He said the air was filled with the cooing, whistling and cackling of thousands of snow geese.<\/p>\n
A member of the Peoria Audubon Society told Mullen he had seen thousands of snow geese already massing south of Springfield, getting ready for the migration north.<\/p>\n
“The miracle of migration means mass movement around the globe is starting,” Mullen said. “Once you witness it, it’s hard not to understand the world differently.”<\/p>\n
He said Forest Park is sponsoring Ulrich’s program to share some of this understanding and sense of connection.<\/p>\n
Ulrich’s photographs appear regularly in prestigious publications including National Geographic, Life, Audubon and National Wildlife. He has seven nature books that will be for sale during his presentation.<\/p>\n
“I try to photograph species on the verge of extinction,” said Ulrich, who originally is from Illinois but now lives in Montana. “I have photographed the rarest duck, the rarest parrot, the rarest penguin. It can be challenging. There are a good number of polar bears out there, and there are quite a few little guys like poison arrow frogs.”<\/p>\n
Ulrich said he’s witnessed vast changes in ecosystems over the decades of his professional life.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen quite a change with the stability of species since I started doing this in 1975. Sometimes it seems almost irreversible … like a losing battle,” he said. “My goal with these programs is to educate and entertain at the same time.”<\/p>\n
Ulrich likes to return over and over to locations to create rich files of biodiversity. He was one of the first professional photographers to travel extensively in the Pantanal region of Brazil.<\/p>\n
When he started going, the region was home to huge cattle ranches. Over the years, eco-tourism grew and has created an alternative economy committed to preserving natural habitats.<\/p>\n
Mullen said we are witnessing the highest rate of extinctions in human history.<\/p>\n
“Maybe for some species the decline is so severe it will be difficult to reverse, and those species will disappear,” he said. “But there is always hope we can turn this around. Humans are a brilliant species, and if they decide to turn this thing around, it could happen. It happened with condors. Wolves are another example.”<\/p>\n
Mullen said it’s important to understand what we do in central Illinois is connected with what happens in some of the most remote regions of the world.<\/p>\n
“Many of us will never get to some of these places, but this program helps us feel connected to them,” he said.<\/p>\n
Clare Howard can be reached at 686-3250 or choward@pjstar.com. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n Tom Ulrich has worked as a professional nature photographer for the past 35 years and will present 400 of his more than 600,000 images in a program Tuesday at Forest Park Nature Center. John Mullen, chief naturalist at Forest Park, said he hopes the program inspires people to feel connected with the natural world and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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