Articles by Colin Sytsma
For the last nine years the focus of Colin Sytsma’s work has been documentary filmmaking that contributes to the universal good and conservation of our world. Originally trained as an experimental storyteller and cinematographer at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee he started working at the award winning documentary film company 371 Productions. After the completion of the Emmy nominated documentary, As Goes Janesville, Sytsma left 371 Productions to start Wood Grain Media, a documentary film company that supports a variety of types of filmmaking. He works in Milwaukee with a focus on Cinema Verite style filmmaking. He produced Wisconsin’s Mining Standoff for Al Jazeera English’s Television show Fault Lines. Sytsma also co-directed From Mass to the Mountain, a feature length documentary chronicling drought and deforestation in an unstable eastern Panama. Currently he is the director of photography on When Claude Got Shot, an Independent Television Service(ITVS), the Ford Foundation, and Sundance funded film documenting gun violence in Milwaukee. In 2018 he received a Brico Forward Fund award from the Milwaukee Film Festival to finish his Stolen Apes film. In 2019 he is working as a cinematographer on the Participant funded documentary Messwood, a film about a combined high school football team between two largely segregated neighborhoods. He directed the short film Stolen apes that won best short film at EkoFilm, the Ireland Wildlife Film Festival, and best environmental film at the Zagreb Tour Film Festival in Croatia. Sytsma currently sits on the board of advisors for the Freeland Film Festival, a film festival trying to rid the world of wildlife trafficking and human slavery.
Facial recognition tech for chimps looks to bust online ape trafficking
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Bolivia’s El Curichi Las Garzas protected area taken over by land-grabbers
- Authorities struggle to protect Bolivian national park from drug-fueled deforestation
- Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea
Oceans
- Huge new no-fishing zones give Antarctic marine predators and their prey a break
- Madagascar takes key step toward improving transparency of its fisheries
- Report: Rising slaughter of small whales and dolphins threatens ocean balance
- Stalemate: WTO talks again fail to end overfishing subsidies
Amazon Conservation
- Fanned by El Niño, megafires in Brazil threaten Amazon’s preserved areas
- Brazil’s Amazonian states push for court reforms in bid for justice
- Squeezed-out Amazon smallholders seek new frontiers in Brazil’s Roraima state
- Study points to which Amazon regions could reach tipping point & dry up
Land rights and extractives
- New report details rights abuses in Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ project
- Phantom deeds see Borneo islanders lose their land to quartz miners
- Indonesians uprooted by mining industry call for a fairer future amid presidential vote
- Indonesian nickel project harms environment and human rights, report says
Endangered Environmentalists
- Vietnamese environmentalist sentenced to 3 years in prison for tax evasion
- Son of slain Quilombola leader will still strive for community’s rights
- Video: Five Tembé Indigenous activists shot in Amazonian ‘palm oil war’
- Indigenous activists demand justice after 5 shot in Amazonian ‘palm oil war’
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
Conservation Effectiveness
- The conservation sector must communicate better (commentary)
- Thailand tries nature-based water management to adapt to climate change
- Forest restoration to boost biomass doesn’t have to sacrifice tree diversity
- How scientists and a community are bringing a Bornean river corridor back to life
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest