Love Your Mother!
Much of my work as a professional Landscape Photographer here in Bend Oregon is dictated by Mother Earth. Will the flowers be blooming, will the sunrise be vibrant, will the wind be blowing? It’s all up to her. Because of that and my lifelong passion for the outdoors, I’ve been looking for a way to give something back to mother nature and Mother Earth.
Have you seen those “Make Local Habit” stickers around Bend? Well I have and I love them. After seeing one of those stickers on the back window of a Subaru Outback in downtown Bend, I had an epiphany. I’d give 20% of my print prices to environmentally based non-profit groups and I’d make them local ones. This commitment to Mother Earth will continue for one month. Luckily there are some phenomenally well run environmental organizations with which I already have a great relationship, so the decision was an easy one. I’ve decided that my contribution to Mother Earth will come in the form of donations to either The Deschutes Land Trust or the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
Both of these two organizations are efficient, have honorable missions, and they are staffed with talented, motivated and affable individuals. To describe these groups a bit better, I have borrowed some text from their respective websites. To find out more, please visit the links for yourself.
The Deschutes Land Trust: “The Land Trust’s mission is to work cooperatively with landowners to conserve land for wildlife, scenic views and local communities.”
The Deschutes Land Trust Vision:
The Oregon Natural Desert Association: ONDA is a 1,400-member, grassroots organization committed toprotecting, defending, and restoring the health of Oregon’s native deserts for present and future generations. Founded in 1987, ONDA is the only group working exclusively to protect Oregon’s vast High Desert. Over the past 20 years, ONDA has earned many successes including the protection of Steens Mountain as the nation’s first “cow-free” Wilderness in 2000, and the removal of livestock from both the Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge and the Wild and Scenic Owyhee River. In 2009 ONDA was instrumental in the designation of the Badlands and Spring Basin Wilderness Area, creating 40,000 acres of new desert wilderness.
