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December 2010 issue	Table of Contents Attawapiskat First Nation International Space Station Endangered icons Is that the right whale? Animal reactions Curling community Native foods The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte In habitat Book Reviews Interview with Jerry Kobalenko ----------------------------------------------- Past issues

The 38-year-old Swiss native first picked up a camera in 1997, moved to Alberta in 2003 and quickly made his mark. His photograph of the Athabasca River in Jasper National Park won the “Canadian parks” category in the 2005 edition of Canadian Geographic’s annual photo contest. His images from western and northern Canada, the Grand Canyon, the Swiss Alps and the Galapagos Islands have appeared in magazines, books and galleries in North America and Europe. “I often try to photograph animals by showcasing the habitat they live in,” says Dettling. “Most of my photographs are moments of harmony, beauty and powerful storytelling.”

Just two years after he took the photographs of the bear-versus-wolves showdown, none of the animals remained in their home territory. Most of them had died under the wheels of cars or trains. Some of the wolves had dispersed and their fate is unknown. “The day the bear was killed by a train in the park, my morale hit rock bottom,” says Dettling. “I swore I would do everything in my power to bring change to the way our society values the natural world, starting with our Rocky Mountain parks.”

One result is The Will of the Land, Dettling’s latest book (published by Rocky Mountain Books in October), which presents his most poignant wildlife and landscape images of Banff ’s Bow River valley and depicts the impacts of tourism, commercial development and intrusive transportation routes in our oldest national park. In it, Dettling also tells the story of a tagged female grizzly bear. He had photographed her mating with a male in 2005 and 2008; another male showed up in 2008 and forced the first into exile. She accepted her new suitor and started playing and wrestling with him, until she suddenly placed a paw on his shoulder and looked deep into his eyes. “He looked back at her for a while,” says Dettling, “then turned toward me with what looked, to me, like a massive grin.”

Dettling’s career trajectory is much like that of our other featured photographers — Ian McAllister, Mike Grandmaison, Patrice Halley, Scott Linstead, Fritz Mueller, Chris Colbourne, John Sylvester, John E. Marriott — whose photos and first-person stories behind them comprise our cover pictorial. Passionate about making breathtaking images of the land and its wild inhabitants and dedicated to preserving them from myriad pressures, these intrepid fellows (it’s an undeniably male-dominated craft) endure solitude and cold and wet and deer flies and cramped legs and life-threatening encounters to capture those iconic, unforgettable moments that end up as part of our collective imagination.

Anyone who has tried to photograph any animal in the wild, whether a chipmunk or a cougar, will also appreciate the winning wildlife photo contest images in this issue. Now in its third year, this contest offers a venue for the rest of us, who may have just enough specialized gear, technical skill, knowledge of animal behaviour, stamina, patience and plain old good luck to snap a judge-impressing photo. And now the winning entries from our first two wildlife photo contests, as well as those from the wildlife category of past annual photo contests, have been collected in “Best Wildlife Pictures 2011,” a special edition that’s on sale at newsstands right now.

— Eric Harris

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