Reimagine Place
For thousands of years, Native peoples admired and appreciated the piñon tree as a “Tree of Life”, one that provides abundant resource for wildlife and humans alike.
Piñon-juniper woodlands continue to dominate much of the American west, and yet few people today recognize their incredible beauty, diversity, and value. Our view and relationship to these woodlands impacts the habitat Pinyon Jays and many other birds call home. For decades our we allowed this woodland to be chained, torn out, removed as “weed trees” while prioritizing other goals.
This project asks audiences to look again with new eyes at the woodland and their relationship to it so that all creatures large and small may thrive in it. By starting to pay attention and deepening our knowledge of this the piñon-juniper ecosystem, we can once again find balance and our right relationship with the beauty and bounty of this rugged, hardy landscape.
Restoring Sense of Place
Through multimedia storytelling, Piñon Country brings to light the interdependence of life in the Piñon-Juniper Woodland. The project highlights the intimate lives of Pinyon Jays as the engineers of this ecosystem, the challenges and threats they face in their habitat, and conservation solutions being implemented across the intermountain west. We produce a range of visual media and deliverables to reach different audiences.
Rather than seeing a sea of green shrubs, audiences will begin to recognize the unique plants, birds, wildlife, and resources of this one-of-a-kind place and become stewards of this essential landscape. The audience will learn about opportunities to help the Pinyon Jays and their woodland home thrive once again through simple actions in their backyards to long-term volunteering and funding.
Raising Awareness
Inspiring the empathy and action to protect and reforest piñon woodlands. Piñon-juniper woodlands and related habitat are among the least-studied forest types. Our knowledge is rapidly developing about how this landscape functions. We need land management decisions based on this new science to inform woodland thinning and removal, and invite policy changes in land management and energy development supported by our growing understanding of what Pinyon Jays need to thrive on this landscape.
Inspiring Action
This project continues to document life in the piñon-juniper landscape. The process involves collaborating with and sharing the stories of the stewards of Piñon Country: the landowners, managers, conservation groups, birders, Native peoples, researchers and other individuals working to preserve a functioning landscape.
Stories of Stewardship
SUPPORTERS
