Awards

2007

December 13, 2007: The BayScience Foundation and ZipcodeZoo are pleased to announce that Lisa Couturier has been named Nature Writer of the Year for 2007 for her book The Hopes of Snakes and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape. Couturier writes with great power and sensitivity, pulling the reader in, teaching and thrilling and spinning a yarn like no other nature writer. Along the way, the words tumble together in new ways, and the charm and delight flows in a torrent. In the end, we are moved, we have learned, and we want more. We hope you will share our delight with this book, and share it with friends. This is our first year for giving this award. Lisa becomes our head judge for the 2008 competition. The author's site is here, her book may be purchased here.

September 27, 2007: Marcus Coltro and Carlos Henckes are named Photographers of the Month for October for their contribution of 32,462 incredible photos to ZipcodeZoo and their important work in carefully cataloging the world Mollusks.

May 1, 2007. Gilberto Quintanilla has been named ZipcodeZoo's Photographer of the Month for May, 2007. Gil has spent many hours promoting butterfly conservation and bringing butterflies to the public through presentations on butterfly identification, gardening with native plants, and raising caterpillars. He is an excellent macro photographer, as his photos on this site reveal. Sharply focused and showing important details, Gil's photos reflect both skill and patience with his cameras in the field.

April 20, 2007. Bill Bouton has been named named ZipcodeZoo's Photographer of the Month for April, 2007. Bill's love of nature comes through in every one of his photographs, many of rare or locally rare species, all of whom seem to be posing for him. His photographs are sharp and full of remarkable detail, and show the animal -- often a butterfly -- in action dining, mating, resting, or in flight as if no one was watching. Bill's photographic contribution to our site will provide users with a remarkable chance to view animals they would never otherwise see, and challenge professional nature photographers to try harder.

Our Awards program is activated only when something very, very worthy comes along.

2006

February 28, 2006. Borut Furlan has been named ZipcodeZoo's Photographer of the Month for March, 2006. Borut has spent much of his life underwater, bringing its citizens to our desktops in all their beauty. His photos seem to capture the adventure of being a fish, a nudibranch, a crab or shrimp. They capture the richness and diversity of that world, and especially capture its beauty. Borut's photos provide a good example of how we like to see living things: in their habitat, doing their thing, close, but untroubled by our presence. We are delighted that Borut has shared over 5,000 of his photos with us.

January 18, 2006. Paolo and Antidio Rossi have been named ZipcodeZoo's Photographer of the Month for January, 2006. ZipcodeZoo always prefers to show photos of an animal living, rather than dead, in its natural environment, rather than in a cage or tank, and to show a bit of the animal's typical environment in the photo. The Rossi's have achieved this and more: their photos manage to bring us close to some very timid critters, and see them in great detail. Their photos are as beautiful as their subjects, and bring honor to this web site, to their subjects, and to the world of photography. We are proud to feature their photos on this site.

December 29, 2005. The BayScience Foundation is pleased to Award http://www.wiscfish.org and its creator John Lyons with Website of the Month for January, 2006. John Lyons took over 4,500 photos of 175 Wisconsin fish, carefully including multiple side views, as well as top views, bottom views, front views, views of important aspects, and many identification photos to which he added helpful annotations. He assembled thorough information on every one of these fish, creating detailed physical descriptions and comparison tables showing how a fish differed from similar species. And he put it all into one amazing web site, http://www.wiscfish.org. The site even offers a free CD to help with fish identification. We are grateful for the support of this site by the University of Wisconsin, Center for Limnology, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant.

December 16, 2005: Giff Beaton has been named ZipcodeZoo's Photographer of the Month for December, 2005. This award was made for the quality of his photo contributions, his capable and careful identification of each species. Most impressive are his photos of those fabulous flying machines - birds and insects. Visit Giff's site at GiffBeaton.com