National Geographic BlogWild

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."

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.

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.

Wildlife filmmakers, conservationists, and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert appeared with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show this morning to announce the Big Cats Initiative—a campaign to rally public support and bolster conservation efforts for lions, leopards, and other large feline species in the wild worldwide.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer T.H. Culhane and his wife Sybille are passionate about energy and garbage. In fact, they are so committed to investigating new ways of approaching energy problems that they moved into a slum in Cairo, and are teaching the people there how to make solar water heaters from recycled materials and biogas from trash.

From afar, the primeval mountainsides of the Monteverde Cloud Forest of Costa Rica appear both majestic and mysterious. Venture within with National Geographic Young Explorers Greg Goldsmith and Drew Fulton and you will discover that this mist-enshrouded tropical evergreen forest is teeming with life. This astounding biodiversity owes much of its existence to the extra water bestowed by clouds, which condenses onto leaves and drips to the forest floor. This extra moisture supports the world's most diverse collection of orchid species and a thriving array of amphibians, reptiles, and birds.

Photojournalist and National Geographic Young Explorer Joe Riis hopes to inspire people to protect the Path of the Pronghorn by documenting their epic migration—from the pronghorn's perspective. “[I] wanted to view the landscape through the eyes of the pronghorn and see the obstacles that the pronghorn see,” explains Joe. Outfitted with a collection of infrared-triggered camera traps and a life-size cutout of a pronghorn that he uses as a cover, Joe is the first person to take close-up photographs of the pronghorn during migration. Walking alongside the animals on foot, he chronicles the hazards faced on their journey—as well as the spectacular beauty of the Wyoming landscape—in intimate detail.

Greetings from Costa Rica, faithful BlogWild followers. For the next three weeks, I’m headed to sea.

National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle, and a team of leading marine scientists from Central America and across the globe have gathered here. Destination: Cocos Island—Isla del Coco, ringed by some of the most shark-rich waters anywhere—and the submerged and all-but-unexplored summits of Las Gemelas (“The Twin Sisters”) seamounts.

Our latest book, long overdue, is to be released by Rizzoli in New York in September. We have just received copies of Eye of the Leopard, and we are delighted with the printing and the way it has turned out. Most of all we hope that the book does justice, in its small way, to the delights of sharing the world with animals such as this—and in particular like Legadema, the leopard character of the book.

After witnessing an oil spill in San Francisco Bay in 1971, John Francis gave up riding in cars and other motorized vehicles and began walking nearly every place he went. Several years later, he decided to stop talking, initially for just one day. "For the first time," he says, "I began listening." And so his self-imposed silence stretched to 17 years.

I got together with environmentalist, advocate, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Alexandra Cousteau at headquarters yesterday afternoon to discuss something she thinks about lots and speaks of with passion: Water. Over the last half-year, Alexandra's Expedition: Blue Planet has taken her to India, Botswana, the Middle East, the Mississippi River, and Cambodia chronicling "the interconnectivity of water... what it means to live in a world where water is our most precious resource."

In my last post, I began the story of my trip up Guyana's Wokomung Massif to the summit of Mt. Kopinang in search of new frog species. In particular, I was on the hunt for frogs with funky odors that repel would-be predators. I literally had my eye on the one above, a red and black Pristimantis that Bruce Means discovered and described as a new species, prompting us to visit the Wokomung Massif together. In general, bright coloration and bold patterns indicate that a frog might be toxic, and on Wokomung, there were more colorful frogs to discover...

My friends managing the My Wonderful World blog posted an interview today with ecologist, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and all-around great guy Luke Dollar. He describes his decision to pursue a career in conservation science after finding a forest he wandered in as a child abruptly clear-cut, his work with Madagascar's fossa (the island's largest endemic predator—it's pronounced "FOO-sa"), grassroots efforts to engage the Malagasy people in wildlife conservation, and citizen science with EarthWatch volunteers.