Mike was invited to speak at the Harbour Ridge Birding Society’s opening dinner for their 2019/2020 season in West Palm Beach, Florida.
South Platte Forum Keynote Speaker
The South Platte Forum was initiated in 1989 to provide an avenue for a timely, multi-disciplinary exchange of information and ideas important to resource management in the South Platte River Basin. Mike was the closing Keynote speaker at this event.
Orthopaedic Surgery UNMC 50th Anniversary
The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation marked the residency program’s 50th anniversary in 2019 with an October celebration. Mike was asked to be the featured speaker at this event.
Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival
This week-long event filled with tours, workshops, presentations, and film, culminates in a community-wide celebration of the Greater Yellowstone region’s exceptional wildlife, irreplaceable natural resources, and the fall migration of the Sandhill Crane on the Driggs City Center Plaza. The festival supports the efforts of the Greater Yellowstone Sandhill Crane Initiative which works to protect crucial habitat and resources for the largest staging population of Sandhill Cranes in the Greater Yellowstone and the myriad of iconic species that call the region home. For more information and to sign up for a tour or workshop, visit www.tetonlandtrust.org
Grand Opening: Headwaters Center
Located along the Fraser River on the edge of Winter Park, Headwaters Center is Colorado’s first on-the-water, off-the-power-grid gathering place for celebration, recreation and education. Multi-dimensional and multi-faceted, Headwaters Center offers Grand County’s residents and visitors alike unique spaces to gather, grow, and grasp our greatest water issues. In partnership with the Headwaters Center, Platte Basin Timelapse has three time-lapse cameras that are incorporated in the exhibit.
Exhibition Ending: A River Runs Through It
A River Runs Through It exhibition will be ending on August 4, 2019. This exhibition is held at Kearney, Nebraska’s Museum of Modern Art (MONA). Platte Basin Timelapse is featured in this exhibition along with many other talented Nebraska artist. The above images is on display at the museum along with several other multimedia pieces produced by the PBT team. Be sure to check it out before it ends!
Andersen Lecturer at UNMC
Mike was the 8th annual Andersen Lecturer at UNMC in Omaha, NE on June 7th, 2019. Mike presented a Keynote titled, “Finding Home in Flyover Country”.
Great Plains Exhibition at Wildcat Hills Nature Center
Mike’s Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild Exhibition will be at the Wildcat Hills Nature Center in western Nebraska for the summer. Mike will be speaking at the opening reception on the evening of June 27th.
Haines Branch Prairie Corridor project: An opportunity to leave a legacy
Mike, the Prairie Corridor Cabinet leader, former mayor Chris Beutler, and Maggie Stuckey, executive director of Lincoln Parks Foundation were featured on the cover of Lincoln’s L Magazine. The article discusses the Haines Branch Prairie Corridor project. Read the article in the link provided below.
Premiere of "Time and the River"
Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music and the Glenn Korff School of Music joined forces in a concert to present the world premiere of “Time and the River.” Composed by Kurt Knecht (UNL DMA 2009), the work is inspired by and incorporates the images from the Platte Basin Timelapse project of Michael Forsberg and Michael Farrell. The concert was held on April 27th, 2019.
To learn more about the show visit: https://events.unl.edu/2019/04/27/132092/
Exhibition: River Runs Through It
From February-August 2019 the A River Runs Through It exhibition will be at Kearney, Nebraska’s Museum of Modern Art (MONA). Platte Basin Timelapse is featured in this exhibition along with many other talented Nebraska artist. The above images is on display at the museum along with several other multimedia pieces produced by the PBT team.
Follow the Water Documentary on PBS National
On Earth Day 2019 Follow the Water aired nationally on PBS.
In this 60-minute documentary, Mike Forsberg and Pete Stegen set off on a 55-day traverse across the Platte River Basin. They travel more than 1,300 miles-on bike, on foot and in a canoe--to trace the journey of Nebraska's Platte River from snowmelt in the mountains of Wyoming to where it finally flows into the Missouri.
Click the link below to watch the documentary.
CoJMC pop-up class: Platte River Crane Experience
Mike Forsberg and Mike Farrell taught a pop-up class held through the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications called, Platte River Crane Experience. The class was held at the Crane Trust Nature & Visitor Center on March 8-9, 2019. Forsberg and Farrell took the students into a crane blind in the morning and evening, a week later the students presented the projects they put together from their experience.
Click the link below to listen to the podcast and watch the short video about the class.
https://www.unl.edu/podcasts/following-cranes-journalism-pop-class/
Nebraska Agro-Tourism Conference
Mike was a Keynote speaker with rancher Sarah Sortum at the Nebraska Agro-Tourism Conference on February 28, 2019 in Ord, Nebraska.
Audience: Anyone wanting to start or grow a successful agri/eco tourism business. Typical attendees include farmers, ranchers, outfitters, vineyard operators, u-pick operators, managers of eco-tourism attractions, chamber/tourism directors, and more.
Story: A Trout with Feathers
In 2015, I began a quest to document the life of North America’s only aquatic songbird - the American dipper. I did it in my home watershed, the Platte River Basin, in its upper reaches in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming. Now four years later, because time never stops and stories are never really finished as much as they are taken away from you, here’s an essay with a portfolio of images, along with a short documentary film produced by my colleague Mariah Lundgren with Platte Basin Timelapse - PBT for short.
PBT was created in 2011. It is dedicated to telling the stories of a watershed in motion, and to do so takes a village. One small part of my effort is a series of natural history-based stories that will roll out over this next year - pieces I have been chipping away at for years. Trumpeter swans in the Nebraska Sandhills are next, then bighorn sheep in the Wildcat Hills, and then the role of beaver as hubs of biodiversity along the Platte River, and so on.
These indelible creatures are the wildlife among us in a surprisingly rich watershed in the heart of the Great Plains. They stand as symbols for ecosystem health, they are survivors whose stories help shine a light on conservation challenges past, present and future, and they deserve to exist in this landscape just like we do, beyond any utilitarian purpose, for their intrinsic beauty and for their own sake.
I hope you enjoy the dippers at least half as much as I have getting to know them. It has been a privilege to glimpse below the surface into their remarkable watery world. They are a trout with feathers...
Click the links below to read the full story and watch the short documentary film
Story: A Trout with Feathers
FILM: A Trout with feathers
Great Plains Nature Photographers Annual Meeting
Mike was be the featured speaker for the Great Plains Nature Photographers 2018 annual meeting at the McPherson Opera House. The Great Plains Nature Photographers organization has been in existence for roughly 30 years. Through photography, the organization has been shining a light on prairies and plains and America’s lingering wild.
Powder River Basin Resource Council's 46th Annual Meeting
Mike was the Keynote speaker at the Powder River Basin Resource Council’s 46th Annual Meeting. Mike’s Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild Exhibition will be at the Sheridan Public Library during the month of November.
2018 Watershed Symposium
Mike, along side with members of the Platte Basin Timelapse project, and Chris Johns of National Geographic Society, presented a pre-conference storytelling workshop at the 2018 Watershed Symposium in Whitefish, Montana in partnership with National Geographic and the University of Nebraska.
Land and Livelihoods Conference
From September 24-26, the Western Landowner Alliance held the Land and Livelihoods Conference in Billings, Montana. Mike, and Sandhills Rancher, Sarah Sortum were able to present about the Platte Basin Timelapse project and what it means to live in the Nebraska Sandhills. For more information about the conference, visit their website: http://wlameeting.org/
The Switzer and Sortum children looking through telescopes on the Switzer Ranch. (Mike Forsberg)
Summit Workshop 2018
It was another very successful year at the Summit’s Nature & Wildlife Workshop in Jackson, Wyoming. Thank you to all of the participants, staff, and faculty for making this possible. See you next year.
The Nature and Wildlife Workshop, also called Photography at the Summit, is the longest-running workshop in the Summit Series. It brings together a faculty of top international photographers and editors — many from National Geographic — and combines it with the beautiful setting of the Grand Tetons. Our faculty offers a wide-variety of photography knowledge, so a student may go shoot in the morning with an expert nature photographer, review their work in the afternoon with a professional editor, then go over their editing process with a tech expert.