A thousand words part 2

Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.
Although if the bear is a grizzly bear and you are a salmon it's really more of the latter.

Posting about the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award below made me think about the power of photographs. Joel Sartore, whose photograph of dead frogs in the Sierras won a highly commended in the One Earth Award, has a great website with thousands of his images - many taken on assignment for National Geographic.

He also has a blog and a FAQ with lots of great information about being a wildlife photographer.

To make this topical check out his gallery on Endangered Species:

Writer Douglas Chadwick has said that there is as much beauty and importance in the beat of a butterfly wing as there is in the howl of a wolf. Such thinking forms the basis for a remarkable law, the Endangered Species Act.

Since its inception in 1973, the ESA has become the most important tool in the fight to save animals from extinction. Though much maligned and woefully underfunded in the past eight years, the law protects all creatures great and small, from ocelots to beach mice. It even protects a single species of fly found on the California coast.

By isolating species on black and white backgrounds, all are given equal consideration (and hopefully equal attention) by readers. Public support of the law is vital to its continuance, saving hundreds of species for future generations.

Photograph shows A St. Andrew beach mouse (Peromyscus polionotus peninsularis), a federally endangered rodent, in Panama City, FL. This and several other beach mice subspecies are imperiled due to beach development.