ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Short-eared Owl at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon.

Conservation is a controversial topic in this part of the world, where water and other natural resources are scarce. Not enough water is shared between farmers, ranchers, native tribes and wildlife conservation efforts for birds migrating along the pacific flyway every year. Everyone doesn't always get what they want due to lack of water in the vast High Desert of Eastern Oregon. The lake at Malheur (which supports short-eared owls and a hundred+ other species besides) has dried up due to agriculture in the past - devastating the local ecosystem that year. In 2016, a group of armed far-right extremists occupied the refuge here for about a month - advocating for the national agencies that manage the reserve hand over control to the states and open Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to local ranchers and farmers for agricultural use. This would have been devastating to the ecosystem here, like cowboy capitalism has been to so much of the American West over the past 150 years.

None of this matters, however, to the Short-eared Owl. Short-eared Owls have been hunting these lands since long before humans migrated to this desert valley 10,000-15,000 years ago. They rely on the seasonal waters that flow from nearby Steans Mountain (Snowy Mountain) to the south and the Blue Mountains to the North. I love taking pictures here. I love seeing the animals that call this land home and documenting small moments like this with them through a camera. My hope with photography is to share this world with others, so they understand why we use this land to keep birds like this from disappearing from the region forever, like many other species in the American West over the last 150 years.

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