The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers approximately64,000 square miles (164,000 km2) and comprises one of the most important estuaries in the North Atlantic. With rapid development along its shores destroying vast swaths of wetlands and buffering forest, and polluted with a steady increase in agrochemical runoff from the 1950s on, this once thriving estuarine ecosystem was headed toward collapse.

A forty-year campaign by The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other stakeholders has gradually turned the tide, with current political will at the point of tipping toward long-term restoration and protection of the Bay. The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Act (H.R. 3852/S. 1816) was introduced to both chambers of the United States Congress last October, on its way to mark-up at the end of this year. These two bills seek to amend the Federal Clean Water Act (Section 117) to ensure that the six states of the Bay watershed, plus the District of Columbia, develop and implement detailed plans to reduce pollution sufficiently to achieve Bay-wide pollution reduction targets for nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment by 2025.

The Chesapeake Bay RAVE, a project of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), is a collaborative effort to highlight the importance of this legislation through photographs, video, and stories from across the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.  iLCP and CBF will use this collected document of the issues facing the Bay to produce an action exhibit of thirty photographs to premiere in September 2010 on Capitol Hill, and to provide the compelling visual media necessary to facilitate news coverage of the urgency of the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Act to speed the restoration of the Bay’s health and protect it over the long term. The expedition team coordinates the efforts of iLCP photographers from across North America, including several who live within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

iLCP Photographers: 

Annie Griffiths
Garth Lenz
Cristina Mittermeier
Miguel Angel de la Cueva

Octavio Aburto
Morgan Heim
Krista Schlyer

Guest Photographers: 

Justin Black, iLCP Executive Director

Karine Aigner, iLCP Affiliate

 Chesapeake RAVE Partners: