PDNEWS
International League of Conservation Photographers
to get additional images for the book. “So more funding was available and I got a lot of helicopter time,”
Colangelo explains.
To document the bear, moose and other wildlife,
Colangelo canoed, backpacked, and in some instances
got flights into remote areas. For instance, he set up
camp on top of a mountain for a week in one particular place to photograph a large population of Stone
sheep whose habitat could eventually be harmed by
mining operations.
Chief Samooh,
Wet’suwet’en hereditary
chief, gaffs for salmon,
Moricetown Canyon,
Bulkley River.
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Although grizzly bears
roam the area, Colangelo was
unarmed—and unphased.
“Don’t go to bed with a choc-
olate bar,” he shrugs. “Don’t
agitate them or startle them,
and they’ll leave you alone.”
Of more concern to him was the care and operation
of his camera traps, which he set up along animal trails
and left for weeks at a time in order to capture images of
animals walking by. (The cameras were triggered by the
animals stepping on a pressure plate.)
“Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong,”
Colangelo says. “I melted flashes. Animals ate the
cords. Hunters came along, opened the boxes and
filled them with sheep scat,” he says. It was all just a
lot of “Kilroy was here” fun on their part, apparently.
They left the cameras operational (and unstolen, but
this is Canada after all.) “We have pictures of hunters
trying to set off the [camera] with bows and arrows,”
Colangelo says.
With a goal to raise awareness and his expenses
covered by grants, Colangelo provided images for publication free-of-charge to several magazines and newspapers. And recently, he got a grant from the Royal Bank of
Canada to exhibit the work at venues to be announced,
including festivals, museums and communities downstream from the Sacred Headwaters.
Colangelo credits the Tahltan people and their efforts
for the temporary moratorium on oil, gas and mineral
extraction in the Sacred Headwaters region. But that
moratorium is scheduled to expire in December, 2012.
“I’m hoping that the book and exhibition raise enough
awareness to get permanent protection when the moratorium is lifted,” he says.
Meanwhile, he has started work on a related (but narrower) project with Wade Davis. They plan to research
and document the herd of Stone sheep in more depth,
now that a mining company has been granted a permit
to do exploratory drilling in the habitat. Colangelo and
Davis hope conservationists and decision makers can
later use the information they gather to gauge the impact of the mining operations on the sheep.
—David Walker
www.pdnonline.com
Contact us today at 305-751-2556 to make your next studio reservation.
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MIAMI, FLORIDA 33138
Online this month: A closer look at
what made Paul Colangelo’s grant
applications for his Sacred Headwaters
project so successful, including
interviews with the grant sponsors.
