Project Remote
This is an old video for our 2018 campaign but we think it still tells our story and we are still trying to raise funds for our new Citizen Science endeavor and to finish Project Remote!
Roads and cities blanket the American landscape so densely that it is almost impossible for a wilderness seeker in this generation to get truly remote from the sights and sounds of human development...anywhere. The health of all U.S. ecosystems continues to degrade. The conservation movement appears to be waning in America. If true, this is tragic and absolutely unacceptable. We are a husband-wife team of conservation biologists working every day to do something--anything--to combat this. One day (9 years ago!?!), it occurred to us that, using modern GIS computer software, we might be able to determine an exact location in every state that was the farthest possible from roads and cities. And when we realized that--there was a calling from deep inside of us--we simply had to journey to those locations and see them. But just seeing them wasn't enough. And so we developed a unique mission to define remoteness scientifically, precisely calculate the remotest location in each of the 50 United States, and mount expeditions into each state’s ‘Remote Spot’ to document and share what we observe. In so doing, we generate new knowledge about ecological and physical conditions in these special, previously unknown, places. We call this endeavor: Project Remote. Early on, we realized that we could use Project Remote as a platform to increase nationwide awareness about the importance of preserving our remaining roadless wildlands. Such an undertaking was challenging enough, but there was just one other wrinkle...our baby girl, Skyla, had just arrived! What would we do with a baby while journeying into the wilderness 50 times??? The answer seemed clear. Take her with us.
After documenting 35 state Remote Spots, Skyla has literally grown up going on expedition after expedition. It turns out that watching her grow and learn in the outdoors has been the greatest fulfillment of Project Remote. We hope to ignite in people--especially families--a greater appreciation of what's left of our magnificent wild country. It shocks us that you can't get but just a little over two miles from a road anywhere within SEVEN American states. And the rest are not very impressively remote. We must at all cost document what's left, keep the road system in check, and work together to save the country's remaining wildlands between the roads, starting with public lands: the National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Forests, Bureau of Land Management, and other lands within which many state Remote Spots are found.
We've been at this for 10 years now. Even though we travel frugally, camping nearly the whole time while out, the cost of gear and time spent away and calculating the Spots adds up to beyond our financial capability. We started this campaign to fund our Georgia, Texas, and Arizona expeditions. We have completed Georgia and Texas! We've kept this active because now it's 2019 and we are heading to Utah and Kansas this year.
Project Remote has come so far only because of donations from people like you. You, like us, desire to know exactly what's left--and save it! Please continue to help in any way you can. It is for you that we do this. We thank you so very much.
We share our videos, photos, and data on our website so everyone has access to the sights and sounds of what is left between the roads.
We have documented 40 states so far, we only have 10 more to go. What we've learned:
-You can't get more than 7 miles from a road in over half the states in our country
-Only 7 of the 40 Remote Spots we have documented were greater than 10 miles from a road
-At all but 4 Remote Spots we were able to detect human presence during a 15 minute Remote Spot Assessment
-The good news? All but 4 of these 40 Remote Spots are on public land - that means we have a say in whether they stay that way!
Every donation receives a Project Remote sticker!
