Conservation Note
Tristan Reid: tattoos, and a walk across Turkey
The Inked Naturalist on drawing attention to Turkey's threatened biodiversity: first with bird tattoos, then with a plan to hike thousands of kilometres.
Tristan Reid became known as the Inked Naturalist after having a series of bird tattoos worked onto both arms: a deliberate fundraising and awareness device rather than a personal decision that happened to attract attention.
The cause was Turkey’s biodiversity, and specifically the country’s rivers. Turkey was in the middle of an enormous dam and hydroelectric programme, with schemes numbering in the thousands and river systems totalling many thousands of kilometres facing permanent alteration, and Doğa Derneği, the BirdLife International partner there, was the organisation the fundraising supported.
This conversation covered the second stage of the project: a plan to walk thousands of kilometres around Turkey, on foot, to draw further attention to the same issue.
The logic behind both is the same and worth naming. A dam programme is difficult to campaign against because it is diffuse, technical and spread across a country, with no single decision to oppose. Something visibly strange (permanent tattoos, or a very long walk) gives journalists a reason to write about a subject that otherwise offers them nothing.