Invisible: The Ohlone Tiger Beetle
Halie Cook | CA, United States
Photographer: Halie Cook
Exhibit Title: Invisible: The Ohlone Tiger Beetle
Location: CA, United States
Most people who hike and bike the coastal prairies of Santa Cruz County have no idea they're sharing the trail with one of California's most endangered species. The Ohlone Tiger Beetle, a brilliant green, half-inch predator, has been federally listed under the ESA since 2001, and right now its fate is being decided in real time by the same mountain bikers, hikers, and ranchers who use the trails every day.
The species depends on human disturbance to survive. Mountain biking, grazing, and foot traffic maintain the bare soil patches where it hunts. Remove that disturbance, and the vegetation closes in. But speed through too fast, and the beetles get crushed by tires. The community is both essential to this ecosystem and one of its greatest threats.
Colleen Smith, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has been building a species assessment since 2024, and her preliminary findings are stark: without further protections, the beetle's future is in jeopardy.
We often view conservation as a practice of keeping humans out, but the Ohlone Tiger Beetle tells a different story. This brilliant green predator is an 'invisible inhabitant' of the Santa Cruz coastline, sharing its world with thousands of weekend warriors who are largely unaware of its existence.
Using a lens informed by over a decade of investigative storytelling, I sought to capture the fragility of this relationship. By shadowing the biologists who have been doing surveys for years, I’ve documented the intimate, microscopic reality of a beetle whose fate is currently being decided by the macro-movements of a community. These photographs serve as a witness to the friction of the trail, where human impact is simultaneously the beetle's greatest threat and its only hope for a home.
haliecookphoto@gmail.com
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