PORT ANGELES — The North Olympic Land Trust’s spotlight this year falls on a photographer and videographer accustomed to putting the spotlight on the beauty of the North Olympic Peninsula and documenting the community’s conservation efforts.
The land trust will honor the efforts of John Gussman, along with award-winning author Dr. Robert Michael Pyle, at the organization’s 14th annual Conservation Breakfast, slated for 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. April 22, online.
RSVP at northolympiclandtrust.org/event/conservation-breakfast-2.
Gussman will receive the Land Trust’s Out Standing in the Field Award, an honor recognizing “exemplary locals making big differences in our community for conservation.”
The award will go to Gussman for “his incredible images of the North Olympic Peninsula that are key to documenting and inspiring our community’s conservation efforts,” Land Trust representatives said.
The featured speaker is Pyle, an author, lecturer and lepidopterist who wrote “Watching Washington Butterflies” and “Handbook for Butterfly Watchers” — the first American books promoting butterfly watching alongside collecting.
His “Audubon Society Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America” was the first to cover the entire fauna, and it is still in print and widely used after 40 years, program organizers note.
Pyle is best known for founding the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in 1971; Xerces now has a staff of more than 50 and is the largest pollinator protection team in the world, Land Trust officials said.
