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Also on exhibition at Circles in Atlanta, GA:

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Galleries

Videos :

Videos

Updated: Sep 12, 2009 10:49am PST

Sea Turtles in Hawaii :

Sea Turtles in Hawaii

Jackson Hole, Wyoming :

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Morro Bay, California's Central Coast :

Morro Bay, California's Central Coast

Chimp Haven : Published in the Shreveport Times, June 15, 2007 “Monkeys have tails, chimps don’t.” When I worked on the movie “Planet of the Apes” this is the response that I heard the animal handlers say to people who mistakenly referred to the chimpanzees as monkeys. Chimpanzees are our closest living evolutionary relatives. We share somewhere between 95% and 99.4% identical DNA. These similarities are what make them useful in biomedical research. From 1930 until 1970 they were imported into the United States from Africa for this purpose. There are still about 1000 of them being used today. In the wild where they have natural predators their life span is about 40 years. This is the age when they start to become weaker and slower. In captivity where they don’t have predators they live much longer. Cheeta, the chimp from the original Tarzan movie is now 75 and lives in Palm Springs, California. The lush climate in Louisiana is perfect for chimps and Caddo Parish was good enough to set aside 200 acres of forest for a chimpanzee sanctuary. In April 2005 Chimp Haven became a refuge for retired chimps in Keithville, LA. Chimp Haven is a sanctuary for over 100 chimps that have been retired from medical research. Most of the chimps here have spent 30 to 40 years working as research animals. They come to Louisiana to enjoy the last years of their lives. The sanctuary wants to keep the space it has available for up to 100 more chimps when they are retired, so it attempts to keep the chimps from reproducing. Their methods usually work, but in the case of Teresa and Conan, the vasectomy failed. That is why they now have 5-month-old baby Tracy. Teresa, age 45, is one of the few chimps here that was born in the wild and spent a few years of her youth in her natural habitat before spending about 30 years in medical research facilities. Now that she once again has trees to climb and a forest to roam, she is teaching her baby how to live more naturally. Chimp Haven gives the chimps their choice of where to live. They can choose to build a nest in the woods or they can stay indoors. Since some of the chimps here were born in captivity and have never lived in an environment other than concrete and steel, some of them are only comfortable in the man-made world. “Even when they go outside some of the chimps like to keep one hand touching the concrete building at all times,” according to Rick Delahaya, Media Relations Director for Chimp Haven. According to Amy Fultz, a Behaviorist at Chimp Haven, the hope is that the few wild born chimps will eventually teach the others how to live in the forest. Some of them have already discovered that they can get some of their food naturally. They like to eat the naturally growing elm, oak, and sweetgum. In order to speed up the process, the scientists at Chimp Haven use some tricks to teach them. They place bananas and other goodies high up in the trees to entice the chimps to climb. They have built fake termite mounds and filled them with food products that the chimps enjoy like peanut butter and applesauce. The chimps find a stick to put in a hole and pull out the food. This mimics what they would naturally do, except in the wild the stick would become covered with yummy termites. Chimp Haven is still in its early stages of growing and becoming an internationally renowned educational center. Go to www.chimphaven.org for more information.

Chimp Haven

Published in the Shreveport Times, June 15, 2007 “Monkeys have ta ...

Updated: Jul 04, 2007 7:51pm PST

The Day After Earth Day 2007 at the California Wildlife Center : The Day After Earth Day The day after a disappointingly non-eventful Earth Day 2007 I followed a trail of dead birds, and a squirrel and some troubled seals all the way inland to the people who rescue animals. On April 22,1970 Senator Nelson from Wisconsin called for a day of environmental education in response to the deterioration of the environment. 20 million Americans participated in the celebration and many reforms were made because of the newly increased environmental awareness. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed as an outcome of this first Earth Day Celebration. Now Earth Day is celebrated around the globe by an estimated half billion people. This year on April 22 I was curious to find what Earth Day happenings were going on in Los Angeles. What I found were a special Earth Day event at the LA Zoo and some organized beach clean-ups in Santa Monica. In other words, not a whole lot was going on. The one thing that I heard most coming from media outlets on this Earth Day 2007 was that if we all start using more efficient light bulbs we will be helping out a lot. At daybreak on April 23, 2007 I went for a walk on my nearby beach. As I walked on the mile long stretch of sand I was confronted with the carcasses of over 30 sea birds, 2 sick sea lions, a sick elephant seal, a delirious pelican, and several dead fish. This sight prompted me to take a short drive to the California Wildlife Center to find out what was going on. The California Wildlife Center is a non-profit organization located in Malibu on State Park Property right smack in the middle of the backbone trail. It serves as a hospital and rehab center for injured wildlife. They tend to marine animals and sea birds from Topanga to Pt. Mugu as well as land-based wildlife and birds from all over Los Angeles. Their mission is rescue, rehab, and release. They have an intensive care unit where injured animals are looked after round the clock. The Center is mostly staffed by volunteers. You must be 18 years of age or older and go through a training session that is held once a month. They have a small number of paid wildlife Veterinarians and marine mammal rescue professionals. Since their goal is to re-release the animals into the wild, they want to keep their contact with humans to a minimum. I felt honored that they allowed me inside the hospital to see and photograph the animals. I was able to convince them that my goal is to inform more local residents of the Center’s existence in the hopes of increasing the number of volunteers or simply educating more people of the impact that we have on the local wildlife. Since the reason that I was there in the first place was the sick and dead animals that I saw on my beach, I spoke at length with Tristan Joy, the assistant Marine Mammal Coordinator at CWC. She informed me that this incident was a case of domoic acid poisoning, a naturally occurring toxin that comes from a microscopic blue green algae that works its way up the food chain. First, the anchovies and other baitfish eat the algae. Since their nervous systems are simple, the toxin does not affect them. Then they are eaten by sea birds and mammals like sea lions, dolphins, and whales. In these animals it becomes a neurotoxin that causes loss of muscle control, seizures, brain damage, and eventually death. The CWC got their first call this year on Tuesday April 17 about a seal with domoic acid poisoning. The algal blooms that create the toxin occur when the water is warm, polluted, or stagnant. Scientists first identified domoic acid in 1958. Hitchcock’s film “The Birds” was based on an incident in 1961 of seabirds that had literally gone insane from the neurological effects of the toxin. In recent years incidents of domoic acid poisoning have become an annual occurrence and it is happening earlier and in higher numbers every year. This year so far the cormorant population has been greatly affected, as well as sea lions, pelicans, and other birds and fish. Oddly enough, I also found a dead squirrel on the beach next to a dead cormorant. It is possible that this squirrel’s death was just a coincidence. If its death is related to the domoic acid, it is a first for the squirrel population. According to Tristan Joy, even a slight increase in water temperature might be the culprit for the increase in incidents of domoic acid poisoning, or it could be run-off from nearby residences and businesses, everything from fertilizer to laundry detergent. Often there is nothing that they can do once the animals become sick from the toxin. The birds tend to die quickly from it. Some of the larger mammals are able to overcome it. If the CWC gets to an animal that is severely sick it can administer liquids to try to flush out the toxins, but this does not always save the animal and often times it is too late. Needless to say, the incident that brought me to the CWC is not the one that kept me there for an afternoon since virtually none of the animals that I saw sick, dying, or dead on my beach had survived long enough to make it to the wonderfully caring emergency room off Malibu Canyon. Once I was let into the Center I was amazed by the high level of efficiency with which it is run so I took a grand tour of it. Currently in the Intensive Care Unit were several small birds, squirrels, possums, and ducklings. Some of the smallest birds were victims of a springtime tree trimming. One bird had a broken shoulder from a cat attack. One hummingbird was still in shock from flying into a window. In the larger outdoor enclosures were some ducklings, an owl, and some morning doves that were on their last few days of rehab and observation before being released. The owl had been caught up in a glue trap when he went to get the rat that had been caught in the glue. The ducklings were orphaned and left in a dangerous place. Someone found them and brought them in. The morning doves had come in for various reasons, often from broken wings from animal attacks or from flying into windows. My tour guide was Tim Weis who has been a volunteer at CWC for several years. Many of the animal pens were empty. Tim pointed out to me that they do not have many animals because they try to rehab them and release back into the wild as quickly as possible. Back in the ICU, Vet tech Lauren Coffield was skillfully directing an intern and a volunteer in the care and feeding of tiny sparrows, hummingbirds, and squirrels, who oddly enough didn’t seem to mind being placed right next to each other. As she was instructing them on which formula to give to which squirrel, she was delicately placing a flower petal over the needle of a syringe before administering the liquid to a hummingbird. The flower is placed over the syringe so that the hummingbird grows accustomed to taking food from a flower. Then she checked on the bird with the broken shoulder and sadly reported that the prognosis might not be good. If the break was further down the wing it might grow back but a break in the shoulder joint often doesn’t. Nonetheless, she will bandage it and wait a few days to see if it gets better. As for the victims of the domoic acid poisoning, the CWC gathers as many of the dead ones as they can to take tissue samples from them to further the study of domoic acid. For more information go to www.californiawildlifecenter.org or call 818-222-2658.

The Day After Earth Day 2007 at the California Wildlife Center

The Day After Earth Day The day after a disappointingly non-eventfu ...

Updated: Jun 17, 2007 1:56pm PST

Scenic Southern California :

Scenic Southern California

Updated: Jan 27, 2007 11:18am PST

China :

China

Updated: Jan 20, 2007 10:12pm PST

Beach :

Beach

Updated: Dec 24, 2007 10:39pm PST

Panda Bears : Panda bears live in mountainous bamboo-covered forests in southwest China. There are only about 1600 of them left in the world. At several panda breeding centers like the Wolong Nature Reserve and the Chengdu Research Base, both located in Sichuan Province, China, many pandas have been born in captivity. The ultimate goal is to release them into the wild while at the same time increasing conservation efforts so that they have the natural habitat that they need for survival. To purchase prints of any of these photos, contact me.

Panda Bears

Panda bears live in mountainous bamboo-covered forests in southwest Ch ...

Updated: Aug 23, 2007 4:56pm PST

Wild Horses : The Wild Horse Sanctuary is located in northern California.

Wild Horses

The Wild Horse Sanctuary is located in northern California.

Updated: May 24, 2008 10:53am PST

Dogs :

Dogs

Updated: Apr 20, 2007 10:30am PST

Thailand :

Thailand

Updated: Apr 20, 2007 11:30am PST

Cambodia : Angkor Wat and its Environs

Cambodia

Angkor Wat and its Environs

Updated: Jan 22, 2007 9:10pm PST

Surfing :

Surfing

Updated: Feb 25, 2008 7:00pm PST

Kite Boarding :

Kite Boarding

Updated: Dec 17, 2006 9:52pm PST