Tampa Bay Wildlife Refuges Featured Artist

It’s an incredible honor and cherished opportunity to be the first featured wildlife artist for the Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges. It’s a dream come true: combining my love for nature and photography and my desire to volunteer and connect with a community helping to protect our environment.

This has been in the works for a while, but the official announcement didn’t come until this week: I have just been named the first featured wildlife artist for the Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges! So now I can finally reveal my excitement and share the first few photos from my first outings with “the friends”.

First off: THANK YOU to Joe Porter, Patrick Mundus for making this possible and showing me the refuges. And thank you to all the volunteers and members who have been doing their part in preserving these habitats!

Featured Wildlife Artist Program

“The Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges Featured Wildlife Artist Program celebrates local wildlife artists whose work brings visibility to the beauty and ecological value of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges.” – FTBNWR

Getting this guided access to observe and capture in photo our native and migrating birds in their protected natural habitat fulfills my personal creative desire to connect with the wildlife in the moment I take the photo and freeze time and space and nothing else matters but the magic of feeling this close to an animal through my lens – which I get to relive and share with others through the digital and printed photo later.

And it’s that sharing of the images that becomes the most important aspect of my work: to reach you and others with the birds’ uplifting beauty. I hope you will join us in volunteering, donating, advocating or whatever is your method to help us protect the habitats, plants, and wildlife.

I believe that coming together as a community to help protect our environment helps not just the nature we want to protect, but empowers us as individuals and strengthens our bonds to one another and to our land (and sea).

Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges

The Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges are natural gems just offshore the metropolitan Tampa-St. Petersburg. They feature gorgeous white beaches, lush mangroves, a historic fort and sanctuaries for birds, wildlife and native plants.

The Refuges include the larger Egmont Key near the mouth of Tampa Bay on the Gulf and a collection of mostly mangrove islands grouped as The Pinellas Refuges inside the Bay between Fort DeSoto and the Skyway Bridge. Sadly, the third specific Refuge, Passage Key, which was established by Roosevelt in 1905, has been just about wiped out by Hurricane Helene last year.

I am so proud to be able to advocate on behalf of Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges in an official capacity. They, or shall I say now WE are an all-volunteer organization.

Our mission is to promote conservation, awareness, and appreciation of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges, and to assist the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with their mission for those Refuges.

This gets accomplished through outreach, education, advocacy, and volunteering to protect the nesting and resting wading birds, seabirds, and other wildlife on the refuges as well as protecting the habitat they need to thrive.

Find out more: https://tampabayrefuges.org
Instagram: friendsoftampabaynwr
Facebook: FriendsofTampaBayNWR

Watch the award-winning documentary film Where Birds Can Be Birds – The Remarkable Refuges of Tampa Bay

Please join us and become a member of the Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges today.

The photos you see here are just from my first two outings to a few of the islands, including Egmont. This is just the beginning. I’ll be posting a lot more in the weeks and months to come. And I can’t wait to get back out there.

But first: Board President Patrick Mundus will be speaking at St. Pete Nerd Nite tonight!