Why choose Yellowstone Park Foundation for my current program?

If you are not in the know, which I believe many people are not, I am running a program where I will donate 35% of my direct sales from my website or through my Etsy site to the Yellowstone Park Foundation to help them with their efforts to preserve and improve that wonderful park!

First, a little background as I have a policy that 20% of my sales of prints from images I took in a national park will be donated back to that park.  I cam to this decision while I was at Yellowstone National Park in Aug 2011. My time there was fantastic and it was also life changing. Douglas Adams can sum up my experience there nicely, "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be" The brief skinny on this is simple, I went there with 3 other people. Our first day at Yellowstone they informed me they were leaving due to somethings that occurred. The details aren't important, but the ending is.  Yes, was furious at first, it wasn't what my plans were, I wouldn't be able to get the shots I had planned/needed at Glacier National Park, etc.  However, as I was hiking down to the Lower Falls, expecting the others to follow as the one with me was going to get to the other two, I had that time alone to think and look at what occurred and what I was going to do and I decided to stay in Yellowstone a few more days.

During those next three days I hiked around the west side of the park.  Saw some really gorgeous water falls and raging waters.  The hot springs would just take my breath away and I realized that with all this beauty being preserved, knowing our countries economic woes, that someone needed to do something.  The park doesn't require photographers to pay them anything extra if they aren't being paid to be there and aren't interfering with other visitors experiences.  I wanted to give something back, in exchange, with the park for the work they do so I can visit and came up with the plan of donating the 20%.

YPF is the official funding partner for Yellowstone National Park.  They helped to raise the money for the new visitor center at Old Faithful.  They have been funding a tracking program for the wolves in the park since they were formed in 1996. In this program they outfit the wolves with either a radio or GPS collar to track movements and to study their habits. With all that they do, and my decision about helping our parks while in Yellowstone, I decided to try and help them during this Christmas/Holiday season. This lead to my Gift of Preservation program.