A recent photo spread in National Geographic Magazine documented efforts to protect the jade palm pit viper, an endangered venomous snake that inhabits the cloud forests of eastern Guatemala and western Honduras.
The vipers - their scales an otherworldly emerald green with black and turquoise accents - pop off the magazine's glossy pages, as does the lush beauty of the cloud forests, which are severely threatened by encroaching coffee plantations.
The photographer, Jack Devlin '22, studied visual storytelling at Yale. In shooting the spread, he twice visited a mountaintop nature preserve in Honduras managed by HonduHerp, a nonprofit organization founded by his friend and Yale classmate Tasman Ezra '22.
"It is the most beautiful forest I've seen," Devlin said. "Every inch is covered by something green."
Devlin and Ezra met while students in "Plant Diversity and Systematics," a course taught by Erika Edwards, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology that they took during the fall of their senior year. During a fieldtrip to Horse Island, a research and teaching site in Long Island Sound managed by Yale Peabody Museum, the two discovered that they shared an enthusiasm for photography. More specifically, they found they had a mutual interest in photographing amphibians and reptiles.
