Center for Biological Diversity
BECAUSE LIFE IS GOOD

Protecting endangered species and wild places through
science, policy, education, and environmental law.

NEWS RELEASE: for immediate release, Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Desert Art Show Highlights Public Lands - Tour Hits Southern Arizona November 2 - 23
Photos by L.A.'s Andrew Harvey of Algodones Dunes, scenic wildlands turned 'Mad Max'

Contact: Daniel R. Patterson, Desert Ecologist 520.623.5252 x 306 or 520.906.2159
Andrew Harvey, Photographer 818.469.1185


TUCSON - Conservationists have teamed up with Los Angeles-based photographer Andrew Harvey to create a visually stunning and fascinating photographic exhibition exploring the Sonoran Desert's Algodones Sand Dunes. This traveling photographic exhibit, which moves to Tucson after popular stops in San Diego, Las Vegas and El Centro, is a dynamic combination of art and environmental education. The exhibit engages the public in a memorable visual experience while inviting them to learn more about the natural history of the Algodones Dunes, the importance of preserving the diversity of animals and plants that depend on this fragile ecosystem, and the looming threat to our environment posed by the increased use of off-road vehicles on public lands.

This is an important opportunity in Southern Arizona to view a photographic exhibit with breathtaking visual imagery that also raises public awareness of an immediate environmental threat to our southwestern public lands.

Your opportunity to explore this exhibit of a rare, extraordinarily beautiful, and biologically important piece of the American landscape is: Saturday, November 2 - November 23 at Bookman's (eastside) 6230 E. Speedway, 520.748.9555. Media and the public are invited to an opening reception Saturday, November 2, 2 - 4 pm. Exhibit hours are 9 am - 10 pm daily. Desert Ecologist Daniel Patterson and Biologist Dale Turner will speak at the opening reception on the environmental damage caused by off-road vehicles, and the importance of dunes conservation.

The Algodones Dunes Photographic Tour is important and timely, as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is updating their management plan for the dunes. President Bush's Interior Secretary Gale Norton is speeding toward opening protected areas now closed to off-road vehicles, gravely threatening this unique and fragile Sonoran Desert habitat. Turning off-road vehicles loose on these wildlands would make the dunes more dangerous and inaccessible for other visitors, worsen air pollution, overload law enforcement and medical services, and would further jeopardize endangered species that live only at the Algodones Dunes - surviving no other place on Earth.

View a slide show with Andrew Harvey's photographs of the Algodones Sand Dunes.

Learn more about the Algodones Sand Dunes.

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