|
the conduit to scientists and specialists that empowers people to protect whales, dolphins and porpoises, their cultures and their homes.
|
|
| archived words from the wise: Mr Erich Hoyt |
|
Erich Hoyt has spent much of his life on or near the sea, working with whales and dolphins and marine conservation. An award-winning author, he has written 15 books and hundreds of magazine articles on whales, dolphins, as well as ants, insects, wild plants and other subjects. Erich is currently Senior Research Fellow with WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in the UK and directs the first orca study in eastern Russia (in Kamchatka), an international collaboration with Russian researchers. Erich has researched and written numerous conservation and scientific reports as a consultant and advisor for international conservation groups and governments and is considered an authority on whales and dolphins, marine-protected areas and marine conservation, whale watching and ecotourism. He has lectured and worked on conservation and scientific projects in Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Iceland, Mexico, and the Caribbean. He has also taught as a visiting lecturer at the Ohio State University, the University of Edinburgh, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). |
|
| Posted: 2007 September 24 |
|
Contact erich.hoyt@mac.com |
|
|
| wise words |
The Power of Film
Almost a year ago, in late spring 2006, the filmmaker and conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau was invited to the White House to show his film about the remote, untouched and as yet to be fully protected Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Shortly afterwards, in June 2006, President Bush declared the vast area of land and sea a “national monument”, making it, at 140,000 square miles (350,000 sq km), the largest highly protected marine protected area in the world. (For more information about this seminal event in the short history of marine protected areas goto the Online News Hour) The new Hawaiian MPA, to be called the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, was designated in response to the power of a film. It could have taken many scientists, conservationists, and national and international NGOs, decades of concerted research and campaigning to achieve similar results with such a high level of protection – if such results could even be achieved at all. Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming is another example of cinema that has the power to move audiences as well as, hopefully, lower world temperatures — including the hot air from the world’s politicians. All of these works, however, trace their lineage to a 1962 book— Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring.
To achieve conservation goals, we need not only to use the media, but to get involved ourselves, to inform and inspire, and to shape the message into a great film, book, play, DVD, or piece of music.
A note from whales-online.org - This contribution is an excerpt from Erich Hoyts own blog.
|
|
|
|
|
|
