A photographic exhibit based on The Seattle Times story about a grand
experiment to tear down two dams and return an Olympic wilderness to its
former glory. Photographer Steve Ringman who worked with Lynda Mapes, a reporter for The Seattle Times, documented the work on the Elwha in photos and video.
It’s the largest dam-removal project in North America and a second chance for the Elwha River valley, where dams have blocked salmon runs for more than a century. Two dams on the river are being taken out in a $325 million grand experiment that’s one of the most ambitious ecological restoration efforts in the U.S. Come along as we explore a largely unspoiled place that offers one of the best chances for restoration anywhere.
Walk through the unprecedented dam removal and current restoration effort on display at the Seattle Aquarium through September 2012.
Steve Ringman, Photographer
Steve Ringman is a general assignment photographer for The Seattle Times. He shoots everything from sports to features but his passion and personal focus is on stories involving environmental issues including climate change, fisheries and forestry. He has covered major stories including the Sandinista-Contra war and aging in America. He has traveled to the Arctic covering climate change, and Africa covering the efforts to eradicate malaria. He covered the Vancouver Olympics, shooting Alpine events, focusing on local athletes and their drive for the gold. His images of a young Steve Jobs and the devastation of the Loma Linda earthquake have become iconic.
A graduate of Brooks Institute of Photography, Ringman was twice named national Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association. Most recently he was a co-winner of the 2009 Knight Foundation’s Risser Award for Environmental reporting with coverage on landslides caused by over logging on steep slopes causing environmental damage.
Lynda V. Mapes, Reporter
Lynda Mapes is a reporter at The Seattle Times covering nature and natural history, environmental news and Indian tribes. She most recently completed a special report for The Times on the Elwha River restoration effort and is at work on a book about the Elwha for publication by The Seattle Times and the Mountaineers Books, due out in 2013. She is also the author of the book Breaking Ground, published by the University of Washington Press in 2009, about the inadvertent discovery by the state of Washington in 2003 of an ancient Indian village on the Port Angeles waterfront. A recipient of numerous regional and national awards for her work, she has been a daily newspaper reporter since 1984.