Throughout my career as a conservationist, I’ve often been asked some version of the same question:
“Where do you find the motivation? How do you keep from losing hope?”
I’ve answered that question differently over the years, because the truth is that conservation work is always changing. The campaigns change. The species change. The threats change. And when you work in conservation communications, so much of your job is figuring out how to meet people where they are and help them understand why any of this matters.
But for me, the goal has always been the same: How do I tell a story that inspires regular, everyday people to care and then to act for threatened and endangered wildlife?
For years, I tried to answer that question from behind a camera.
I filmed and photographed coral reefs and changing marine ecosystems, trying to capture their beauty, their complexity, and sometimes their fragility. I wanted people to see what I was seeing. To feel connected to places and species they might never encounter themselves.
I first learned about coral reefs in the mid-1990s, and over the decades since, I have watched them face extraordinary decline. There were moments when photographing something beautiful carried an uncomfortable thought with it: Will this still be here the next time I come back?
That kind of work teaches you a lot about loss. But it also teaches you to look for hope.
And in late August, during a week with the Endangered Species Coalition team in the Florida Keys, I found a new level of inspiration and a deeper understanding of where that hope can come from.
Our team traveled throughout the Keys, where we hosted a lunch-and-learn with elected officials and business leaders from across the island communities. We talked about the need to protect the Gulf from new exploratory offshore drilling and about why Floridians have such an important role to play in defending the wildlife, waters, communities, and local economies that depend on a healthy ocean. Florida is home to over 135 threatened and endangered species, half of those species can be located within the communities in the Florida Keys.
These are the kinds of conversations that matter. Conservation cannot exist only in reports, policy documents, or scientific journals. It has to live in communities. It has to connect with people’s lives. And ultimately, it has to give people a reason to believe that their voice and their actions can make a difference.
But something else happened during that week that I wasn’t expecting.
I got to really know my colleagues.
Until then, many of them had been names attached to emails or familiar faces inside little boxes on a Zoom screen. In Florida, we ate together. Traveled together. Talked about wildlife, strategy, communities, challenges, ideas, and why each of us had chosen this work in the first place.
And I walked away from that week thinking about hope differently.
Because more than almost any organization I have worked with before, the Endangered Species Coalition is made up of a truly remarkable group of people. People with an extraordinary level of expertise, yes, but even more importantly, an extraordinary level of commitment.
Every person brings something different to this work. Policy expertise. Organizing. Science. Communications. Creative artistry. Community relationships. Advocacy. Years of experience fighting for wildlife and the places they call home.
And all of it is pointed toward the same purpose: defending the Endangered Species Act and protecting the threatened and endangered wildlife that still share this country with us.
The Endangered Species Act gives wildlife a fighting chance. For more than fifty years, it has shown what is possible when science, law, communities, and committed people work together to prevent extinction and help species recover.
But laws do not defend themselves. Wildlife cannot walk into a congressional office, organize a community meeting, tell its story, or ask someone to speak up. People have to do that. And I think that may be the answer I’ll give the next time someone asks me where I find the motivation to keep going. I find it in the people doing the work.
I find it in colleagues who refuse to accept extinction as inevitable.
Conservation can sometimes feel like a profession defined by everything we are trying not to lose.
But that week in the Florida Keys reminded me that it is also defined by something much more powerful:
Everything and everyone we are willing to fight for.
And right now, I feel incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by people who are doing exactly that.
ASK THE STAFF: What inspired you the most from our time together in the Florida Keys?
The post Hope Is a Team Effort appeared first on Endangered Species Coalition.