We are rediscovering that only through sharing will we save this magnificent planet. Social media gives us the ability to share photographs, thoughts, ideas, and knowledge almost instantaneously with powerful effects. A great example of this is National Geographic’s “The Great Nature Project”. This is a worldwide celebration of our diverse planet through photographs submitted by people around the world. WE must all participate by tag all photograph uploads of plants and animals #GreatNature Become part of a Guinness World Record attempt to upload the largest-ever online photo album of nature photographs. The Great Nature Project is part of a new age of exploration by millions of people around the world with cameras and instruments gathering important data and research for a better world.
Guides, rangers, researchers, ecotourists, photographers, artists and conservationists around the world apply themselves everyday to sharing, studying, photographing, writing about and celebrating the “wild” with their guests, co-workers, colleagues, and local communities. These amazing photographs are a window into their world, a world where the lions, elephants, orangutans and leopards still reign supreme and we can dream of that perfect morning in the wilderness. Ranger Diaries and The Bush Boyes have teamed up to bring you the “Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness”. These stunning photographs are selected from hundreds of submissions and are intended to bring the beauty, freedom and splendour of the wilderness to as many people as possible around the world.
Submit your best photographs from the wildest places to the The Bush Boyes Facebook page or Ranger Diaries website, and stand a chance of being featured in the “Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness” published each week.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” (John Muir)
“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” (Henry David Thoreau)
“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.” (Aldo Leopold)
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties” (John Muir)
“The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.” (Nancy Wynne Newhall)
“It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness.” (Loren Eisley)
“Nothing truly wild is unclean.” (John Muir)
“I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.” (Edward Abbey)
“A flower’s structure leads a bee toward having pollen adhere to its body . . . we don’t know of any such reason why beautiful places attract humans.” (David Rains Wallace)
“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be – will be – a human zoo. A high-tech slum.” (Edward Abbey)
“I think it is far more important to save one square mile of wilderness, anywhere, by any means, than to produce another book on the subject.” (Edward Abbey)
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”(Henry David Thoreau)
Did you know? The Okavango Delta is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site…
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.” (Edward Abbey)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (Henry David Thoreau)
“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.” (Edward Abbey)
“In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.” (Charles Lindbergh)
“No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.” (Garrett Hardin)
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” (Rachel Carson)
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” (Crowfoot (Blackfoot))
“Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.” (Aldo Leopold)
“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow… the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.” (Aldo Leopold)
“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world – the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.” (John Muir)
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” (John Muir)
“Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.” (Chief Seattle (Suquamish))
“Every year, my brother (Chris Boyes), Pete (“the Nare”) Hugo, Giles (“Prince William”) Trevethick and I (Dr Steve Boyes) cross the Okavango Delta, top to bottom, on mokoros (dug-out canoes) to survey the distribution and abundance of wetland birds, advocate for World Heritage Status, and share this amazing wilderness with accompanying scientists, explorers and special guests. My wife, Dr Kirsten Wimberger, joined us for the first time this year. No one will forget what happened on the 2012 expedition…”
In 2013, we are embarking on the Okavango River Expedition. This will be a 1,750km odyssey down the Okavango River from the source near Huambo (Angola) all the way down the catchment, across the Caprivi Strip (Namibia), and into Botswana to cross the Okavango Delta via one of our planet’s last untouched wilderness areas. Our objective is to support the Okavango World Heritage Project and achieve UNESCO World Heritage Status for the Okavango Delta and the entire catchment. See: http://www.okavangofilm.com/
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