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ELEPHANTS
Links to organizations and information.

Amboseli Trust for Elephants
Cynthia Moss has been studying this group of elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park since 1972 – the longest running African elephant field research project in the world. Her studies of more than 2,000 elephants (1,400 still living) in their natural habitat are the most comprehensive ever undertaken.

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust: A Haven For Elephants & Rhinos
Based in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, this conservation organization is probably best known for it’s African elephant orphan project. Headed by Dame Daphne Sheldrick, the Trust has successfully saved and hand-reared over 82 infant African elephant calves, two from the day of birth. Currently, over 40 of the Trust’s hand-reared elephants are fully established and living free amongst their wild peers in Tsavo, some returning with wild born young to show their erstwhile human family.

The Elephant Listening Project
ELP began at the Portland Zoo in 1984, when Katy Payne felt (more than heard) the low-frequency rumbling communication of two Asian elephants, a male and female, who were standing on opposite sides of a concrete wall. In the following years, Katy and a group of dedicated colleagues demonstrated that elephants often communicate using sounds below the threshold of human hearing, that these sounds carry over vast distances, and that elephants use vocal communication to bind their complex family social system together. The earliest research was focused on savannah elephants, but increasingly the focus has been on forest elephants in the rainforests of Central Africa.

Elephant Voices
Researcher Joyce Poole’s website is full of information and additional links, sounds, and images.

The Elephant Sanctuary
Founded by Carol Buckley and Scott Blais in 1995, this natural-habitat refuge in Tennessee is for sick, old and needy endangered Asian elephants.

Save The Elephants
Founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the African elephant, pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behaviour in Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park at age 23. This is a very informative site.

Elephant News Service
Since 2000, Save the Elephants has been running the world’s only free email elephant news service dedicated to disseminating daily news stories, publications and resources on both the Asian and African elephants. This service is run by researcher Melissa Groo, based in the United States. To subscribe, send an email to groo@elephantnews.org with the subject “Request African/Asian (as appropriate) Elephant” or “Request Both”.

Performing Animal Welfare Society
Founded in 1984, by former Hollywood animal trainer and author, Pat Derby, and her partner, Ed Stewart, PAWS maintains three sanctuaries for captive wildlife – 30 acres in Galt, California, 100 acres (The Amanda Blake Wildlife Refuge) in Herald, California and 2,300 acres of pristine, natural habitat (ARK 2000) in San Andreas, California.

The Kerulos Center
Dr. Gay Bradshaw’s work was what got me going on the ELEPHANT performance – specifically her work on post-traumatic stress disorder in young African elephants. Bradshaw’s Kerulos Center is a non-profit organization based on the scientific understanding of animals as thinking, feeling, sentient beings.

The Human Elephant Foundation
A foundation started by South African artist Andries Botha. The site includes amazing images of life-sized elephant sculptures made from recycled materials.

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WOLVES
Links to organizations and info.

The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale
14-18 miles off the coast of Minnesota/Ontario lies Isle Royale, a big island in Lake Superior.  It’s the least visited national park in the country (probably because, to get to the park, there’s a five hour ferry ride over waters that can get a little rough). Since 1959 they’ve been studying the island’s wolf population and the moose the wolves eat.  It’s the longest predator-prey study in the world.  I was an artist-in-residence there as part of my research for the show.

The International Wolf Center
Way up north in Ely, Minnesota, The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future.

The Wildlife News: Wolves
A fantastic source of articles, histories, and information about wolves and other beasts.

Yellowstone Forever Institute
As part of the research for WOLF and BEAR I took some courses here.  A big part of the WOLF performance was based on the idea of reintroducing wolves to Allerton Park – a small forest, an island, in the middle of Illinois’ 43,000 square miles of industrial agriculture.  The Yellowstone wolves were exterminated in the 1920’s and reintroduced in the 1990’s. The reintroduction was bitterly contested.

The Wolf Education and Research Center
A wolf sanctuary in Idaho – currently in transition.

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BEARS
Links to organizations, individuals, and information.

Doug Peacock
An author, activist, and passionate advocate for wild lands, Doug Peacock has written that spending time with bears saved his life. After two tours as a Special Forces medic in the Central Highlands of Vietnam (for which he received the Soldier’s Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and the Bronze Star), Peacock was repatriated to the Rocky Mountains, the wild deserts and tundras of North America. It was there he met the late author Edward Abbey, who used Peacock to mold his iconic character, George Washington Hayduke.

Dave Stalling: From The Wild Side
A thoughtful hunter with some sharp opinions.

Great Bear Foundation
A non-profit organization in Missoula, Montana, dedicated to the conservation of the eight species of bears and their habitat around the world.

North American Bear CenterJust down the road from the International Wolf Center is the North American Bear Center. There is even controversy – because it’s Minnesota and that’s where Prince is from.

Vital Ground: Grizzly Bear Habitat“The Vital Ground Foundation is a land trust that conserves and connects habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife. We also team up with communities to prevent conflicts between bears and people.”

Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
The vision of the Y to Y Initiative is “an interconnected system of wild lands and waters stretching from Yellowstone to Yukon, harmonizing the needs of people with those of nature.” That’s over 500,000 square miles of territory. Wow. Go Y2Y, go!

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ART/NATURE

Leanne Allison & Karsten Heuer
A husband and wife team making some beautiful work. Check out Bear 71: a 20-minute interactive documentary. It’s really fantastic. Smart. Gorgeous. Haunting.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation
Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized and perceived.

Center for PostNatural History
Rich Pell’s brilliant little museum is a platform for true stories about our shifting natural world – stories that don’t feel natural at all.

BD Collier
Collier is doing some fascinating work with invasive species. Past projects have included work with starlings and parrots. New projects include the asian carp and it’s threat to midwestern waterways. Hilarious, very dry, and devastating.

Mark Dion
Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world.

Laurie Hogin
Hogin’s paintings tiptoe on the line between Old Masters and modern day paranoia/apocalypse.

Lisa Jevbratt / Zoomorph
Lisa and her crew are working on a plug-in/filter/app that will allow humans to see how various non-human animals see.

Maya Lin / What Is Missing?
Described as “Maya Lin’s last memorial, will focus attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear within our lifetime. She envisions it as a multi-site video project, as a site on the Internet, and as a book.”

Maria Lux
Maria’s making some thought-provoking work about the intersection of animals, institutions, art and perception.

Melissa Pokorny
Pokorny’s large-scale sculptures, mixed media tableaus, and installations incorporate fragmented images of landscape and nature that highlight contested spaces, borders and boundaries between the natural world and our presence in it.

Jennifer Monson / iLand
iLAND Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance investigates the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world. Artistic director, Jennifer Monson, is a choreographer and performer who’s history runs broad and deep.

Regional Relationships
Ryan Griffis and Sarah Ross and their Regional Relationships project “commissions artists, scholars, writers and activists to create works that investigate the natural, industrial and cultural landscapes of a region.  It is a platform to re-imagine the spaces and cultural histories around us. An invitation to join in seeing what we can learn—and learning what we can see—by juxtaposing spaces and narratives that are usually kept apart.”

Isabella Rossellini / Green Porno and Seduce Me
Short films about sex in the natural world. Very handmade and very funny.

Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Center
Taft-Nicholson has an artist in residence program.  Set in Montana’s Centennial Valley, the center lies adjacent to the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  Taft-Nicholson is part of the University of Utah.

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BESTIARY COLLABORATORS

Jennifer Allen
Susan Becker
Jeff Kolar
Aaron Landsman
Maria Lux
Valerie Oliveiro
Cynthia Oliver
Jason Patterson
Chris Peck
Ryan Thompson
Andy Warfel
Jayne Wenger

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links:     elephant     wolf     bear     art/nature     collaborators     colleagues