Summit 2024

SPEAKERS

Mark Emery

Mark Emery is a cinematographer, composer, and photographer.

Mark Emery grew up in Ocala Florida. He worked at Silver Springs driving glass bottom boats and later went to work for Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute. Wrestling alligators and milking rattlesnakes five times a day gave him both story-telling skills and an appreciation for all wildlife. In the mid-eighties Mark went to work for Jordan Klein Film and Video. Jordan Klein Senior invented underwater cinematography and made many of the technical advancements with Jacques Cousteau to make SCUBA diving practical. Emery worked on productions with Academy award winner Jordan Klein and his son for 18 years. Emery preferred natural history films to commercials and movies so eventually Mark and his wife Mary traveled to 35 countries producing, directing and shooting scores of television shows and commercials about fish and wildlife for the BBC, National Geographic Television, The Discovery Channel PBS and Disney Plus. He has won two Emmy Awards for Cinematography, a Chris Award, and Wildlife Communicator of the Year Award.

Emery’s parents were classical musicians but Mark chose a different road. He teamed up with composer and arranger Tracy Collins. Together they have written and performed music for over 320 national television shows and commercials including numerous scores for National Geographic Television, The Discovery Channel, Walker’s Cay Chronicles, Ford Commercials, Triton Boats, Captain EOS for Disney World, Larry Csonka’s NorthAlaska, Walkers Cay Chronicles, 20 years of One More Cast with Shaw Grigsby as well as many others. Emery’s still photography has been published in National Geographic Magazine, Newsweek, The London Times, Outside Magazine, Outdoor Life, Florida Sportsman, Backpacker Magazine, Alaska Magazine as well as many books, calendars and other publications.

Emery has spent a portion of his summers guiding fishermen and film crews in Alaska. Mark has been on-camera and guided many notable clients including Olivia Newton-John, Jeff Corwin, the Governor of Alaska Sean Parnell, IMAX crews, Stanley Cup winner Patrick Verbeek and many, many more.

Recent films: Katmai, the ends of the Earth, a finalist at Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Wild Alaska Live, wildlife camera 1 for a remote 1 week BBC shoot to broadcast live to England and the lower 48 states almost instantly. Featured brown bears chasing salmon, wolves fishing, whales bubble netting and eagles on the hunt to name a few. Wild Florida, BBC and Nature on PBS, Cinematographer and Narrator. America the Beautiful, five one-hour series on American wildlife, Emmy-nominated finalist for Best Wildlife Documentary. Everglades, National Geographic, Disney Plus and Hulu. Coming in 2025: The Americas, narrated by Tom Hanks. Ten one-hours on NBC February.

Margaret Ross Tolbert

Internationally Renowned Artist of the Springs
Author of AQUIFERious

Margaret Ross Tolbert earned her BFA and MFA in painting at the University of Florida. Her work has since been about communicating the experience of immersion through painting and installation, writing and film. Since the 1980s, Tolbert’s springs paintings have featured in exhibits and collections in the US, Europe and Turkey. In 2010 the book AQUIFERious, with art and science combining as a guidebook to springs and the Floridan aquifer, and the urgent need for preservation, was released. It received a gold and silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and the accompanying AQUIFERious exhibit and film was shown in New Orleans, the University of Virginia and in numerous museums and art centers in Florida through 2019.

Tolbert was a producer of Lost Springs (2017), a plea for restoration of a historic river and springs with her art as a starting point, with a premiere exhibition at the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art. Public art installations include the Orlando Springs installation (2011) at Orlando International Airport, and Connected Worlds of forest and springs at the Austin Cary Memorial Forest (2015) in Gainesville. Tolbert has had several exhibits in the Art and Embassies program in Turkey, and her commissioned 18 ft diptych Ulupinar/Great Spring was recently installed in the new United States embassy in Ankara, Turkey. She is based in Gainesville.

Jason Gulley, Ph.D.

Leading Springs Explorer and Research Geologist

Jason Gulley, Ph.D. is a geology professor at the University of South Florida, photojournalist and National Geographic Explorer. His work has been published by National Geographic, GEO, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED.

Jason’s research and photography career have taken him on expeditions to all seven continents, from underwater caves in Florida, the Caribbean and Africa as well as to glaciers in Alaska, the Arctic and the Mt Everest region of Nepal.

He has a PhD in geology from the University of Florida (2010) and is a technical diving and rebreather instructor. Jason’s research emphasizes the human impacts on the environment, cave systems, the Aquifer, and especially Florida’s springs.

Starting in 2020, Jason had an epiphany of sorts: scientists have never been more certain about how humans are impacting the planet, but the policy changes needed to protect the environment were not being implemented. Because more science seemed unlikely to change public perception, Jason decided to combine his photojournalism background and scientific expertise to tell compelling and science-based stories about our planet.

It is the vision and mission of Horse Farms Forever to inspire conservation of horse farms through education, awareness and idea exchange so as to preserve natural pasture land focusing on horses and their habitats, to protect soil and water on which they depend, and minimize land use conflicts
in Marion County, Florida.

We are watchful of government and others to preserve and protect horse farms and farmland for future generations - especially in the Farmland Preservation Area. We are neither anti-growth nor anti-development; we encourage urban growth to remain inside the Urban Growth Boundary.

Horse Farms Forever® is a Florida not-for-profit corporation registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as a charitable organization and approved as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation by the Internal Revenue Service. Horse Farms Forever® does not have a political mission. Our status as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization does not allow us to participate or intervene in political activities. The organization will neither advocate on behalf of political candidates nor advocate for the passage of legislation.

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