National Geographic BlogWild

The H1N1/swine flu outbreak has prompted officials to close hundreds of schools across the United States and left thousands of kids and teens (both sick and well) stranded at home. The U.S. Department of Education has recommended that schools and parents help students continue learning while they’re home, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called on educational publishers to support the effort.

Friends and colleagues Sarah Caban (editor of the My Wonderful World blog) and Maggie Strassman (intern and University of Wisconsin Madison geography department superstar) have lined up a bevy of fired-up contributors for the first annual Geography Awareness Week Blog-a-Thon. The week, which runs through Saturday, coincides with the National Geographic Channel’s Expedition Week, and highlights the importance of geographic literacy and geography education in the United States.

The National Geographic Channel kicks off Expedition Week 2009 in the U.S. Sunday night with Search for the Amazon Headshrinkers—and an invitation to shrink your own head.

Exciting times here at National Geographic headquarters! Yes, today IS my birthday … but that’s not the reason. In just one week, Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor opens at our museum. More than 80,000 tickets have already been sold for the exhibition—the largest collection of the life-sized figures ever to tour the United States.

The Wildest Dream got its Canadian debut screening Saturday night at the Banff Mountain Film festival. The new National Geographic feature film combines fascinating archival video footage of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on Mount Everest in 1924, love letters between Mallory and his wife Ruth, and a bold attempt to recreate Mallory and Irvine's bid for the summit by modern-day climbers Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding.

National Geographic's biggest fan here at Banff, Jim Olver, gave us a tour of the Banff Centre yesterday and introduced us to the Leighton Artists' Colony, which Banff supports in addition to the Mountain Films.

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter had the Banff festival audience laughing and gasping as he shared gorgeous photographs and riveting stories of capturing the rare snow leopard in Ladakh, India. Extreme altitude and cold, plus some exhausting travel, had made for an emotionally stressful time for Steve, but fun stories for us!

National Geographic's Expeditions Council has come out in force for the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festivals, conducting workshops to help filmmakers and authors pitch ideas to National Geographic Television, National Geographic Books, and our magazines.

The Royal Canadian Geographical Society awarded National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis its top honor, the Gold Medal, at its 80th anniversary dinner in Ottawa last night. The anthropologist, ethnobotanist, writer, photographer, and lecturer is an eloquent and passionate voice for the world’s indigenous peoples and cultures. He has been described as the "real-life Indiana Jones."

Colleague Anne Haywood (in Austin, Texas) and I (at NatGeo headquarters in Washington, D.C.) got together virtually last week to discuss the ways National Geographic is using new media to inspire people to care about the planet—and to help them understand it. We gave our presentation—or, at least, our avatars did—at the New Media Consortium’s Symposium for the Future in Second Life, an immersive, 3-D virtual world.

Some of the freshest faces at National Geographic are here at headquarters this weekend for a Young Explorers Grant workshop.

Last night, NG Live hosted an event titled “Exploration: The Next Generation” with four up-and-coming Society grantees: Katherine Amato, a biologist studying howler monkeys in Mexico’s tropical forest; Pat Walters, a journalist who’s documented the havoc wreaked by invasive flying Asian carp on U.S. rivers; Trip Jennings, a conservationist who caves and paddles through unexplored regions in Papua New Guinea; and Ross McDermott, a photographer and filmmaker who—with colleague and fellow photographer Andrew Owen—is documenting America’s small-town festivals, from the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa to the Middle of Nowhere celebration in Ainsworth, Nebraska.

By now, you’ve likely seen Monica Szczupider’s photograph of grieving chimpanzees at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center. The image—which Monica submitted to Your Shot, and which appeared in the November issue of National Geographic magazine—is resonating with people everywhere. Over the last few days, it’s turned up in newspapers, on television, and on blogs worldwide.

National Geographic President and CEO John Fahey traveled to Hollywood this weekend to accept the Environmental Media Association's Legacy Award on behalf of the Society. Explorers-in-Residence Beverly and Dereck Joubert—whose years of filmmaking, photography, and conservation efforts on behalf of the world's endangered felines inspired the new Big Cats Initiative—joined Fahey for the ceremony.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer, aquatic ecologist, and megafish-finder Zeb Hogan has traveled to lakes and rivers the world over to document and protect the planet’s largest freshwater fish. Tonight, the National Geographic Channel premieres a new episode of Hooked that follows Zeb into the Australian outback in search of one of the most critically endangered—and peculiar-looking—fish on Earth, the giant freshwater sawfish.

Though public attention has focused on oil reserves beneath Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal aren’t the northern state’s only energy resources. Now, two National Geographic Emerging Explorers will receive a grant to see if microscopic life forms from the Alaskan tundra could help turn garbage into fuel in cool climates worldwide.

“These mosquitoes really love me! Why aren't they biting you?" The reason why pests bother you, but not the person sitting next to you—or vice versa—probably comes down to a matter of scent.

If you have water on tap in your home, school, or office, and it’s safe to drink, count your blessings: hundreds of millions of people worldwide don’t. As human population and water demands increase, and as climate patterns shift, some aquifers and rivers are running dry. Many people (disproportionately women and children) walk miles a day just to retrieve clean—or not-so-clean—water to drink, to cook with, and to bathe with. Many communities lack any source of clean water or the means to regularly filter, boil, or chemically sterilize it. Contaminated drinking water spreads diseases that kill millions of children and adults each year.

Fresh from dives with National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala and other marine scientists at Cocos Island and Las Gemelas, Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle appears tonight with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, where she’ll discuss her new book The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One.

Dereck and Beverly Joubert, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, have spent nearly three decades living alongside Africa’s lions and leopards. Working out of a tent or truck, they spend months at a time observing and learning about these top predators. With a collaborative storytelling style that weaves together Beverly’s photography and sound recordings with Dereck’s film footage and writing, they have created dozens of award-winning films, books, and magazine articles. They also now are helping National Geographic with the Big Cats Initiative, which was announced yesterday on the Today Show (and on this blog!).

Because of Beverly and Dereck's patience and love for these animals, we are lucky to have this beautiful slide show of images to share with you.