Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does." —Anthropologist Margaret Mead


Often, artists can see  bigger pictures long before the rest of society does.  In Julia Rogers' painting of Tanzania's Serengeti Plain, below—click on the work to make it larger—behold the magic of the greatest wildlife migration corridor still remaining on Earth. 

As you meditate on the picture, imagine 1.3 million wildebeest, 700,000 zebra, rhinocerous, elephant, giraffe and several varieties of antelope passing seasonally across this table of land interacting with healthy prides of lion, leopard and cheetah, among dozens of other major mammalian and bird species. 



Will Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete be remembered as a leader who protected or destroyed the fragile Serengeti ecosystem?

It is a scene that has existed since time immemorial and indeed just across the horizon is the place, as the achaeological record shows, where our species, walking upright, first began to differentiate itself from the Great Apes.  This remarkable setting, encompassed by Serengeti National Park and Masai Mara National Reserve—two of the premier crown jewel nature preserves on the planet—boastfully gives Tanzania a priceless treasure found nowhere else.

Now, take a glance at Rogers' painting again.  Pretend that it's now the year 2030 with a hypothetical highway slicing through the view carrying more than a million trucks and cars annually. Years earlier, after the highway opened in...