National Geographic Blog Wild

The Mudmen Cometh: It's Terra Cotta Time

2009-11-19T20:56:05Z

Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor opened today at the National Geographic Museum. By the time NatGeo staff welcomed the first ticketholders at 10 a.m., the Society had sold more than 105,000 tickets to the spectacular exhibition.

Just before the opening, the first wave of exhibition visitors stretched outside Geographic headquarters along M Street...

... around the corner, and down 17th. Long-time Washington, D.C. resident Stephanie Faul got out early and headed up the line. “When I heard they were coming months ago,” she told me, “I immediately bought a ticket. This is our history, everyone’s, our ancestry. It’s exciting to get the chance to see it.”

More than 2,200 years ago, Qin Shihuangdi...

... led the conquest of half a dozen warring states to form an empire two-thirds the size of the U.S. He established a common currency and written language, standardized volume and weight measurements, built roads, and laid many of the enduring foundations of the Chinese nation. He also constructed hundreds of palaces...

... and is thought to have been so paranoid that he never slept in the same palace two nights in a row. Evidently, that paranoia had some justification: History records at least three foiled assassination attempts on the ruthless emperor. To guard him in the afterlife, he chose a burial site surrounded on three sides by mountains, and had a vast army of clay warriors constructed to face the valley's single entrance, standing vigilant for eternity.

Qin Shihuangdi's army for the afterlife included thousands of terra cotta infantry, cavalry, archers, and generals, plus counselors, musicians, and strongmen to advise and amuse the emperor. Fifteen of the life-size terra cotta figures are among the 100 ancient artifacts on display.

Learn more about the Terra Cotta Warriors and the exhibition on David Braun's NatGeo News Watch, on the Intelligent Travel blog, in National Geographic magazine, and here on BlogWild. And if you'll be in Washington, D.C. sometime between now and the end of March, 2010, get some tickets!

Photographs by Ford Cochran

Chicken Soup for the Mind: Home Zone

2009-11-17T20:43:31Z

Families wait hours to get free H1N1 flu vaccinations for their children outside Virginia's Fairfax County Government Center.

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.

National Geographic has responded with Home Zone—two hours of programming each weekday plus streaming programs online from the National Geographic Channel, with companion activity guides from National Geographic School Publishing.

Home Zone programs include television specials and episodes from popular NatGeo series, including Explorer, Naked Science, and Wild Spaces. Instructional resources span a mix of grades from early elementary through high school, and cover science, social studies, and other disciplines. Topics range from the Grand Canyon, the oceans, the Poles, and Mars to pirates, extinctions, Chinese mummies, solar and hydropower, Alexander the Great, and more.

The weekday programming begins at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, 8 a.m. Pacific through December 25th. Find shows and curriculum guides on the Home Zone website and in the National Geographic Channel’s streaming video library.

Photographs by Ford Cochran

Blogging for Geography

2009-11-16T19:51:26Z

Friends and colleagues Sarah Caban (editor of the My Wonderful World blog) and Maggie Strassman (intern and recently-graduated 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 geography education in the United States.

This year’s theme—Get Lost in Mapping: Find Your Place in the World—celebrates geospatial tools such as location-aware mobile devices (got your iPhone or Droid handy?), satellite imagery, and community mapping platforms such as Google Earth and FieldScope, the Geographic’s new school-based collaborative mapping and citizen science application.

The theme also celebrates traditional paper maps, with a twist: You can download and print spectacular wall-size mosaic maps of Europe and the Americas (using 112 sheets of 8-and-a-half by 11-inch paper), as well as smaller mosaic wall maps of the world, each of the continents, each of the oceans, a number of Asian regions, the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Recommendation: Laminate the pages of the maps, get some erasable markers, and you can use them for activities and games again and again. Nat Geo’s education team covered a wall around the corner from my office with the large Europe map, and take it from me, it's spectacular.

You’ll find lots more ideas for things to do on our Geography Awareness Week page and the My Wonderful World blog. At a minimum (if you haven’t already), I hope you’ll mark the week by joining the My Wonderful World campaign to give kids the power of global knowledge. While you’re at it, you can test your own Global IQ with questions from the 2006 Roper poll of geographic literacy.

Headed Your Way: Expedition Week

2009-11-13T17:38:59Z

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.

The program retraces the journey of explorer Edmundo Bielawski, who returned from the Amazon in the 1960s with film of a human head-shrinking ceremony featuring a recently deceased person’s actual head. (Purportedly, this is the only authentic footage of such a ceremony that’s known to exist.) The NatGeo Channel obtained an exclusive license to broadcast Bielawski’s archival footage.

The Shuar people of Ecuador and Peru shrank the heads of enemies to render them powerless, to gain authority over their wives and children, and to prevent their souls from taking vengeance. The process, as documented by Bielawski, was elaborate.

The fascination of Europeans and Americans with shrunken heads (called tsantsa in the Shuar language) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries may have increased local warfare, as warriors sought heads for trade.

Now there's a safer, easier way: The Channel’s online Headshrinker lets you see how you, your friends and loved ones, and your favorite (or not-so-favorite) celebrities and politicians might look in portable tsantsa form.

Search for the Amazon Headshrinkers premieres at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time Sunday night on the National Geographic Channel.

Terra Cotta Countdown

2009-11-12T18:08:59Z

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.

NatGeo staff began uncrating and placing the warriors last week. They’ve been crafting the exhibition space (behind high wooden walls and locked doors) for months.

The thousands of clay soldiers, charioteers, archers, musicians, generals, and acrobats that—along with hundreds of horses and at least 100 chariots—comprise the Terra Cotta Army were buried shoulder-to-shoulder in vast pits nearly 2,000 years ago. Their purpose? Accompany emperor Qin Shihuangdi into the afterlife.

The massive trove of figures, discovered by farmers digging a well in 1974 near the city of Xi’an, ranks among the 20th century’s most important and astonishing archaeological finds.

BlogWild documented the advance ticket sales kickoff back in May, when living Terra Cotta warrior Zheng Chi Chang dazzled D.C. schoolkids before handing them free tickets to the exhibition.

Purchase tickets, get the official exhibition book, or find more Terra Cotta treasures (including life-size replicas of the warriors—no home is complete without one!) in the National Geographic Store. And don't forget to follow the exhibition and get updates from the National Geographic Museum on Facebook and on Twitter.

Photographs by Kate Baylor, O. Louis Mazzatenta, Wang Da Gang, and Ford Cochran

The Wildest Dream Debuts at Banff

2009-11-09T19:02:24Z
The 1924 Everest expedition. Back row, left to right: Andrew Irvine, George Mallory, Edward Norton, Noel Odell, and John Macdonald. Front row: Edward Shebbeare, Geoffrey Bruce, Howard Somervell, and Bentley Beetham.
In 1999, Conrad Anker discovered the frozen body of George Mallory on Mount Everest. For years afterward, he wondered about Mallory's quest for the summit. Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, were last seen in 1924 only a few hundred meters from the summit. Had the pair tackled the Second Step successfully and made it to the top? How much was Mallory torn between his love for Everest and his love for his wife Ruth? What was it like to climb a mountain as cold and brutal as Everest in the relatively light, flimsy gear of the 1920s?
Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding in recreated clothing similar to that worn by Mallory and Irvine during their ascent.
The Wildest Dream sets out to answer these questions with archival video footage of Mallory and Irvine on the mountain, love letters between Mallory and Ruth, and a bold attempt to reenact their bid for the summit by modern-day climbers Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding. The new National Geographic feature film got its premiere Canadian screening Saturday night at the Banff Mountain Film festival.

Conrad and his team had plenty of obstacles to overcome when they decided to recreate the historic, ill-fated climb. One of the most obvious: Who would play Irvine to Conrad’s Mallory? Conrad was thrilled when he learned about British climber Leo Houlding. “We were looking for similarities to Irvine in age and experience, and I knew he was going to be solid. He was totally game.”

Conrad and Leo gained tremendous respect for Mallory and Irvine as they donned the mountaineering clothing of the 1920s and climbed toward the Second Step. The antiquated outfits offered scant protection against the bitter cold of Everest, and the boots were far less sturdy then their modern-day counterparts.

The film celebrates Mallory's pioneering accomplishments, which—despite his sad fate on the mountain—would make him legendary in the world of climbing and high adventure. (Who could ever forget the man who said he wanted to climb Everest "because it is there"?) Conrad hopes, too, that The Wildest Dream accurately represents Mallory's life and illustrates what climbing was like nearly a century ago versus today. And he says he'll be thrilled if it provides the "motivation to get people outdoors to do something wild!"

Watch for The Wildest Dream in theaters during the spring of 2010, and become a fan on Facebook for updates!

Artist in Candyland

2009-11-08T02:53:17Z
Photograph by Jeronimo Hagerman
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.
Photograph by Amy Bucci
Jim Olver, Jill Sawyer and Jeronimo Hagerman look over Jeronimo's latest photos.

The colony consists of nine studios designed by well-known Canadian architects to offer an inspiring, pleasant, and safe space for resident artists working on new projects. In particular, we were there to visit artist Jeronimo Hagerman.

Animation by Jeronimo Hagerman

Jeronimo's works play with the relationship between the individual and "nature", emphasizing on how the emotional ties between the subject and the outside world are generated. Jeronimo says he likes to show the beauty that can occur when humans' artificial objects, such as candy, are combined with mountains, forests, gardens, and more.
Photograph by Jeronimo Hagerman
In an exhibit in Casa Vecina Gallery, Mexico, Malas Madres (or Evil Mothers), for the plants' "tendency to throw away their babies." Adding to the fun, says Jeronimo, the exhibit's pulley system sounded like birds whenever the plants moved.
Photograph by Jeronimo Hagerman
Learn more about the artists' colony, Jeronimo Hagerman, and get ready for the Banff film tour in Washington, DC February 2-6, 2009!

Snow Leopards Show Their Spots

2009-11-07T15:12:45Z

You might never guess that the down-to-earth, easygoing Steve Winter has followed and photographed jaguars in Brazil, grizzly bears in Siberia, and tigers in Myanmar. (Though he does show an uncanny sense of direction here on the large Banff Centre campus.)

Steve 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!

Notoriously shy and difficult to find, wild snow leopards number only between 4,000 and 7,000 animals. Knowing this, Steve consulted local naturalists and set up camera traps in places they thought snow leopards might frequent.

The camera traps helped Steve capture intimate views of this elusive animal, glimpses he could not have obtained if he’d been holding the camera himself.

Within three days of setting the photo traps, Steve's cameras had snapped seven photographs of a snow leopard rubbing his face on a rock. In the last of these, the leopard actually bites the transmitter. “I didn’t take this photograph,” says Steve. “The snow leopard did.”

After early success, weeks passed without the cameras snagging a single image of a snow leopard. During the long dry spell, he thought, ”What am I doing wrong?”

Armed with tenacity (National Geographic magazine editor Chris Johns has commended Steve for his stick-to-itiveness), the photographer positioned the camera traps at additional mountain locations, and went on to win the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award in 2008 for a photograph of a snow leopard at night. Steve's images appeared in the June 2008 issue of National Geographic.

Steve firmly believes that photographs of the snow leopard will get people interested enough to make sure the cat has a future. "Photography has the power to move people emotionally and allow positive change. It has done that for snow leopards."

Steve also stressed that he could never have captured these images without the help of the community. When Steve had to leave the area, a local man, Tashi, ran the cameras and took care of them. Snow Leopard Enterprises, a program of the non-profit Snow Leopard Trust, helps local populations embrace these beautiful and endangered predators by investing in community conservation projects and creating new sources of income to discourage poaching.

Want to learn more about lions, leopards, snow leopards, and other large felines in the wild? Check out National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative.

Photograph by Dan Grogan (top) and by Steve Winter, Director of Media, Panthera

Banff Film Festival Brings It On

2009-11-06T15:16:37Z
Photograph by Amy Bucci
After about nine hours in the air and two more in a van—during which I was the only one who opted for the optional blanket—I have arrived in what I think is the most beautiful place on Earth: Banff, Canada.

This town in the Canadian Rockies hosts the adrenaline-pumping, awe-inspiring, I-need-to-learn-to-snowboard-before-I-am-40 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. For years, I've watched the Banff films on tour at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. Finally, here I am in beautiful, chilly Banff witnessing all the adventurers and action firsthand.

National Geographic’s Expeditions Council is out in force, conducting workshops to help filmmakers and authors pitch ideas to National Geographic Television, National Geographic Books, and our magazines.
Photograph by Amy BucciNational Geographic's Rebecca Martin, Canadian volunteer Judeth Stevens, and Angie Sanders.

Yesterday’s events consisted of multiple book festival activities, including an extremely entertaining one-man play tracing the journey of Canadian mountain guide Conrad Kain, and presentations by climber Chris Sharma and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Mike Fay.

Chris’ daredevil, breathtaking climbing stories, photographs, and video had the audience gasping and cheering for more, while Mike Fay's tales from the Redwood Transect (featured in the October 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine) and hilarious footage of Nick Nichols courting owls to the camera with a specially-designed "owl hat" filled the theater with wonder and laughter.
Photograph by Dan Grogan
At the end of his talk, we high-fived Mike from our backstage seats. He was delighted to be here at Banff among friends who also love trees. The festival organizers, familiar with Mike's famously long walks, invited him back to Canada for a trek sometime soon. (I can only hope he'll wear socks with his beloved sandals.)

The audience quickly lined up after the show to get both Chris's and Mike’s autographs. We all know that the attention won’t go to Mike’s head, since he’s not that kind of a guy, and he’s focused on keeping up the dialogue on sustainable forestry with various logging companies and the public.
Photograph by Amy Bucci
Learn more about the Banff World Tour. And if you happen to live near Washington, D.C., save February 2-6, 2010, and check NG Live Events in January for tickets!

A Life Among the Shamans: Wade Davis

2009-11-06T13:47:36Z

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."

Wade first journeyed to the Amazon as a 20-year-old Harvard student in 1974. He would go on to live with 15 different indigenous groups in eight Latin American countries over three years on a quest to learn about the uses and traditions surrounding coca, the source of cocaine. But the project that would make him famous was his harrowing quest to discover the formula for potions used to create zombies in Haiti, chronicled in his book The Serpent and the Rainbow.

“Haiti, more than anything else, taught me that different cultural beliefs manifest themselves in unique and remarkable ways,” says Wade.

Many of those beliefs, and the traditions they embody, vanish as cultures and languages disappear. “Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind,” says Wade, but half of the world’s more than 7,000 languages are no longer taught to children. He believes humanity’s cultural heritage, the “ethnosphere—the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness”—merits recognition and protection analogous to the biosphere, and that its diversity is dwindling even more rapidly.

Wade has published more than a dozen books, including Light at the End of the World, The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Shultes, and (as editor) Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures. (David Harrison, who co-edited this volume with Wade, is a leader of National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project to document endangered languages and cultures and to support their revitalization.)

Wade's Gold Media comes on the heels of another Canadian national recognition: He delivered the prestigious Massey Lectures in October, a week-long series of talks on a political, cultural, or philosophical topic broadcast nationwide by CBC Radio. His theme: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. The lectures have been published as a book, and are available as free podcasts from the CBC until December 1, 2009. They will also be available as a boxed CD set.

Listen to Boyd Matson's interview with Wade Davis on National Geographic Weekend, or view Wade's TED Conference talks, including his June 2008 address on the worldwide web of belief and ritual.

Photograph of Wade Davis by Ryan Hill, other photographs by Wade Davis

Virtual Reality for the Real World

2009-11-03T18:10:06Z

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.

NMC staff created an evocative base camp for us, with a campfire and tent, tall grass, binoculars, laptop, and the requisite pith helmet...

... all set on a revolving stage texture-mapped with a bona fide National Geographic map of the world.

Anne and I walked the audience, including NMC Vice President Rachel Smith (guised as a small blue dragon) …

… through a number of National Geographic programs designed to support research, exploration, and conservation and to engage the public, including the Society’s century-plus legacy of nearly 9,000 grants, our Explorers Program, Genographic Project ...

... Ocean Now...

... Big Cats Initiative...

... BioBlitz, Education website for K-12 teachers and students, Your Shot, Photo Camp, Student Expeditions, My Wonderful World, and FieldScope. All that, and we even left a few minutes for questions at the end!

We also shared some of National Geographic’s educational goals, which include promoting the geographic literacy of people in the United States and around the world. We envision (and are working for) a future where most individuals…

are aware of environments locally to globally,

grasp the concept of sustainability and strive for it,

appreciate places—and who and what inhabits them—through exploration in the field and through media,

actively engage in citizen science, and

connect with others through communities on- and offline.

National Geographic Education recently joined the NMC, which describes itself as “an international consortium of more than 260 world-class universities, colleges, museums, research centers, and technology companies dedicated to using new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and support learning and creative expression.”

Images by Anne Haywood, Ford Cochran, and courtesy the New Media Consortium

Young Explorers Savor Obscure Festivals

2009-10-30T20:52:07Z

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.

I joined NG Weekend host Boyd Matson in our studio this morning for an interview with Ross and Andrew (pictured above on a woodpile at the 50th annual Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin). They describe themselves as “people who go off to odd places in America and find pockets of culture that the rest of us ignore in our daily lives.”

So far, their American Festivals Project—"The search for America's small, hidden, and bizarre festivals"—has kept them on the road for most of the last 14 months. “Traveling in a truck powered by waste vegetable oil, and living in a 1964 truck camper,” they’ve commemorated, well, something or other in all but three U.S. states. Such as, for instance, North Conway, New Hampshire's Mud Bowl Championships.

Ross and Andrew have good news for fans of quirky, offbeat hometown celebrations: Of the 40 festivals they’ve experienced to date, only “one or two felt like they were on the way out.” The rest? “Going strong.”

Some festivals are photogenic, rich with visual potential, says Andrew. Others, such as Louisiana’s Cajun Mardi Gras festival, are so exhilarating that it’s hard to focus on taking pictures. “The music and traditions are so infectious—nearly everyone was a participant. You’re walking through crawfish farm fields and along some of the back roads of central Louisiana.” There’s a “trick-or-treat feel,” he says, as people travel from home to home, gathering ingredients to make a community gumbo. “Folks throw roosters and chickens. We chased a pig!”

“For me,” says Ross, “the greatest time I’ve had was at Fasnacht, a small German festival in Helvetia, West Virginia. It’s a celebration or carnival to mark the end of winter. It starts with a parade through town, and everyone makes paper maché masks.

"They converge on the town hall, dance until midnight, tear down an effigy of old man winter and burn it in a bonfire.”

“Speed Week was a highlight for me,” says Andrew. “It’s on the ethereal landscape of the Bonneville Salt Flats, so you feel like you’re on a different planet with a bunch of mad scientists.

“There’s no prize money: They all just want to go as fast as possible. This is a vacation for the folks who come out for it. There’s no head-to-head racing. They all just want to break a miles-per-hour number, reach a personal limit. They love to go fast.”

View more photos from the American Festival Project in our National Geographic News gallery. Follow the project on Facebook and Twitter. Or watch videos from the project, including this one from Bonneville Speed Week:

If you're between 18 and 25 years old and have a research, conservation, or exploration project in mind that would help inspire people to care about the planet, consider applying for a National Geographic Young Explorers grant.

Photographs courtesy Ross Mcdermott and Andrew Owen, the American Festivals Project

Chimps in Mourning

2009-10-29T16:00:25Z

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.

Jeremy Berlin interviewed Monica about the deceased chimp Dorothy and her bereaved companions for NGM Blog Central. “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group,” said Monica. “The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy's chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures."

Read the full story.

Photograph by Monica Szczupider

NatGeo Wins Environmental Legacy Award

2009-10-27T14:44:11Z

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.

Actor Harrison Ford helped to present the award, and shared these moving (and humbling) words about National Geographic:

"The Environmental Media Legacy Award is awarded to a media organization that has not only proven its absolute commitment to environmental concerns, but continues to build and expand upon that commitment year after year. This year it goes to an organization that has been at the forefront of environmental concerns for 120 years; educating and inspiring us on the importance of nature conservation and respect for all of the Earth’s creatures a century before it was a part of cultural consciousness: The National Geographic Society.

"They are one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Seeking to inspire people about their planet, the mission of the organization is 'to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge while promoting the conservation of the world’s cultural, historical, and natural resources'.

"Their support of the environment began in 1890. In 1916 they helped draft legislation that established the National Park Service.

"Since their inception, they have supported more than 9,000 projects and expeditions and awarded over $170 million in grants to projects such as the excavation of Machu Picchu, the discovery of the Titanic, the work of Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, and the Leakey family. Their Emerging Explorers Program recognizes young explorers and scientists and supports each with a $10,000 grant, while their Expeditions Council provides grants towards the exploration of largely unrecorded areas of the world.

"They also realized that exploration must go hand-in-hand with preservation and in 2001 created the Conservation Trust, a program that funds public education campaigns on global issues, preservation of animal populations and habitat, and education about diverse world cultures. And, of course, they produce television documentaries, promote geotourism, and publish that wonderful magazine we all grew up with—the same publication that a century ago published articles about the dangers of pollution, deforestation, and the importance of preserving our natural resources.

"National Geographic was raising awareness and fighting battles before any of us realized they existed. They remain at the forefront."

Hooked on Sawfish: Zeb Hogan

2009-10-19T20:51:20Z

National Geographic Emerging Explorer, aquatic ecologist, and megafish-finder Zeb Hogan travels 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.

To date, Zeb's work on the ambitious Megafishes project has helped lead to protection for the giant Mekong catfish and creation of a preserve for the giant stingray and the giant barb.

Need something to do while you're waiting for the show to air? Check out the megafishes photo gallery, read National Geographic News' nine-part series on the Megafishes project, scan Zeb's picks for Top Ten Ugly and Endangered Fish, or try your hand at the Hooked: Reel 'Em In game. (I did myself, but the fish kept getting away before I could land them. Can you do better?)