Have Stethoscope – and Camera – Will Travel

Dr. Rand Rudland (NVSS 1964, UBC 1978) has travelled across both polar circles as a ship’s physician aboard small ecotour ships; the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the World Discoverer (including South Georgia, the Falkland Islands and South Sandwich Islands) and the Arctic Circle to Wrangel Island aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov. Other tours have offered visits to the Aleutian Islands of Russia and Alaska, the numerous islands of Japan, Guam, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands & Papua New Guinea. Pacific subantarctic islands including the Antipodes, Macquarie, Campbell, Chatham, Bounty, Snares and Auckland Islands aboard the Spirit of Enderby offered visits to locations rarely ever seen by naturalists and birders. In between he has practised family medicine and GP-surgery based in Sechelt on BC’s Sunshine Coast for over 35 years. During some of his “time off” he worked with the Northern Medical Unit of the University of Manitoba providing fly-in medical services to many remote Inuit communities across the central and eastern Arctic and the shores of Hudson Bay, all the while taking advantage of the locations for his photographic pursuits.

But was it really work? Well sometimes it was a bit hair-raising for sure, but for the majority of the ecotour travel time he was able to put his camera to good use photographing both common and rare species – birds, mammals, reptiles, insects etc. all were photographic fodder. Beyond the ship tours, Rand has photographed nature in Australia, Borneo, Burma, Bhutan, India, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Lesotho, and a few others. He has led natural history tours to Vancouver Island, Central and South America and the Canadian Arctic, as well as being a head boatman for 12 summers white-water rafting in BC and the Canadian Arctic with White Water Adventures and Canadian River Expeditions.

Publications include “The Butterflies of the Sunshine Coast” with Tony Greenfield, “Odonates of the Sunshine Coast”, “An Extralimital Occurrence of Heuglin’s (Siberian) Gull in Myanmar” with Lay Win, “Butterflies and Dragonflies of the Sunshine Coast of BC” in the Newsletter of the Biological Survey of Canada, and numerous natural history articles and photos in BC Nature, BC Birding, and Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association.

Dr. Rudland will present a photographic journey to some of his favorite scenic locations, his favorite cultural moments, and of course his favorite wildlife encounters, from India’s Bengal Tigers to Madagascar’s Fish-eagles to Russia’s Polar Bears and Walrus. It’s a long ways from Fort Fraser to these many remote locations, but the travel and the experiences along the way make the distances seem inconsequential.