Elephants, Caught in Massive Sandstorm

While shooting in Mali, West Africa for the National Geographic Channel’s Great Migrations series, filmmaker Bob Poole and his crew were out searching for an elusive group of migrating desert elephants. But what they found was so much bigger. The crew got caught in a sudden and massive sandstorm that makes the desert of Africa look like the surface of Mars with red dust flying everywhere. For 4 hours the sand blocked out the sun.

Bob Poole said, “this goes down as the wildest thing I have ever seen in my life.”

Watch it for yourself HERE.

Early next year, we’ll be out searching for elephants in the remote jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. While we probably won’t run into a massive sandstorm like this one, we’re excited about what we might find.

Learn more about our expedition, and help us save some of Africa’s threatened elephants by visiting http://elephantivoryproject.org/

Ode to Joe Riis: Amazing Photographer + Awesome Dude

Joe Riis is a man of few words. Maybe it’s because he’s a South Dakotan, or because he spends the majority of his time in the wild setting up camera traps to capture threatened wildlife. He doesn’t have to say much because his photos do that for him. And the words he does say — you should listen to.

We’ve had the fortune to work with Joe on two RAVEs (Rapid Assessment Visual Expeditions) with the International League of Conservation Photographers: both in British Columbia, one in the Flathead Valley and just a week ago in the Great Bear Rainforest.

We got to know Joe really well as we followed him through the remote and mountainous backcountry of the Flathead in search of mountain lions, grizzlies and mountain goats. The guy is incredibly talented and lucky or part wild animal himself (or maybe a mix of the two) because we captured some incredible images in just a couple weeks. Enough to help the groups fighting to protect the Flathead actually win the first round against mining companies!

Catch a glimpse of what we’re talking about by watching the star of Flathead Wild, Joe Riis, on film…

Obviously, we love the heck out of Joe. So much that Kyle asked him to photograph his wedding this summer (Joe fought back the urge to set up camera traps) and Trip is ready to start a Joe Riis fan club. So, we’d like for you to learn a little more, and read a few words, about one of the best wildlife photographers, and humans, that we know…

Sometimes There Are No Words…

Last week in the Great Bear Rainforest, we talked with a fishing guide at King Pacific Lodge in Hartley Bay. He told us that he had a Chinese client there one day who asked him what he thought of the Enbridge pipeline and the ensuing oil tankers in their waters. He said that he had no way to vocalize it… She knew he was an artist, so she asked him to draw it. And this is what he came up with.

His name is Simon Robinson and he is one of the First Nations Gitg’at people in Great Bear.

Learn more at www.iLCP.com

Friday Photo: To Get Perspective, Sometimes You’ve Got To Get Up High

Photo courtesy Cristina Mittermeier, iLCP

EP has joined up with the iLCP, a group of internationally renowned photographers to take part in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, it is one of the planet’s most priceless treasures, but overseas oil interests wanting access to western Canada’s tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have put the region in threat, prompting the action of conservation groups and the iLCP. Throughout the expedition we’ll be bringing you profiles, stories, statistics and photos to learn more about the region and why it’s so crucial that we all work to protect it. Please follow along on the EP blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

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How do you get someone to care about a place that they’ve never been? A place they may never visit? You have to show them. You have to give them that sense of place.

For the last week, we’ve been in the Great Bear Rainforest on the wild North Coast of British Columbia.

It’s a place so pristine and so rich with biodiversity. It’s abundantly clear that this place is special. And that’s just from the ground. Once you get up in the air, the Great Bear sprawls out beneath you.

Now imagine a pipeline cutting through it. And giant oil tankers pushing through the blue water below displacing whales, seals and fishermen. Now imagine oil spreading across the landscape just like the aerial images we saw in the Gulf (right).

Sometimes it just takes a change in perspective to see that it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the risk. We have too much to lose. And too much to save.

River Trivia: How Many Rivers Do We Have In the United States?

The United States has more than 250,000 rivers, equaling 3.5 million miles of rivers. You could circle the globe 140 times and still not have that many miles under your belt! That’s a whole lot of rivers!

Hungry for a little more trivia?

• The largest river is the Mississippi, which has a flow volume of 593,000 cubic feet per second at its mouth.
• The longest river is the Missouri, which flows for approximately 2,500 miles. That’s about the same distance as driving from Portland, Ore. to Asheville, North Carolina.

Source: American Rivers

From the Field: Deciding the Fate of the Great Bear Rainforest

EP has joined up with the iLCP, a group of internationally renowned photographers to take part in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, it is one of the planet’s most priceless treasures, but overseas oil interests wanting access to western Canada’s tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have put the region in threat, prompting the action of conservation groups and the iLCP. Throughout the expedition we’ll be bringing you profiles, stories, statistics and photos to learn more about the region and why it’s so crucial that we all work to protect it. Please follow along on the EP blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

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Photo courtesy Ian McAllister, iLCP

We’ve been in Great Bear for more than a week now. Watching the rain pour, filling up streams and welcoming salmon, fiilming in the pristine (and freezing) waters, searching for the elusive white spirit bears and learning the great stories of the rainforest from the First Nations people who live here. After just a week, it’s not a stretch at all to call this place magic.

Read more as iLCP founder Cristina Mittermeier shares her story from the field on iLCP’s blog:

Photo courtesy Cristina Mittermeier, iLCP

For the past few days I have been sitting in a magical corner of the planet. I know it is really special because I have traveled all over the world and seldom have I seen a place where nature and human cultures live in such exquisite harmony and where all the options for development are still available.

The wild coast of British Columbia, with all its whales, bears, wolves and extraordinarily abundant marine life, is one of the true natural treasures of our planet. This coast, home to hundreds of First Nations who have carved a sustainable living for millennia, is indeed a magical place. Sadly, its fate — like many of the world’s special places — is not up to the people who live here. Instead, large corporations and government bureaucrats sitting thousands of miles away get to make that choice. One would hope that an enlightened nation, such as Canada is supposed to be, would come up with great ideas for how to turn this unique natural wonder into a sustainable economy for the people who live here and indeed, the whole nation…

The only idea that Canada has come up with is to develop this as an oil transit route. And so, this wild coast of northern British Columbia has become a battlefield. The First Nations and the conservation community are ready to fight the massive oil corporations determined to build a pipeline that transports dirty oil from the Alberta Tar Sands in one direction and toxic condensate in the other.“We have drawn a line in the sand. There will be no Enbridge Pipeline and there will be no crude oil tankers in our waters. This is not a battle we intend to lose,” Gerald Amos from Kitamaat Village said at a protest last week.

Photo courtesy Ian McAllister, iLCP

Well, a pipeline is not such a big deal, is it? After all its footprint is not very large and its construction will generate a few thousand jobs. Problem is, once the pipeline reaches the coast, the jobs will go away. Worst-case scenario, the pipeline breaks and gushes oil into the pristine waters and land of the Great Bear Rainforest. And the oil will still need to be shipped, so enormous megatankers will then be called in to pick it up and then transport it to Asian markets.“To me this coast is just this magnificent ecosystem where the terrestrial and marine interact,” Pat Freeny, as Seattle mariner helping the team navigate through Great Bear, said. “And when I think of tankers navigating these waters it sends shivers down my spine.”

Will the fate of this place include the constant threat of oil spills and tanker routes that displace whales and seals and fishermen? Or will we answer the question with foresight and vision, by protecting one of our planet’s jewels of sustainability?

We have the opportunity to set an example here. To show how we deal with the last few wild places on our planet and more importantly, for how we honor and respect the rights and traditions of First Nations and all indigenous people. So the question really is, will Canada do what is right for its people in the long turn or will it become just another petrostate?

Take action to protect the Great Bear Rainforest!

World’s Premiere Photographers Join Forces to Protect British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest

Between now and September 14, EP has joined up with the iLCP and a group of internationally renowned photographers to take part in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, it is one of the planet’s most priceless treasures, but overseas oil interests wanting access to western Canada’s tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have put the region in threat, prompting the action of conservation groups and the iLCP. Throughout the expedition we’ll be bringing you profiles, stories, statistics and photos to learn more about the region and why it’s so crucial that we all work to protect it. Please follow along on the EP blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo courtesy Ian McAllister, iLCP

From iLCP’s blog:

Just like in many creative industries, the photography business is a competitive one. Why then, would some of the world’s premiere photographers converge in the wilds of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest? To save one of the planet’s most priceless treasures. Photographers including Paul Nicklen, Florian Schultz, Daniel Beltra, Jack Dykinga, Tom Peschak, Cristina Mittermeier and more will take part in the iLCP’s RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) of the area and tell the story of this incredible place and the people working to save it.

“The Great Bear Rainforest is an environmental treasure, and the international exposure that the iLCP is capable of generating will undoubtedly prove a clarion call for its protection,” said Ian McAllister, Conservation Director for B.C. based Pacific Wild and recently nominated Associate of the iLCP. “We have everything to lose and very little to gain by allowing oil tankers on our coast.”

Overseas oil interests want access to western Canada’s tar sands — the second largest known oil reserves in the world — and have proposed the construction of a massive pipeline through the rain forest to get it.

Photo courtesy Cristina Mittermeier, iLCP via Lighthawk flight

Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, iLCP’s team of photographers will showcase the immense ecological importance of western Canada’s threatened rain forest and marine environment. The images and stories from the expedition members will be shared with international media and partner organizations and will be featured in a traveling exhibition across North America and Europe.

Photo courtesy Ian McAllister, iLCP

Enbridge Inc., the world’s largest pipeline construction company (and the same one responsible for Michigan’s oil spill) has proposed to open export markets for tar sands oil outside the United States — most notably China.

So, how do you go about that? Build a 1,200 km pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands and British Columbia’s north Pacific coast over more than 1,000 streams and rivers — including some of the world’s largest salmon producing watersheds — and introduce super oil tankers (revoking an existing moratorium on large ships) to transport oil through the pristine waters of the Great Bear Rainforest.

“We support this effort to document the lands and seas of our traditional territory,” states Ernie Hill Jr., Sn’axeed, Gitga’at Hereditary Eagle Chief. The indigenous First Nations who call this area home unanimously oppose this project. “Enbridge’s pipeline and oil tanker proposal will destroy our way of life and we must do everything possible to show what we stand to lose.”

Learn more about the Great Bear Rainforest RAVE.

Friday Photo: Kayaking + Monster Fish on the Mekong

Earlier this year, we were in Laos researching the effects of the Don Sahong Dam on the main stem of the Mekong River. This dam has the potential to stop fish migrations up Khone Falls with potentially disastrous effects on the region’s fish populations and as a result, food supply. Learn more and read about our adventure in the latest issue of Wend Magazine. Subscribe for the digital edition, it’s free!