Day 77 of a Photo a Day: Travellers of the Moose Cree Homelands of Coastal James Bay

For the past few months, I've been steadily completing a video for Nature Canada on the shorebird projects they've been working on with the Moose Cree First Nation in their homelands of coastal James Bay.

Shorebird populations have been steadily declining for about 50 years. For a section of my video that details this, my good friend Jaime drew some whiteboard art, pictured above. In the sequence, as the years progress, shorebirds begin to disappear. Reasons for this include oil spills, feral dogs and cats, storms, disturbances from humans, and loss of habitat. James Bay doesn't have a lot of these threats, and as such is a safe haven for shorebird mating and stop-through during migration. The peoples of the Cree homelands of James Bay have been doing a lot of work to monitor shorebird populations and ensure that they remain as safe and as undisturbed as possible.

I am passionate about birds. Since I started to get serious about photography, birds have become my favourite subjects of all. They are challenging to photograph and so diverse and beautiful, and when I photograph a species I don't know, I love to find out what it is and learn about it.

I love working with this subject matter. The people up in James Bay are close to my heart because I've heard so much about them from my boss, Ted Cheskey, both in 2014 when I first worked for him and now, when I get to look at them and hear them through the footage I'm working with. The shorebirds are close to my heart because I'm worried for them and I know that it's my peoples' doing that their populations are dwindling. Condos on the shore, aesthetic removal of riparian buffer zones, oil transportation to power vehicles that I take advantage of, and so much more are contributing to the decline in populations of species like the endangered Red Knot.

I care about my work and I am so excited to showcase it once it's finished. I want to do a good job. I want to change perspectives. I love all kinds of visual communication, but I am so proud to be an environmental visual communicator...because it really matters.

#PhotoaDay