NANPA Environmental Impact Award

The North American Nature Photography Association recently awarded me the NANPA Environmental Impact Award. I can’t express enough how grateful I am for this honor. I think it best to let Frank Gallagher of NANPA explain what this award is all about.

Criteria For Award

To win the Environmental Impact Award, the photographer’s work must be of “exceedingly high quality” and include a “component that creates and distributes high-quality educational material to enhance public awareness, including material created to influence decision makers.” That certainly describes Cox’s photography and storytelling for Polar Bears International and as director of the Arctic Documentary Project. As NANPA Awards Committee chair, Dr. Paul Brooke, said, Cox “has led the charge to understand the crisis thereby incorporating organizations and scientists/biologists in the field. The committee recognizes his remarkable vision and passion for nature photography. He also donates many of his images to the organizations he works with to ensure that the photographs are put to great use.”

The North American Nature Photography Association’s (NANPA) Environmental Impact Award honors a “photographic project addressing an important and urgent regional or global environmental problem.” The 2023 Environmental Impact Award goes to Daniel J. Cox. He is no stranger to NANPA, having previously received NANPA’s Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year Award in 2013 and was named a NANPA Fellow in 2021.

Going Forward

Thank you, NANPA, for not just this honor but for being a leader in nature photography in the United States. Many of you might not know this, but NANPA is open to ANYONE interested in nature and photography. You don’t have to be a professional to join.

As we all know, there are lots of specialized groups out there. We have Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, The Yellowstone Coalition, and many others. Until NANPA, no group was fully dedicated to the world of nature and the folks who produced photos of it. NANPA is a great organization and one that still has lots of room for growth. I’m hopeful that as time goes on, I can be a small part of helping make growth happen.

If you love the outdoors and have an equal passion for photography, you should join NANPA. Every two years, they put on a fabulous get-together they call the Summit. It’s open to all NANPA members, and it brings amateurs and professionals alike under one umbrella. Keep their webpage bookmarked to later check on the time and date of the next summit.