We’re about 5,000 species into a 12,000 species quest.
Let’s just get people to look these animals in the eye
on black and white backgrounds,
We’re not trying to get everything
on the face of the Earth, there’s millions.
We’re trying to get everything in captivity.
Instead of this
let’s do this.
Instead of this animal just going to become stew that night
in a bush meat market in Equatorial Guinea,
lets take black velvet and make him immortal.
So we have. He’s run all over the world now.
Sydney Opera House, Empire State Building, you name it.
Up to half of all species of amphibian could be lost
in the next 20 years, say.
I went to a lab in Ecuador, the guy, he’s got this frog
he puts it down in front of me at this breeding center.
Take a picture of this, nine left.
Take a picture of this, five left.
Take a picture of this, four left.
And in the ten years that I’ve been doing this project
this has gone extinct, this has gone extinct
and this, and this, and this.
Or the Northern White Rhino named Nabiré
at the Dvur Králové Zoo, this summer in the Czech Republic.
She was really old. And she had cysts.
And they knew those cysts we’re going to be a problem
but she was too old to anaesthetize
and put under to work on.
So, we got there this summer, rolled out the black velvet
photographed her, sweetest rhino ever.
And at the end of the shoot, she was tired
and she laid down and went to sleep.
And she died seven days later.
And now the world has four.
And they’re all too old to breed. And that’s it.
Why the black and white backgrounds?
Well, they’re the great equalizer.
This tiger is no more important that the Tiger Beetle.
Probably a little less complicated actually.
And this bison is no more important than
a Bog Turtle or a Bat-eared Fox.
We have to cover, snakes we have to–
cover things that crawl on the ground.
It ain’t all grizzly bears, it ain’t all koalas
as much as we’d like it to be. We run these pictures
up the Geographic NG Instagram flagpole routinely.
There’s about 33-34 million people see these pictures.
You know what people respond to the most?
Mammals and animals that look like us.
The more they stand up, the more people like them.
Insects, snakes, turtles not so much.
Zoos actually are the ark.
Zoos are the ones that really take care
to make sure we have assurance colonies of animals
until we get smart enough as a species
to set land aside that these animals need.
And we need it too, believe me.
We work with these zoos months in advance
to make sure that we’re working with animals that
will tolerate the process fine.
We haven’t heard anything yet in
many, many, many species.
and it may be that the true value of Photo Ark
doesn’t happen for another hundred years
when people go back and they see what we have.
Maybe they’ll save what they have left.
Here in North America, the Whooping Crane
the California Condor, the Mexican Gray Wolf
Black-footed Ferret, even the Vancouver Island Marmot.
All these animals got down to fewer than two dozen.
And they are not out of the woods completely
but they are in the hundreds now.
They are stable. How ’bout that?
Because people cared. People cared. That’s it.
All you have to do is pay attention.
”
Be First to Comment