Requiem for a (photographic) dream - Part two

Images and text: © Bruno D'Amicis Photography - www.brunodamicis.com. All rights reserved worldwide

Tracks usually don't lie, and after so much searching me and my assistant had finally come upon what we were looking for: a line of footprints left by a small herd of Addax antelopes; the survivors of a group of few individuals reintroduced in the early 2000s to the Tunisian protected area we were in. The animas were again living “free” in their ancient habitat, albeit under close watch of rangers to prevent poaching from wiping them out again. The first reason why I was in the Grand Erg Oriental actually was to search of another endangered species, the Slender-horned gazelle or Rhim, but since I had notice of this small group of Addax existing nearby, I did not want to pass the chance for a possible first encounter with the species and so I took a short break from the main purpose of the trip.

We kept following the antelope tracks until we could spot four white shapes on the horizon. The Addax were slowly moving through the dunes, unwary of our presence. Being born in semi-captivity in another reserve in Morocco and after their reintroduction having been strictly protected, those animals did not perceive humans as a threat and seemed very obliging. Some two hundred meters before reaching them, my assistant stood and I went on alone. The antelopes briefly raised their heads from grazing, to return immediately to feed. I could approach them very close and started walking next to them, taking many pictures in the process. They were so beautiful with their white coat and the elegant dark design on the head; the long, twisted horns were shining in the fading light. I was very happy to have finally met this legendary animal up close and photograph it in its habitats. Eventually, when darkness came, I left the antelopes alone, moved by this beautiful encounter.

The sight was great and the pictures not bad at all. Nevertheless, hours later I realized that this experience had left me with a bittersweet taste. Despite the aesthetical joy of watching a “wild” herd of Addax roaming free in the Sahara, I was not completely satisfied. By looking at the pictures on the rear of my camera I could not feel any of the vibrant emotions Dragesco's photograph had conveyed. My pictures lacked wildness and uncertainty. Although those animals were back to an area where they had been chased to extinction less than a century ago, they seemed out of place. And my succesful “adventure” did not have at all the taste of the real thing, but only of fake. If I wanted to feel accomplished, then I would have had to stick to my original plan and keep waiting for a window of opportunity to go to Niger.

A couple years more had passed since that encounter in Tunisia but the chance to reach the last truly wild herd of Addax had not presented itself to me yet. Meanwhile, I had been in close touch with the scientists who, despite the critical political situation, were still carrying out annual aerial surveys of the antelopes in Niger and each time I waited anxiously for their reports. Where once were hundreds of thousands of Addax antelopes roaming the whole Sahara, from the Atlantic coast to Egypt, now less than two hundred animals seemed to have survived just in a certain area in South-East Niger. An area where international conservation NGOs had helped Niger's government creating a large national park, to ensure the survival of those last antelopes. Besides the wild popultaion, one could theoretically count also on a "reservoir" of some hundreds individuals surviving in enclosures, zoos or other fenced areas across the world. The situation for the wild herd was undoubtedly very critical, but it seemed stable at least and there was some hope, for the animals to survive and also... for me to visit them one day!

Yet even this little optimism was not bound to last too long.

In the spring of 2016 some shocking news revealed that, despite some great effort, the latest scientific survey carried out in Niger had produced just an observation of 3 (!) frightened Addax antelopes. In their report the organization was quite clear on the reason for this sudden decline, blaming the poaching carried out by soldiers employed to protect Chinese-owned oil installations. In a place where years of political uncertainty have created a hotspot for drug smuggling, weapon traffic and wildlife trade the existance of a national park wasn't probably enough of an obstacle to stop criminal activities. While these sad news did not come as a surprise, they are of serious concern as they mean the probable extinction of this magnificent species in the wild.

At this point it is very unlikely that I will ever be able to observe these animals in the Sahara. But what hurts me the most is not the impossibility to fulfill my longlasting dream, it is rather the complete lack of general awareness surrounding this issue. Ask around and see how many people know about the situation of the Addax antelope or any other endangered Saharan species: simply nobody does. In the Sahara and Sahel we are witnessing one of the greatest environmental devastations of all times and almost noone is talking about it. It is indeed very sad. But, on the other hand, what can one expect? If even the largest and longest-lasting conservation and media campaigns haven't managed to ensure a certain future to rhinos and elephants, how could a small team of field scientists and a handful of blurred pictures help raise awareness about the disappearance of the Sahara's most charismatic wildlife?

It is always painfully difficult to manage one's anger when it comes about a species becoming extinct, a natural place being destroyed. Yet, this time and for all the reasons I am here writing about, the acceptance of what is going on in Niger is extremely hard for me. This is why I have dared to disturb and bring in movie director Darren Aronofsky and his weird movie “Requiem for a dream” because it seemed the perfect title to me for this article. Yes, let the dreams rest in peace. My own dreams and those of all the people who are working hard to save this doomed animal!

Sadly, this won't be the last species we are going to lose in the near future. With each disappearing animal, plant or place we also lose a chunk of our imagination and our freedom. As this process goes on, the world becomes smaller and smaller and I wonder what will be left to our and the next generations of nature enthusiasts and photographers. Technology can surely help us in making it easier to get great shots, cheaper airplane fares will make us all reach the remotest places, but I wonder of what avail will all the megapixels of newer cameras be one day without the basic dreams to drive our fantasy?

Requiem for a (photographic) dream - Part one

Images and text: © Bruno D'Amicis Photography - www.brunodamicis.com. All rights reserved worldwide

Spring can be very hot in the Sahara and that day of April was no exception. I was walking together with my guide through a proctected area in the middle of the Grand Erg Oriental, a huge stretch of sand and nothing at the border between Algeria and Tunisia. In the afternoon the heat was finally releasing its grip and a gentle breeze was making the atmosphere a bit more pleasant. Together with the coolness, the wind shaking the tamarisks seemed to carry ancient voices. In the solid silence of the desert then I fancied lost sounds of hunters and prey. Only a few thousands years ago in the same spot where we were, in fact, there must have been a rich savannah. A real one: with giraffes, lions, acacias and the whole shebang of animals and plants we all know from East Africa. Now, after seven millennia of climate changes, severe droughts and massive extinctions, one could not find here much else than sand, wind and silence though.

I had arrived here following the tracks of something special, but also of a certain photograph. A photograph I had seen many years before. It was 1990 and I was 11, when the Italian leading nature magazine “Airone” published a very long article about the Saharan wildlife. The piece was illustrated with the ground-breaking work of the late French photographer Alain Dragesco, who had photographed many previously unseen or extremely rare desert species in over a decade of Saharan expeditions. Of the article I particularly remembered a double-spread with perhaps one of Dragesco's most remarkable shots: a male Addax antelope standing in a sandstorm.

That picture was filled with ambiance and wildness; the massive white animal emerged with its long, twisted horns from the ochre tones of the background. It looked like a pale spectre, with the scars and wounds on its head, the clear marks of a life of struggle in one of Earth's most hostile environments. But that was not all. Next to the Addax picture, the photo editor had placed a smaller frame. The picture in it was showing a human body half covered in sand: an unlucky poacher who had probably died of thirst or starvation in the pursue of the World's rarest antelope. Another guarantee, it seemed to me, of the rarity of Dragesco's Addax picture.

The strong combination of the two images and relative stories had stirred my child imagination like few other things had done before. The level of adventure, drama and otherness I felt spilling from those two pages would be hard to describe in words, and that visual experience left an indelible mark on me. I know that if I have chosen one day to become a wildlife photographer it has been mainly because I was dreaming of exploring the Planet to make similar encounters in the wild, and, once back home, be able to make other people feel the same magic as well.

Almost three decades have passed since that picture was published, but it kept haunting me for all this time. Probably very few remember today (or will ever know) the name of Alain Dragesco and his great work, and this probably also because he sadly passed away in 2002. The Addax, on the other hand, remains a species on the verge of extinction.

I have always loved the challenge represented by the photography of rare and elusive subject living in difficult places. I prefer to have things simply happen in front of my camera, rather than seize opportunities to realize preconceived images. And this, beside the personal entertainment, for I believe in the power of serendipitous pictures to inspire people. The idea that a single strong picture could affect so much a person's life, like that very one had done with me, has been often enough of a drive for me to keep trying. Indeed, I have often thought one could make a difference with photography.

Therefore, having in mind Dragesco's example, I wanted to humbly follow in his footsteps and try to continue his unfinished work with the endangered but often ignored Saharan wildlife. I wanted to start where he had left and see with my own eyes what was the ongoing situation with antelopes, gazelles and so on.

The desert of Niger was the highest ranking in my bucket list, not least because it hosts the last wild population of Addax antelopes in the World. But, after having missed a great opportunity to join a scientific expedition a few years ago and having failed since to raise the required budget to travel in the area, the political situation in the country had worsened so much that reluctantly I had to change my plans. Meanwhile most of the other countries in the heart of the Sahara have become very unsafe or difficult to reach as well. To work in this region requires very expensive and extensive logistics, hard-to-get permits and political support. By now they are all virtually out of reach for most of the self-assigned naturalists and photographers who wish to get there. This is why, for my desert photography, I had started focusing my attention to the somehow safer Maghreb.

From the mountains of Morocco to the sands of Tunisia, I have spent part of the last nine years exploring and photographing the northern end of the Sahara. I have discovered amazing places and challenging subjects, and I have fullfilled part of my longing to work in the desert. But I never forgot that picture nor my initial dream. I knew that eventually I would have been able to follow one day the tracks of the Addax in the sands of the Sahara.

But I could not know that things would have turned out very differently...

Nature in HD*

(Autumn sunrise on the valley of Taranta Peligna, Majella National Park - Italy. 2009)

Shapes and lines, impressions and brush strokes of red, blue and black were shining on the screen: the picture of a deep canyon photographed at sunrise after a light snowstorm opened my lecture. The always pleasant-to-hear “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” were there to welcome its appearance and when I asked the audience wether they knew the location shown in the picture, people appeared confused. “Himalaya!” suggested a woman; “No. It's in Canada” shouted a man in the very back of the theater. I was disappointed or, better, I was shocked: two-thirds of the audience were represented by the staff of a national park in Central Italy and none of them was able to recognise a very distinctive valley of the nature reserve, which lied just 20 kilometres from where I was speaking! Could they really have overlooked the valley, or was perhaps the magic light in the picture making it look different? When I finally revealed the location, most people were suprised and a few smiled at me. One even said, “Oh yes, I was about to say so...”. Once again it seemed to me as if, ignorance apart, the trained eye of a photographer might have seen something special for the majority and realized an image that apparently went beyond the general perception of that particular subject.

A few years later, in a completely different situation, two curious Ladakhi men were , completely in awe, at the LCD screen on the rear my camera. They had paused on their walk to watch me photographing at the side of the trail. I was now showing them the picture I had just taken of the scenery in front of their village: round slopes of a very colorful hill ending against the rugged outline of an Himalayan peak. The view was breathtaking and the light of the afternoon was nice, but the picture was probably nothing more than a record shot. Yet, I was puzzled by the incredible response of those two men: they couldn't stop looking at the little screen and seemed completely speechless in front of it. Their astonishment was palpable and it made me reflect on the situation. The guys had always lived there and that scenery must have been nothing new for them. Tourists and cameras must have been seen in those mountains already for some decades. Besides, due to rather conventional light conditions, that very same scene must have occurred hundreds of thousands times in their lives. It must have been something else: it seemed as if they were seeing it for the first time.

These two anecdotes show some similarities, although they took place in two distinct contexts and are probably born out of two very different human experiences. Lack of interest and superficiality have possibly determined the people response in the first story, curiosity for what is new, exotic and perhaps the vivid colors of my camera to be considered in the second one. These two events made me reflect on the very peculiar reaction we manifest whenever we look at something which appears on a screen.

More than often we seem to be naturally drawn to look at a restricted, reduced and flat reproduction of reality rather than the world itself. Images seem more interesting and our impression of the subject itself seems in this way to last longer. Our brain (our “memory”) retains still images and these probably have a stronger impact on it than the flow of real events. It has always been like that, and since the digitalisation of photography and the wider access to cameras or camera-like devices the occurrence of this aspect could only increase. The result is now in front of everyone: looking at a screen has become today perhaps one of our commonest acts. Images grab our attention immediately: they provide some real fun that can be even shared with others. This is what makes photography and visuals magic and so incredibly powerful; it is probably the reason why me and you are now reading this blog.

(Slopes and ridges at sunset in Hemis National Park, Ladakh - India. 2015)

Yet, this aspect can also have some serious consequences, I am afraid. When in a culture images (“reproductions”) get more valued than reality; when our visual expectations of something start to be based mostly on pictures, then we need to re-focus our attention. What represents the great success of photography in our world, in fact, can eventually turn into its nemesis.The incredibly high standars nature photography has reached today and the (usually) peaceful competition they trigger among us, photographers, are pushing our imagery incredibly far; sometimes too far... On-location wildlife photography facilities and extraordinary post-production tools can easily allow some people to obtain images which have nothing to do with nature anymore. When these mix with the typical human desire to stand out, results can get indeed pretty “wild”. By commending such images, international contests and publications then boost this mechanism even further. But this is an old story... Even before digital photography came out, the trend was set already for a long time.Photography should retain its great value, which is being a powerful stimulation for us to set out exploring the world, a tool to make emotions timeless and share them with others; but this not at the expenses of losing connection with some real life experience.I feel we should make sure that for no reason images do get rated more than the vision and the emotions lived by the photographer in the moment he/she took them. At the end, photography is there to allow us, humans to communicate with each other about what we love, not to create an artificial, high-definition world, whose vivid colors might seem nicer but which would strip Nature of its ordinary, yet unfathomable magic.

Images and text © 2016 Bruno D'Amicis - all rights reserved worldwide

*Article first published in 2016 on "Forum Naturfotografie" magazine in Germany

The truth which lies out of the frame*

(A young herder watches his cows at sunset on the shores of Lake Tana, Ethiopia. 2013)

Last year I had the great honour of joining the judging panel for 2015 of the World Press Photo Contest (WPP), one of the most prestigious competitions in the photography industry, if not THE most important competition in the World for what concerns photojournalism. This has been of course a very interesting and instructive experience for me. Although my contribution was limited to the sole Nature category, I have been nevertheless involved in the following debate triggered by the disqualification of Giovanni Troilo's story on the city of Charleroi, Belgium. The work of the Italian photographer had first been awarded in the “Contemporary issues” category, then, because of complaints forwarded by the Mayor of the city Troilo had photographed and of alleged falsifications (ie. staging) of some of the pictures, his submission has been scrutinized again by the WPP general jury and more in-depth. Some picture information were not in compliance with the competition's rules and eventually the prize has been withdrawn. But the fact that some images appeared to be staged was probably at the core of the issue. Well, this is nothing new, you might say, and everybody can easily follow the whole story of this controversy on the web rather than here. What is relevant, in my opinion, is the massive quarrel that these news have generated concerning the basic definition people have of photojournalism and documentary photography. Many top names stated that if those images would have retained the award, that would have meant the end of photojournalism. Others instead tried to argument that photojournalism as we (want to) know it is long dead and that we should finally come to accept the different ways now one has to cover a certain subject and tell its story. Interesting, but what on Earth does it have to do with nature photography?

In a world where photojournalism is still identified with authenticity, this story had some huge repercussions and invited each of us to reflect more in depth on the general idea of truth in photography. I asked myself wether documentary photography can be still considered genuine or not. I have looked at the issue from my perspective of nature photographer and considering the various degrees of tolerance this discipline allows. As you might foresee, I have realized that the answer is definitely not a straightforward one.

I had already partly written on this on my very first column appeared on these pages and, in different forms, this is surely a topic that has been debated “ad nauseam” on every possible existing platform. For example, I bet that in every nature photography association or club you might have knowledge of there must have been at least once a lively discussion on it. And, almost always, such endless debates remain unsolved...

Most of non-nature photographers (there are also some hardcore disbelievers, of course) often assume that our hobby/profession must be one of the very last strongholds of pure documentary photography and thus look in genuine awe at our images, evaluating them by the odd and “exotic” worlds they reveal to their eyes. Or, perhaps more naïvely, they do so by commending the tremendous effort the photographer must have put in them. People still consider nature images “true” or want to believe they are. On the other hand, we all are aware of how far from reality unfortunately all this can be. I don't think I need to summon here the infamous facilities where animals are raised just for the purpose of the visual media industry (we used to call them “game farms”, remember?) or all the more or less harmful trickery we regularly make use of to take memorable images. Humans' ingenuity doesn't know borders and so there is a universe of available tricks, perhaps as many as the nature photographers shooting out there: they span from baiting brown bears with dog cookies, to spraying glicerine drops as fake dew on flowers; from cooling down restless butterflies in the refrigerator to simply whistle at a passing deer to make it look at the photographer... There are indeed endless possibilities to make our vision become “real”. The quality standards are so high that we are almost forced to embellish reality in order to make it more appealing, and because of this pressure the result often seems to justify any method. Some ways are easier to accept than others; some are “minor sins”, whilst other remain definitely bad behaviors. Even if we know that the situations are not so realistic anymore, in most cases we are not capable to judge the authenticity of the images and thus accept them with good faith. Apparently there is no hope for defining true nature photography, then.

Beware, I am not here to draw attention again on the ethical aspects of nature photography, but instead on what we consider as “true”. Let me explain it better with an example I know quite well: myself. I have always thought to be a true wildlife photographer. One who spends enormous time researching on a subject and waiting somewhere for it to appear or do something, and avoiding as much as possible any interaction with it. I mostly refuse to use tricks and sometimes looked with dismay at those photographers who made the goal prevail on the process. On many occasions, my fundamentalist approach has not turned very productive and I had to live with its consequences: much weaker images than those taken with other methods. But it has been always OK, since I strive to experience nature rather than represent it and to inform people with a correct message.

I have long considered this approach to be “authentic” and pure, but have never really tried to look at myself from an external perspective. Does my approach guarantee for true images or am I perhaps missing something?

The fact of being there, of leaving my smell around of drawing incidentally the subject's attention probably was already an interaction with the subject. Besides, since we all know that photography is more about what is left out of the compostion than what is in, my choice of lenses and framing together with the editing process is also there to determine entirely what I would end up showing people or not. These thoughts opened my eyes. There is no way any of my pictures could be considered fully authentic.

So, I started reflecting on the fact that photography, even in a scenario (the natural one) where our control can be minimal, is and will forever remain a form of art: the realization of a strong mental image. Therefore, we can't keep on fooling ourselves any longer by pretending photographs to be 100% true and pristine views of the world. We are humans and photography can be of our tools allowing us to explore the Planet, learn about ourselves, express our vision and share all this with others. Great, but this comes at the price that we will always be in the images, then. We must take into account the photographer's input every time we look at an image. This doesn't have to be necessarily bad, but can truth be found at all in documentary photography?

Of course it can! The truth is still out there, shining bright as never before. Only we shouldn't look for it in single images. The truth cannot be found in the picture: it lies out of the frame. ­It spills from the approach and the intention of the photographer. His or her choices define the message and thus confirms the power, and the responsibility, offered by this visual media. It shouldn't be seen as a defeat but actually a great reaffirmation of the importance of the individual's own vision and commitment.

pictures and words ©Bruno D'Amicis - www.brunodamicis.com. All rights reserved worldwide.

*Article first published in 2015 on "Forum Naturfotografie" magazine in Germany.

To Everything a Story: Like an hammer

Like an hammer

Picture and text © Bruno D'Amicis - all rights reserved worldwide

January, Central Apennines, Italy

The ridge was now just fifty meters above, I pressed on and made the last paces in apnea. It was over: I climbed for almost three hours in the darkness, panting and cursing my heavy backpack and the 500mm, camera and tripod leaning on my right shoulder, to reach at sunrise the mountain meadow where I had found so many wolf tracks the previous week. Before getting over the ridge and thus reveal my human silhouette above the horizon, I ducked, placed camera and tripod on the ground, dropped my bag and crawled to the rim, binoculars in hand, to check the situation first. I slowly scanned the surrounding grassy slopes ending on that natural terrace: in the morning light a big herd of deer and a family of wild boars were peacefully feeding on the opposite side of the meadow. No sign of wolves. I retreated to change my wet shirt and eat a snack in front of the grand landscape. The sun was getting stronger by then. I moved back to the ridge and sat under a big rock, resting my aching back against it, in plain view: I knew it was over for that morning. The deer had immediately seen me and were now all staring in my direction: 160 eyes following my actions and making me feel naked. I had disturbed them and they started moving higher and farther. But then I noticed what seemed a deer resting alone and much closer. Just 100 meters from me and partly hidden by a bush of juniper. I raised the binoculars: a spectacular wolf in its prime winter coat was sleeping, completely unaware of my presence! I could see its ribs rising with the breathing and its legs moving frantically: it was dreaming. Although I could have photographed it already from my position, I didn't think twice and in a bunch of seconds I was already dragging my camera setup to find a better and more open view of the animal, for a cleaner composition. I moved carefully but I was completely visible: yet the wind was blowing towards me and I was confident the wolf would not notice me. Fast-beating heart and sweating hands, I was already tasting the images I would take that morning.

Just ten meters to my left and I could admire the wolf in its entirety. It did not move. I checked it with my binoculars and I was shocked to see its amber eyes fixed on me, more curious than afraid. Instead on freezing immediatly, I hurried to setup my tripod and shoot. What a mistake! The wolf was already on its legs when I could focus my lens; it started running away as it heard the first burst of pictures.

It all had lasted a few seconds and where before I was experiencing a precious wilderness moment, now only emptiness and silence were around me. After the wolf presence was gone and all the deer escaped, I was just in a mountain meadow: I had ruined everything. And because of photography.

May, Grand Erg Oriental, Tunisia

Three weeks of hard fieldwork had already passed without any fennec sighting. Me and my two assistants had criss-crossed 50 square kilometers of desert, just to find empty burrows and unrelenting sand storms. In this time span, I had taken maybe less than 100 images (mostly landscapes or wildlife tracks) but my camera equipment was already full of grit. I had come all the way from Italy to southern Tunisia to start a photographic project on the fennec fox, but until that day all which could justify my decision was a single fox track in the sand and the stories of my guide, Bechir.

But things were now about to change. We had moved farther from the village, to explore a more remote patch of desert and make use of a military post and its nearby well as base camp for ten days. Wind was blowing strong when we arrived and for the next two days, the moral was low and we couldn't do much else than sleep, read or play chess. Eventually on the third morning the air was still and crisp: perfect for tracking. Full of expectations, Almost immediately and not even one kilometer from our camp I came across a fresh fennec track that looked as etched in the sand. I whistled to my assistant and we started following it. We followed it for one hour, up and down the small dunes. It took us first to an old nomads' fireplace, then to a fresh pile of camel dung, then to a gerbils' den (where the fennec had dug a hole) and after a couple of loops almost back to where we first had found it and then, it disappeared! “Impossible”, I thought, and once again I let despair take over me. On that moment the whole trip, which was supposed to be the beginning of a great project, instead started looking like a big failure.

“Bruno, regarde ici!”, Bechir called from behind a nearby shrub. He had found again the track, which had been partly erased by a soft breeze and was now going into another direction. We walked behind it as it kept going in a straight line, as if purposefully towards something. It was exciting and we started walking faster. Eventually it brought us to a patch of small dunes covered in retam bushes and other shrubs. Ten more meters and it disappeared again. But into a small burrow this time. The fox tracks were also all over the place, crossed by the smaller ones of its pups: we had found our treasure!

With the belly full of butterflies, we winked at each other and quickly made our way back to camp to not disturb the den: I would have gone back in the middle of the day, alone and with my camouflage tent, in the hope to watch the foxes coming out at dusk.

At noon the breeze grew stronger soon becoming a fierce wind, blowing sand into nostrils and eyes. Although I knew it was risky for my equipment to take pictures in such conditions, I went to the den anyway, if not just to glimpse its residents and finally see my first fennec! I walked softly, on bare feet, and concealed myself under a shrub and behind a dune some 200 meters from the den, terrified at the idea of disturbing them. Like most of the canid species, in fact, fennec foxes do immediately move their pups to a different den if threatened.

The hours passed slowly, then evening came and with it another gorgeous sunset, but the wind was blowing hard, making it difficult even to keep the eyes open. If something was living in the burrow, I could not see nor hear. Besides, all my worries were for the equipment sadly full of sand. All this struggle for nothing, I kept on thinking.

That night, the dinner was a silent one. We were all tired from the previous weeks and desperately in need of a breakthrough.

On the next day, I was already up one hour before sunrise and walking carefully towards the den and the lookout point of the previous day. It was a peaceful morning. When the sun rose I had not seen anything, so I approached the den to check if there was any sign of activity. The sand around the burrow was untouched and I was then sure the foxes had moved right after we had found it. It was enough and I was ready to go back home: I was wasting my time there. Back to camp, I recall Bechir and Zyed, my other assistant, breaking my stubborn silence and begging me not to give up but to try again the coming evening, which looked promising because of the wind absence. “Le fennec n'aime pas le vent” kept on saying Bechir. More to please them than with a real purpose, I took equipment and water and walked the distance to the den, this time hiding among some vegetation a little closer to the burrow. “At least, I will be a little more comfortable...” I thought.

It was again a long waiting and I was sweating copiously under the camouflage blanket in the afternoon heat. Dozens of flies kept on harassing me as long as the temperature didn't decrease at sunset. Thirty minutes after the sun had dropped beneath the horizon, the sky and the highest dunes were still pink. It was then when I glimpsed a little whitish shape apparently flying on the ground. The first fennec fox of my life was an adult one returning to its pups. It was much smaller than I thought; beautiful as it ran with its incredibly light pace, which almost didn't move the sand grains under its paws. I guess my face blushed for the deep emotion as my hands trembled when I tried to follow the fox in the viewfinder. An istant before it reached the burrow, two fluffy balls bolted out from it. I don't like to use human adjectives to describe animals, but those two fennec pups were THE cutest thing I had ever seen in my life. In a fraction of a second, they were already lying under the mother suckling milk. I was so grateful and could not believe my luck, because I was watching something that few humans had ever witnessed, let alone photographed! I “woke up” and started taking pictures, although the dim light was asking for dramatically long exposures. But, in the fossil silence of the Sahara, the shutter of my camera sounded like an hammer against the anvil. No matter if I was using the “silent mode” and that my camera was engulfed in a cumbersome blimp: its noise was still impossible to conceal. After two single frames, the female was already looking into my direction. And, although I was well concealed, she could figure something was not right. One more frame and she flew behind a dune; the pups diving back into the burrow. I should have been happy: I had finally seen and photographed my first fennecs, documenting a unique moment of their life! But, once again, I felt as the magic was over. Sure enough, the female moved her pups overnight and it took me five more days to locate the new burrow. I could carry on my work, then, but with more care than on this first encounter. Still, a moment like that didn't repeat itself anymore during my stay and I wondered if I should have enjoyed it without taking pictures instead.

Now, these are just two stories among many, but as usual my pen took me much further than these pages allow. I lost count of the times when I regretted being a photographer. Once it is the pathetic weight of the backpack to ruin a walk; once it is the noise of the camera to scare an animal; sometimes it is the worry for the safety of the equipment to curse a journey, but above everything is the urge of taking good pictures that can often spoil our best moment. Photography claims for such a high attention for details, in fact, that sometimes it can be a serious obstacle to a direct experience of Nature and makes me often think to give up on it.

But, then, I wonder: would I ever climb for three hours in complete darkness with twenty kilograms on my back or spend four weeks roaming a desert, if there would be no challenge of making an experience timeless and accessible to everyone else through the impact of a good picture?

2014: my year as a wildlife photographer in 12 images

January. Red deer stags on a winter twilight - Abruzzo, Italy

Although this image has been actually taken on the last day of the year 2013, the great situation of that evening and its unique atmosphere have convinced me to visit that area almost every day since for the whole January. My hope then was to photograph wolves in the same weather conditions... but this had to wait much longer than expected and I had to be content "just" with red deer and wild boars instead. Nevertheless, I knew this would have been a great year anyway!

February. Sun rising behind frozen forest - Abruzzo, Italy

On a frosty February morning, while exploring with my camera an old beechwood in the Abruzzo National Park I got struck by the marvelous fringe the rising sun was creating behind some old trees living on a ridge. I stopped and started taking pictures of the situation. One hour quickly went by and I started realizing I was freezing. Yet, I had "metabolized" the situation and changed perspective. Eventually my persistence paid off when the sun poke through the trunks and its rays appeared as glowing stars. I am working on a long-term project for a book on beech forests in the Central Apennines and this was a nice image to put aside.

March. Mount Velino at sunset - Abruzzo, Italy.

A sudden drop in temperatures and atmospheric pressure. together with an unexpected spring snowfall created the conditions for a unique light. I chose Mount Velino, the mountain that is closest to my place and to my heart, as a subject; picked a high viewpoint and set up my camera to witness one of the most memorable sunsets of my whole life. A reminder that knowledge of a subject or a place and understanding of light might allow us to get the most out of an unexpected opportunity.

April. Slender-horned gazelles browsing a Retam shrub - Great Eastern Erg, Tunisia

Last spring, after a short trip to Georgia, I listened again to my desert "call" and went to Tunisia to pursue one of my wildest dreams: to search for and photograph one of the rarest mammals of Africa, the beautiful slender-horned gazelle, also known as "Rhim". Once widespread across the sandy habitats of the Sahara, this species is now critically endangered and its numbers unknown. Look well at this image, one of the few out there depicting the Rhim in the wild: increasing illegal hunting and ongoing habitat destruction in fact might cause this graceful and amazing species to vanish in just a few years! In April, I have also had the honor to receive the 1st place award in the "Nature" category of the World Press Photo contest for an image depicting a sad fennec fox illegally kept in captivity. Now, more than ever, it is important to draw attention towards the issue of the conservation of the Sahara species and habitats!

May. Fog and beech trees  in Campo Felice - Abruzzo, Italy

2014 has marked also the launch of "L'Altro Versante" (www.laltroversante.com), an ambitious long-term photographic project which I am sharing with two friends and great nature photographers, Maurizio Biancarelli and Luciano Gaudenzio, and which is entirely devoted to document the last wild corners of our country in the pursue of the "true Italian landscape". We will cover hundreds of locations across the whole Peninsula, but actually working close home and in places often overlooked, such as the Campo Felice plateau, does represent the real challenge and can deliver the greatest satisfactions.

June. Roe deer. Abruzzo, Italy

Returning home from the desert, I was involved in a filming production focusing on the nature of the Abruzzo National Park. It has been a pleasure to spend so much time in one of the places I love the most in the entire world. During the weeks of work, I have watched and photographed bears and wolves, wildcats and woodpeckers. Still, one of the most pleasant memories comes from an early morning encounter with two roe deer. I was laying down in the wet grass to remain concealed. The animals were grazing the fresh spring grass covered in dew and raised their heads every now and then to check a third deer which was moving at the forest rim. 

July. Apennine chamois - Abruzzo, Italy

Last July, I have headed for the altitude plateau of the Majella National Park, in Eastern Abruzzo, on a mission for "L'Altro Versante" project. I had expected flowers and summer, but instead I found myself in a true Mediterranean tundra, with a grey sky, strong chilly winds and extensive snow patches. I liked the almost monochromatic patterns of bright limestone rocks and the dark tones of the clouds. I did not expect any wildlife at this altitude nor was I prepared to photograph it. So, when I stumbled across this lonely Apennine chamois along a ridge I was climbing, all I could do was to frame and photograph it with the wide-angle lens I had in my hands. The resulting picture is one of my ever-favorites of this subject and reminds me of the saying that "the best lens for the situation is the one you have in your hands at that moment!"

August. Wild boar in summer pasture. Abruzzo, Italy

I have spent the whole months of August and September looking for wolves in the mountains of western Abruzzo, where on the previous years I had collected enough information to know the movements of at least two packs. I expected to find a pack with the pups of the year, but it has unfortunately taken me weeks and more than 35 excursions with no outcomes to finally be able to locate them. In the meantime, of course I have encountered many other animals, last but not least this big wild boar male. On a warm evening it was crossing a summer pasture that showed the typical nitrogen-tolerant vegetation of grazed areas: a humble subject in a humble context, yet a pleasant scene to witness and a even nicer memory to have frozen with my camera.

September. Wild Italian wolf - Abruzzo, Italy

Things cannot always go wrong! Last September, in fact, after so many weeks of nothing, I have finally located "my" pack of wolves and could follow and photograph them over a few days. The many images taken don't give justice to the emotions I experienced in those moments. Wolves are addictive: once you get some, you want more and more of them! I would like to know where are they now and what are they doing, but I can only gather some sparse information and get an incomplete scenario. Nevertheless, it is an enriching activity and thus my work that started five years ago goes still on and I hope to be able to show you the results of it already in 2015!

October. Red fox in old beechwood - Abruzzo, Italy

In Italy wildlife is usually skittish and I am used to patiently stalk and photograph animals just from a certain distance. Sometimes, though, things turn around and it is the animal to stalk and approach me. Like this awesome and very curious red fox male, which simply appeared out of nowhere as I was walking through a nice beechwood with some friends on a grey October day. He first sniffed us, then our backpacks and eventually it hung around a little bit allowing us to take some truly memorable images. These are really magic moments, when somehow the barrier between us and them animals feels temporarily vanishing. Always in October, but with a different fox this time (another threatened fennec from the Sahara), I walked on stage in London to receive an award as category winner at the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and be able, once more, to raise awareness about the pet-trade and the critical issues affecting the desert wildlife.

November. Juvenile Parson's chamaeleon - Eastern Madagascar

November has seen me working on a long assignment for the National Geographic Magazine together with my friend and amazing photojournalist, Christian Ziegler, to document chameleons, their biology, their habitats and the issue menacing their conservation. Madagascar is the center of diversity of this animal group and home to almost one hundred species: the range of characteristics and the variety of adaptations is simply astonishing. Nevertheless, the future of these animals is far from being secure. In fact, due to deforestation and land exploitation, just 7% of the original forested surface is now left on this island.

December. Mainarde mountain range and the Matese massif - Molise, Italy

This is the last image I want to share with you here. It has been taken from a ridge in the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park and spans over the mysterious Mainarde mountain range in the foreground and down until the Matese massif. It has been taken on a mission for the project "L'Altro Versante" (the "other side") and I picked it for this blog as it includes many "other sides" in itself. With it, I would like to wish you a happy, healthy, peaceful, successful and wild 2015, with the invitation to always look on the "other side" of things and to nurture that curiosity that keeps us discovering and learning.

Wilderness book of the month #4 - July 2014

The abstract wild*

by Jack Turner, University of Arizona Press (1996)

From the back cover: "If anything is endangered in America it is our experience of wild nature--gross contact. There is knowledge only the wild can give us, knowledge specific to it, knowledge specific to the experience of it. These are its gifts to us. How wild is wilderness and how wild are our experiences in it, asks Jack Turner in the pages of The Abstract Wild. His answer: not very wild. National parks and even so-called wilderness areas fall far short of offering the primal, mystic connection possible in wild places. And this is so, Turner avows, because any managed land, never mind what it's called, ceases to be wild. Moreover, what little wildness we have left is fast being destroyed by the very systems designed to preserve it. Natural resource managers, conservation biologists, environmental economists, park rangers, zoo directors, and environmental activists: Turner's new book takes aim at these and all others who labor in the name of preservation. He argues for a new conservation ethic that focuses less on preserving things and more on preserving process and "leaving things be." He takes off after zoos and wilderness tourism with a vengeance, and he cautions us to resist language that calls a tree "a resource" and wilderness "a management unit." Eloquent and fast-paced, The Abstract Wild takes a long view to ask whether ecosystem management isn't "a bit of a sham" and the control of grizzlies and wolves "at best a travesty." Next, the author might bring his readers up-close for a look at pelicans, mountain lions, or Shamu the whale. From whatever angle, Turner stirs into his arguments the words of dozens of other American writers including Thoreau, Hemingway, Faulkner, and environmentalist Doug Peacock. We hunger for a kind of experience deep enough to change our selves, our form of life, writes Turner. Readers who take his words to heart will find, if not their selves, their perspectives on the natural world recast in ways that are hard to ignore and harder to forget."

Well, this is an easy one... I wanted, in fact, to preserve this title for a future post, when I would have maybe lacked of time or ideas, and not "burn" it so quickly... But after reading it for the third time, I couldn't wait any longer. I say this because if there is a truly good wilderness book out there, then it is surely this one, and the fact that it now comes in its fourth edition proves I am right. I will never be thankful enough to my friend A. Antonucci, who first introduced me to Turner's writings (besides many other great books...) and let me thus discover this gem of nature literature. 

But beware, this is not just a nice book and a pleasant reading. In his eight provocative essays, Jack Turner - philosopher turned mountain guide, confronts us with a crude reality. Wildness (a more complex term than wilderness), through management, definition and abstraction is almost ceasing to exist in our contemporary world. With a book that more than a series of essays, sounds like a manifesto, the writer casts a passionate invitation to reflect on the disappearance of first-hand experience (contact) between humans and the wild as the main weakness in the conservation movement. And he manages to argument this with a highly stimulating writing, which are extremely well articulated and always supported by a rich bibliography. The prose is never boring, as one might expect but, on the contrary, eloquent, passionate, gripping and sometimes even moving. Such kind of writing is rare nowadays.

"The easiest way to experience a bit of what the wild was like is to go into a great forest a night alone. Sit quietly for awhile. Something very old will return."

If you have never experienced "the wild", I am afraid this is a difficult book to understand. But if you have the heart for these things, these words will make you thirsty for some real nature experience and wanting to get out and walk immediately. Turner's words spoke to me with an eloquence I had rarely found before and, if, only here and there (Leopold, Abbey, Peacock, Bass, Snyder, Lopez, Meloy, Hainard) in the vast sea of wilderness literature. Never before I had found so much truth in just one title. There is material to reflect on anything. On conservation biology, on wilderness management, on language, even on nature photography! It made me reflect on my conservation fundamentalism; on my personal spiritualism; on my devotion to certain wildlife species or mountains; on my need for the unpredictable and ever-changing; on my political choices; on my vegetarianism...

Besides being so beautiful, this book is therefore somehow also disturbing, since it will stir all your beliefs. Now, more than ever, one sees the mistakes and short perspective the environmentalist movement has been until now partly guilty of. There is a need for a new language and deeper interaction, if we want to save the "Other". The answer might seem revolutionary, but it is already in our genes, since it is as old as we are.

"To construct a new conservation ethic, we need first to understand why we impose a human order on no human orders. We do so for gain, the gain being in prediction, efficiency and, hence, control. (...) So we fight to preserve ecosystems and species, and we accept their diminished wildness. This wins the fight but loses the war, and in the process we simply stop talking about wildness."

Turner's message is so true that I am very glad he wrote this book. Surely, it would be worth taking the time to translate it also in other languages. So, once again,  don't get discouraged by this American-centered book: you will find some universal food for thought in it!

*Linking to Amazon is only for practical purposes... you'd better look where to purchase these books elsewhere!;-)

Wilderness book of the Month #3 - June 2014

I know I am terribly guilty: it has been in fact more than ninety days since my last "wilderness book" post and it feels bad not having been able to keep up with the promise of a title/month. Still, as you know, the life of a wilderness photographer is a highly unpredictable one and, sometimes, good intentions should be those that count... ;-)
Anyway, here we go again and, to make up for the long absence, I present you a very, very good book!

Wild Ones: A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America*
by Jon Mooallem, The Penguin Press HC (May 2013)

From the back cover: "Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter’s world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls—while the actual world she’s inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it—from Thomas Jefferson’s celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, Wild Ones discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.

The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange’s metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it’s led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear’s image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.

With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism’s older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world."

Once again, my partner L. Pater has to be considered responsible for this reading, as "Wild Ones" had been her great present for my 2013's birthday. She bought the book even before it had been released!
As the title says, this is an American-centered book, but the observations and reflections in it have the broadest validity. With a gripping prose that surely grows from a vast and serious research and first-hand journalism, this book is one of the greatest reportages on the environmentalist world that I know. Articulating important concepts such as the shifting baseline syndrome or other aspects of the behavior of humans devoting their life to the environmental cause, this book truly deserved the award of New York Times Notable Book of 2013. I now like to quote their review: "Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America... This is not a book about wilderness; it’s a book about us." --New York Times Book Review
Yes, this is not a book (just) about wilderness; it's a book about us. And if you want to understand what motivates some people to fight unrelentingly for the environment or what makes some abandon their cause for a pessimistic vision, this text will surely help.

*Linking to Amazon is only for practical purposes... you'd better look where to purchase these books elsewhere!;-)

Wilderness book of the Month #2 - March 2014

Ecocriticism (The New Critical Idiom)*
by Greg Garrard - Routledge, 2011 (first edition 2004)

From the second edition back cover: "Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment in all areas of cultural production, from Wordsworth and Thoreau through to Google Earth, J.M. Coetzee and Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man.
Greg Garrard’s animated and accessible volume traces the development of the movement and explores its key concepts, including: pollution; wilderness; apocalypse; dwelling; animals; earth.
Featuring a newly rewritten chapter on animal studies, and considering queer and postcolonial ecocriticism and the impact of globalisation, this fully updated second edition also presents a glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading in print and online.
Concise, clear, and authoritative, Ecocriticism offers the ideal introduction to this crucial subject for students of literary and cultural studies."

To be honest I haven't read this second, promising, updated edition, and at least a couple of years have passed since I read this book in its entirety. Still, the read represented such an objective and generous source of information and ideas that I kept thereafter looking up for quotes and definitions. I must thank my partner L. Pater for passing this book to me.
Either if you want to enrich your environmental vocabulary or develop a more critical (indeed!) look at environmentalism, if you are keen on understanding the visual power of the panda on the WWF's logo, or if you look for the origin of  popular, yet mysterious words such as wilderness or pastoralism, for example, this is the book for you.
Of this book I especially like the very objective point of view, which, for a change, can give environmentalists room for a different perspective, while reflecting on topics that are often taken for granted. It will surely provide some prime "food for thoughts" to all the (ok, nerdy) environmental culture enthusiasts, like me.
Here a few lines from the beginning of the chapter on wilderness: "The idea of wilderness, signifying nature in a state uncontaminated by civilization, is the most potent construction of nature available to New World environmentalism. It is a construction mobilized to protect particular habitats and species, and is seen as a place for the reinvigoration of those tired of the moral and material pollution of the city. Wilderness has an almost sacramental value: it holds out the promise of a renewed, authentic relation of humanity and the earth..."

*Linking to Amazon is only for practical purposes... you'd better look where to purchase these books elsewhere!;-)

My little "heart of darkness" - part three of three

Images and words ©Bruno D’Amicis/www.brunodamicis.com

One day we decided to go further. A shepherd, in fact, had talked with us about a cave which, according to him, the lions used as a den and had offered himself to accompany us: it would take almost five hours of walk from Adjo, he said.

Barefoot and with a spear in his hand (a two-meter-long metal rod crushed and sharpened at the tip), he preceded us with a light pace. We followed him and got again into another gorge, down a steep path that ran along one of the walls. From there you could see well our goal: a sort of gigantic grassy "terrace", partly covered with large trees, which interrupted the long rock wall. On the cliffs above dozens of white slick denounced the presence of a large colony of vultures. Such a place would have suited well even a Tyrannosaurus rex, I thought.

Although my skepticism was chronic, I pondered on the lightness with which my fellows managed such a visit to the very home of the lions. I was wondering if that was something appropriate. Anyway, after what had been one of the most strenuous walks of my first 35 years of life, we reached the edge of the terrace. There we stopped to eat and rest. The shepherd said that we had to climb on the trees and, at sunset, the lions would have come out. So we did, waiting in vain until sunset and beyond: nothing. It was late and I suggested to return. I didn't feel at all comfortable: we were all alone, in the alleged lion area, with just a lamp among four, at more than two hours walk from the nearest settlement and without any equipment to deal with the night. Crazy stuff. We walked our first steps and into the light beam I saw it: a beautiful big turd, exactly like the one of a cat, just fifty times bigger and full of cow hair and bone fragments. A shiver along my back. It was then that we heard the first ROAR: a male lion was calling from two to three hundred meters from our position. I was afraid.

We had to move quickly to reach a safer place where to spend the night and so we took up a hard and almost onirical march into the most complete darkness, embraced by the velvet warmth of the African night, which was seasoned by a big chirping of insects, the distant laughters of hyenas and the roars of that damn’ lion.

I put all my trust in the shepherd, who seemed so confident: I followed him for what seemed like an endless journey through the night, while “we penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness". So I felt, in fact: like Marlow, the protagonist of Conrad’s novel.

We crossed again the deep rocky gorge climbing this time along a different trail and on the other side, finally there was our “salvation”: a small farm. There, greeted by the friendly owners, we lit a fire and, eating enset bread and drinking fresh milk (welcome, diarrhea!) we discussed until late sharing the too many emotions of that evening. When we laid down, wasted, to sleep the one next to the other, it seemed to hear him: the ROAR was not far away. I felt like a Pang in my stomach and I groped in the darkness for the gaze of my friends. We heard it all again two, three more times. Believe me, that has been a long night ...

The next day arrived way too slowly for my taste and I had enough of it. I wanted to go back home and end it there, but we still had to spend one more night at Adjo and wait for the driver to come from Bonga and pick us up on the next day. As we returned to the village in the afternoon, I have found dozens of vultures feasting on a dead horse. Not even ten metres from them, a group of children were attentively watching the banquet: luckily, I was no more the main attraction. Then, as the day was fading a rumor spread quickly: ambassa had just been spotted not far from the last houses. We ran there, me, the interpreter and half of the village. And there, on the edge of the forest, half hidden in the lush tropical vegetation, nodded a lioness, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A vision so beautiful and unusual, which made me wonder if the painter Henri Rousseau had not already experienced something similar in his life. The lioness was huge. After moments of hesitation, I realized that I was not of her interest and, a little reassured by the presence of my companions, I started photographing, first taking a couple of portraits with a long telephoto lens, but, eventually changing to a shorter lens and moving closer. I widened the frame to place the lioness in the wonderful context. I continued shooting until it became dark, then mixing the light from the flash to a portable spotlight. The lioness has moved only once to lay down on a different spot. Finally, we walked away in silence: that was it.

The photographs taken that day probably represent the first visual document attesting the presence of these animals in the afromontane rainforest, at over 2,500 metres above sea level. But the grotesque aspect of this story is also that so much effort would eventually dissolve in just some fractions of a second.

Is there a moral to this story?

Let’s respect and start to believe paintings, fairy tales, rumors and songs, because we will never know where does hide "all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men." (J. Conrad)

And, in the meanwhile... in the jungle... the mighty jungle... the lion really sleeps tonight!

THE END

Wilderness book of the Month #1 - February 2014

If somebody would ask me to point out what is the main source of inspiration for my profession of wildlife photographer, I wouldn't hesitate and name literature, both fiction and non-fiction, instead of other photography or any other form of art. The freedom words give to talented writers and thinkers in order to express the subtle feelings elicited by nature and animals, articulate their reflections on the world and describe fleeting situations is unsurpassed in my opinion by music and visual arts.

As a wilderness "book-oholic" with an ever-growing collection, I have my little circle of similarly-affected people with whom I share the latest releases and virtually unknown highlights. Way too often, we have the feeling that so many incredible findings are appreciated just by a very small percentage of the population and, especially in the case of Europe in general and Italy in particular, those books get known only within a very limited entourage. Wether this happens because of a limited distribution or the barrier of foreign language (and because of the general lack of interest for nature), I often thought it would be worth to share authors and books that I've found exceptional and worth to be widely known. So, here comes the idea to name regularly on my blog a "Wilderness book of the Month". No matter if the book is twenty years-old or freshly published, French or American, writes about food culture or grizzly behavior, I hope to trigger your interest and create momentum for a broader diffusion of wilderness culture!

Wilderness book of the Month #1 - February 2014

Among Wolves: Gordon Haber's Insights into Alaska's Most Misunderstood Animal
by Gordon Haber and Marybeth Holleman - University of Alaska Press, 2013

From the back cover: "Alaska’s wolves lost their fiercest advocate, Gordon Haber, when his research plane crashed in Denali National Park in 2009. Passionate, tenacious, and occasionally brash, Haber, a former hockey player and park ranger, devoted his life to Denali’s wolves.He weathered brutal temperatures in the wild to document the wolves and provided exceptional insights into wolf behavior. Haber’s writings and photographs reveal an astonishing degree of cooperation between wolf family members as they hunt, raise pups, and play, social behaviors and traditions previously unknown. With the wolves at risk of being destroyed by hunting and trapping, his studies advocated for a balanced approach to wolf management. His fieldwork registered as one of the longest studies in wildlife science and had a lasting impact on wolf policies. Haber’s field notes, his extensive journals, and stories from friends all come together in Among Wolves to reveal much about both the wolves he studied and the researcher himself. Wolves continue to fascinate and polarize people, and Haber’s work continues to resonate."

Pardon my ignorance but I didn't know about Gordon Haber and his departure until I stumbled upon his great website: http://alaskawolves.org, and must thank my friend and fellow book-oholic Antonio Antonucci for recommending it to me. This book has been an incredibly pleasant read during a few days of flu and forced bed rest. Although it mostly focuses on Haber's research on wolves in Denali, Alaska, I believe his findings to be of broad interest for all the wolf enthusiasts around the world and his approach to be a very rare example of conservation commitment and scientific clarity. We should all pay homage to this great person and make sure his brave voice won't be silenced. I would like to quote his words at the end of the book, after Haber arguments his position against wolf exploitation: "(…) we are unknowingly destroying the very treasure on which we thrive and, in fact, depend. A sameness results with a numbing of the spirit, and we gradually lose our ability to marvel. The battle to protect wolves or a wild caribou herd, alligators or whales, or another tract of wilderness isn't a plot to lock wilderness and wildlife away. This battle really represents and attempt to ensure that we do not neglect some of our most basic non material needs. It is nothing less than a matter of helping ourselves toward full achievement of the human promise." In this dark age for wolf conservation across Europe and the whole world, I hope these beautiful words will echo in everyone's head.