Year-end appeals are so perfunctory in the not-for-profit, public benefit business that I’ll just “cut to the chase” first with our deep appreciation for the support and attention you have afforded us this last year. Our ask is simple – we really value your contribution to our work and again seek your support for another year of progress.
The other part of our appeal is a sharing with you of what we actually got done:
Looking back on this last year for me – more than many others, was a surprise. As we moved through it, with so many large obstacles and seemingly insurmountable challenges I felt like we were just treading water. But without really taking notice while we worked we ended up both “moving the needle” and leaving some real gems in our path.
The list turns out to be pretty long, so I’ll spare the details and just shine up some of the brighter stars.
One of the gems was the completion of our “Sounds of the Bay” installation at the Environmental Volunteers Interpretive Center in Palo Alto. I love these hands-on places, and Gwynn did such a sterling job marshalling together all of the resources and creating the interactive media for the exhibit. Visiting these sorts of facilities when I was a child nurtured my love of nature and my surroundings – making possible the opportunity I now have of expressing that love through our work at OCR.
Another golden egg was the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the biz crafting international metrics – and how to express acoustical terms and units when it comes to the ocean. While this sounds a bit dry, the utility is deep: In order for ocean protection to occur, scientists need to have clear terms that regulators can understand.
While NRDC and Earth Justice did most of the heavy lifting, probably the most publicly visible project in our campaign this year was our participation as a plaintiff in an historic ruling against NMFS and the US Navy on a Hawaii-Southern California testing and training range environmental over-reach – and their proposed “taking” of unprecedented numbers of marine mammals. The Navy had a lot to give away (which is why the case was brought to court) but everyone left the table reasonably satisfied with the settlement.
If you’d like to dig a bit deeper into the topic, and by way of which read a chronicle of our work, please visit our newsletters collection covering 2015.
Of course none of this would have been possible without the generous support of you, our community, and the family foundations that help keep the boiler room stoked and the lights on.
Thanks!
Yay, Humpbacks!