Photos by carltonward | Today we celebrate the people who work behind the scenes with photographers: the assistants. Malia Byrtus manages the remote camera systems for my Florida-based Path of the Panther project, and she helped produce many of the photos in "Return of the Panther," a story in the April 2021 issue. Malia is a true explorer, in practice and at heart. She joined me as an intern in 2017, and in her first week on the job had a chance to test her mettle. I was away at en event, and wet season came early to the South Florida swamps. Malia went to rescue our most vulnerable low-lying cameras from rising floodwaters. After my truck got stuck in mud so deep that water seeped in through the doors, she figured out how to use a winch to pull the truck to higher ground. Then she waded in waist-deep to rescue the camera. When Malia encountered a large alligator in her way, she cut a long walking stick to poke the water ahead of her, discouraging the toothy reptile from coming clos...