“A picture is worth a thousand words.” So goes the old adage, but in this day and age when we are deluged with photographs ranging widely in quality, the idea can get rather lost. We might tend to lose sight of the fact that there are people out there like nature photographer Pete Oxford—who is truly making a difference.
Oxford has resided in the South American country of Ecuador for the past 21 years, focusing as a nature photographer on the Ecuadorian Amazon as well as the Galápagos Islands, and has become involved in helping with an effort to protect a sensitive area of the Yasuni National Park within the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Yasuni is double protected both as a national park and as a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) biosphere reserve, and a core area within the park even has a third level of protection as an “intangible zone” because there are two uncontacted tribes living there. Despite all the protection, according to the constitution the Ecuadorian government retains what are called “subsoil rights,” giving it access to oil in the ground; and the government is being strongly urged by the Brazilian oil company Petrobras to allow them in to drill for the oil.
In 2008 the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, proposed an enlightened and unique measure called the ITT initiative, to save the area from the oil extraction. ITT stands for Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha, which is the name of the area where the oil is located; and the initiative proposes that if the global community can raise $350 million dollars per annum, the government will match it, and therefore the Ecuadorian people will still get the value of the $700 million worth of oil that’s there but it will not need to be extracted.
“The problem is that nobody really knows much about the area, and certainly nobody knows anything about these uncontacted tribes,” Oxford told Organic Connections. “They are presumed both descended from and related to the Huaorani people, whom I’ve been visiting for the last 20 years. So I went in and, in a very timely way, put a book together called The Spirit of the Huaorani. Traditionally, pictures of the Huaorani show them standing stock-still, very stoically. They all have these headbands and red-painted faces that they’ve just put on, and they look awful. So I photographed them in such a way as to give them back their real character, making them look as human, warm and nice as possible.”
The consciousness-raising effort worked. The president grasped the idea and commissioned a presidential edition of the book. He then took The Spirit of the Huaorani to OPEC meetings, utilizing it to bring a human face to the area needing protection.
“These tribes don’t have any voice because they’re uncontacted,” said Oxford. “Although the intention is to leave them uncontacted, maybe somebody should speak on their behalf. So this book is being used as a tool in major talks to try and raise the funds necessary to protect the Yasuni.”
It has been some years since Oxford first dedicated his life to conservation photography. He is a founding member of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) and works hand in hand with various NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), such as Conservation International, to raise public awareness of conservation issues.
Click on any image above to see a larger version.
“Working with the ILCP is now my driving force,” Oxford said. “What we’re trying to do as a league is join forces often, all egos aside, and utilize photography—which is a very powerful tool in reaching Joe Public—to speak for conservation.”
Oxford’s photography often specializes in mammals. In addition to capturing images of man, he has traveled the world with his wife and partner, Reneé Bish, photographing a broad range of subjects from sea lions to jaguars, from bears to monkeys. He is a qualified biologist and, through considerable experience, has learned enough about animal behavior that he can even predict the responses of species he hasn’t before encountered. This kind of understanding comes in very handy in situations such as having to photograph the rare fossa, a catlike animal related to the mongoose, which is Madagascar’s largest predator, and which, before Oxford came along, had never been photographed professionally in its natural habitat.
“There had been one or two pictures of the fossa, and a couple of people had done some good stuff with captive animals, but it had never been photographed in the wild,” Oxford related. “So I went to Madagascar in the middle of the dry season—extremely hot—and set up in this dry riverbed with what I reckoned was the last remaining patch of water anywhere within the nearest kilometer or so. I spent about seven or eight days sitting in 40-degree or more heat [104 degrees Fahrenheit], all day, covered in flies, without moving. I finally got a first glimpse of this animal, but what was really neat about it was that I’d set my tripod up with my long lens and had predicted correctly. I’d looked around and said, ‘If he’s going to appear anywhere, he’s probably going to show himself first there,’ so that’s where I was aiming on my tripod. And when I first set eyes on the guy, I didn’t have to move the camera one millimeter; there he was—just walked straight into the frame—which was pretty gratifying. I was shaking like crazy from the tension, but finally I calmed down and started getting pictures. Gradually the animal became accustomed to my presence and we ended up getting some pretty nice stuff with it.
Oxford has also recently been involved in documenting the critically endangered Iberian lynx, currently the rarest cat in the world with only 208 surviving in the wild.
Pete Oxford continues his many photographic efforts, and his books can be found on Amazon.com and at bookstores everywhere, including our bookstore page on this site.
Photographs copyright © Pete Oxford. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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