A community effort. During part of their stay on Oahu, the photographers’ community included Michael Hadfield and his laboratory (where he removed tiny snails one by one from a large humidity-controlled refrigerator for their moments in front of the camera); Steve Perlman, of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens on Kauai, who engages in “extreme collecting” (he rappels down cliffs to survey plants that grow nowhere else); and Steve Montgomery, an entomologist who studies “the half of the insect fauna that’s out there at night.”

At the right:  Oahu tree snail, Achatinella livida, photographed at the Endangered Tree Snails Conservation Laboratory, University of Hawaii at Manoa. (© 1999 David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton.)

Before and after. Middleton studies the endangered Schiedea nuttalli, posing in a plastic water bottle, at the Rare Plant Facility in the Mokuleia Forest Reserve, Oahu, Hawaii. (© 1999 Fred Powledge.)
 
Right: the same plant, as photographed by the Leadership Award winners. (© 1999 Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager.)

Liittschwager and Middleton -- 3

                An ongoing relationship

The photographers’ expeditions, be they an extended visit to Hawaii or a trip down the road to a small nature reserve in California, are carefully planned and coordinated with experts. Liittschwager speaks of the “small community” of scientists and others who regularly stay in touch and welcome the opportunity to describe a creature’s characteristics or to serve as guides to patches of habitat where the last of a dying breed may be found. “That’s an absolutely crucial element of the formula,” he says. “We couldn’t afford to be able to do this without this community.”

  There are benefits for the cooperating experts, of course. Michael Hadfield, of the Pacific Biomedical Research Laboratory at the University of Hawaii, is an expert on the islands’ snails. He knows that of 41 species of the Oahu tree snail, 22 are extinct and all but 2 of the rest are endangered — the result of shell collecting, deforestation, and the deliberate introduction by the state department of agriculture of a carnivorous snail from mainland America that has spelled doom for the native species.

  Dr. Hadfield knows all this, but many of his colleagues and the general public could not appreciate the fragile beauty of the Oahu tree snail if it were not for the pictures Middleton and Liittschwager presented in their book, Witness: Endangered Species of North America (San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 1994).

  Steve Montgomery, another member of the photographers' community, counts among his many laboratories Oahu's Koolau mountain range, a place of bamboo forest and steeply-hilled volcano craters. At the top, trade winds that blow across the Pacific bring what seems like constant showers of spitting rain. Middletown and Liittschwager are in excellent shape — she carries a backpack that weighs about 30 pounds, and he manages one, filled with cameras, film, and lighting equipment, that is roughly double that — but Montgomery threatened to exhaust them one day as he searched for an endangered long-nosed leafhopper. 

  Eventually, in late afternoon, the photographers returned to their rented truck without the entomologist. He had gone off on his own, without pack or water or raingear. He emerged from the forest late that night, bearing specimens of the alpine wolf spider and larvae of the oceanic Hawaiian damselfly for his visitors to photograph the next morning.

How can I help?  On the following evening, Liittschwager and Middleton gave a lecture at the Hawaiian Botanical Society. The site had to be changed because of heightened public interest. The auditorium was filled with children, young families, university faculty, and older people. 

  Middleton explained the solid white or black backgrounds: “It presents our subject more effectively by eliminating all of the other distractions. . . . On a conceptual level, of course, what we’re losing is any trace of context or habitat, which is exactly what needs to be preserved to insure the survival of these species.” The crowd was enthralled by the slides, and afterward dozens of people gathered around the photographers to ask questions — one of which was, “What can I do to help?”

  The two photographers are justly proud of their work, and they are encouraged by the crowds at lectures and the recognition and financial help of the sort the Biodiversity Leadership Award confers. But they know their task is far from over.

  “When we started this in 1990,” says David Liittschwager, “there were 545 creatures on the federal Endangered Species List. It’s 1999, and there are now almost 1,200 creatures on the list. There would be nothing more depressing than to sit on our hands and give up. It’s not a battle that we’re ever going to win, certainly not in a single lifetime. This work will never be done, because we have an ongoing relationship with the rest of the world — to our environment, to biodiversity.”

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