Jeff Opperman

#WaterYear 27 Teddy Roosevelt, born on this day in 1858. Among many notable conservation accomplishments he helped establish the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. Photo: Sahalie Falls, McKenzie River, Willamette NF (OR) @usdagov.bsky.social @forestservice.bsky.social

Roosevelt recognized that H2O was one of key resources those forests provided, noting “A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but…at the same time a reservoir of water.”

#WaterYear 26 Luca & I near Horseshoe Bend of Colorado R. in 2009. More than 300 river miles downstream is Hoover Dam. On this day in 1936, its hydropower turbines first generated electricity. At 2 GW, it was the biggest hydropower dam in world until 1948; generation now dropping due to megadrought

#WaterYear 25 Wren and her boyfriend (visiting from Brooklyn) above an unnamed tributary to Silver Creek in West Woods Park in Geauga County (OH). We’ve had such a dry October that the waterfall isn’t flowing and the leaves cover the pool at its bottom.

#WaterYear 24 Happy International Freshwater Dolphin Day! (or World River Dolphin Day)! I took these photos of Irrawaddy Dolphins in the Mekong in 2013 on a trip down the river with my family. See my article in the New York Times about these extraordinary dolphins and that remarkable trip (next)

#WaterYear 21 365 seems like a good number for a year-long project, and so…English "Writer-gardener" John Evelyn was born 365 years ago on this day (in 1661). To fight pollution he encouraged tree planting & large city parks - actions still vitally important today...

#WaterYear 20 Jay "Ding" Darling was born 150 yrs ago this week. He won 2 Pulitzers for his political cartoons and was a leader in the early conservation movement, including a founder of @nwf.org Photo: great egret in the FLA Panther NWR @usfwshistory.bsky.social @deptfishwildlife.bsky.social

#WaterYear 16 On #WorldFoodDay let's remember that nearly 1/3 of all food in world comes from rivers: their water, nutrients, sediment or habitat. See WWF's fascinating microsite Rivers of Food (link in next post). Photo is a market in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

#WaterYear 15 Today is “Imagine a World Without Water” Day. Most of my photos for WaterYear show scenic rivers, flowing through a verdant landscape. The photo below is also a river, one in Kenya with a dry riverbed; there's water, but you just can't see it. @uswateralliance.bsky.social

#WaterYear 15b. The photo above was cropped from this one, and shows people accessing sub-surface water by digging a scoop hole. The amount of labor people have to expend to get to that “invisible” water is immense and exhausting and precludes so many other activities.

#WaterYear 14 Last month TNC and many partners released the Amazon Forgotten Fishes report (link in following note) Photo: me at age of 24 hand line fishing for wolf fish in Bolivian Amazon; a trib to a trib of the Beni, which is trib to Madre Dios which is trib to the Amazon

More photos from the 1995 field work, and fishing, in the Beni Biosphere Reserve

#WaterYear 13 Leaves starting to turn along the Chagrin River (Chagrin Falls, OH)

#WaterYear 9 The Living Planet Report shows monitored vertebrate populations have declined by 73% on average since 1970. Monitored freshwater populations have dropped by an average of 85%, largest decline of any species group. Photo is of a gharial swimming in the Babai River of Nepal.

#WaterYear 8 Hope is the thing with feathers…(Emily Dickinson) Today, World Wildlife Fund released the Living Planet Report 2026: the Science of Hope. Photo: little Wren as a ruby-slippered water bird taking flight from the Chagrin River (sometime around 2008)

And while the report does show the global abundance of wildlife has declined dramatically since 1970, the signs of hope abound Hope is not wishful thinking, it’s the ability to put goals into action through effective strategies The Science of Hope...the signs of hope livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/

#WaterYear 7 Happy birthday to Yo-Yo Ma! (born this day in 1955) He has several beautiful recordings that celebrate rivers or water, including “The Falls” (an Ennio Morricone composition from “The Mission.”). Photo is Catarata San Fernando in Costa Rica. See next for water theme Yo-Yo Ma playlist

#WaterYear 1 Happy New (Water) Year! Here in U.S., the new Water Year kicks off on Oct 1. To mark this moment, I’m starting a photo diary, each day posting one of my photos w/ a water theme along with a brief description of why that theme is important to people; see below for link to essay & song..

Sometimes these themes will be big – meaningful at a planetary scale, with relevance to hundreds of millions—or even billions—of people. Sometimes they will be meaningful at the scale of a family (essay here, theme song and music video in next post) substack.com/home/post/p-...