NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EARTH DAY 2021

Celebrate the wonder of Earth Day beneath the sea with the world’s most majestic creatures

EARTH DAY

Secrets of the Whales streaming Earth Day on Disney+

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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EARTH DAY 2021

Inside Earth Day is inspiration for every day

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Maribel Perez Wadsworth

April 22 focuses attention on the planet, the damage we have been doing to it, and what we can do to save it. “We’ve known the answer for a long time.” 4

Boot up for these 10 spectacular hikes

Publisher and President, USA TODAY Network

Nicole Carroll

Trails for all skill levels wind through epic scenery in national parks from one end of the country (Haleakala in Hawaii) to the other (Shenandoah in Virginia). 10

‘Planet Possible’ leads with some hope

New initiative builds on National Geographic’s legacy of changing how people understand the world, while also expressing faith in the possibility of progress. 13

Behind the scenes and under the seas Photographer and National Geographic Explorer Brian Skerry, the creative force behind “Secrets of the Whales,” sits down to talk about his adventures. 18

Editor in Chief

Patty Michalski Executive Editor

Issue editors Lori Santos for USA TODAY; Chris Albert and Jennifer Driscoll for National Geographic

Whales share their ‘Secrets’

Documentary shows us these magnifi cent mammals as never before. See an orca invite a diver to dinner.

Issue photo editors Lydia Thompson and Jordan Roth for National Geographic; Emily Johnson for USA TODAY

Six women making an impact worldwide Gal Gadot hosts a series telling the “extraordinary stories” of a Native American chief fi ghting for her people, a clean water activist in Puerto Rico, and others. 28

Issue designer Bill Campling Design manager Jennifer Herrmann

Diversifying the documentary community

ISSN#0734-7456 A USA TODAY Publication, Gannett Co. Inc. USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are registered trademarks. All rights reserved.

Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22108.

National Geographic’s Field Ready program offers mentorship and opportunity to aspiring fi lmmakers. 32 h Listen up: It’s a new generation of storytellers. 34

What have we done and what can we do?

Explorers and others involved with Earth Day programming offer their take on the planet’s biggest threats and the most meaningful changes we can all make. 36

An orca with a ray it caught in the waters off New Zealand. BRIAN SKERRY

Celebrate the wonder of Earth Day beneath the sea with the world’s most majestic creatures

The Best-Selling National Parks Guide

EARTH DAY GUIDE TO

NATIONAL PARKS UNITED STATES OF THE

NINTH EDITION

ON SALE THROUGH 5/10/2021

$4.95

Secrets of the Whales streaming Earth Day on Disney+

Adventure awaits in your backyard

A closer look at giants of the deep

‘The ocean is Earth’s life-support system’

On a predator’s trail in the frozen north

Photo Ark offers last look at species

The national park system has 423 sites to enthrall and enchant visitors with nature and history. 8 h For more ideas, check out National Geographic’s guide, above, on sale now.

Belugas attend their annual reunion, orcas hunt and share, humpbacks sing their haunting songs, and a young sperm whale, above, sticks close to its mother for safety. 20

Trailblazing oceanographer and “Hero of the Planet” Sylvia Earle is sounding the alarm for the seas, even as she holds onto optimism. “I still have great hope.” 22

A lifelong tracker sets off on his “fi nal quest” — following a polar bear for a year. The result is the documentary “Kingdom of the Polar Bears,” premiering on Earth Day. 24

Joel Sartore is on a mission to capture images of every animal — including those that are the last of their kind, like the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog, above. 26

About the cover Design: Bill Campling Image: A mother humpback and her calf rise to the surface over coral reefs in the waters of Tonga in the South Pacific. Photo by Brian Skerry.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

EARTH DAY CAN INSPIRE ANY DAY April 22 focuses attention on the planet, and the need for action

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Jacqueline Cutler

| Special to USA TODAY

arth Day traditionally has meant taking action. h We march to demand that politicians listen and polluters stop fouling the planet. h But it’s not just anger that propels us. h We also head outside to clean our seashores, pick up our parks, volunteer. h Determination and hope are powerful forces, too.

Waves break on the coral reef that rings the island of Bora Bora in the South Pacifi c. JODI COBB/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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Humans have set aside slices of the world to protect them from ... humans. Above: Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. JAMES P. BLAIR/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

As we celebrate the 51st Earth Day, and the second during this global pandemic, protests will be smaller and, of course, masked. Chants will be muffl ed.

Cleanup eff orts will be more private, too.

But every seed planted, every plastic bag plucked from the ocean, still contributes to repairing the planet.

Not only is Earth Day still important, but the work may be more critical than ever.

“It is the one day of the year when we can get people to focus on what is, in fact, an existential crisis,” says Susan Goldberg, National Geographic editor-inchief. “It is hard to think about in those terms: why these days matter, why these months matter. But if you can get people to focus, even for a short time, it makes such a diff erence later. If you can, just stop and look at your own use.”

This Earth Day, the magazine’s focus is on the oceans, including work by noted National Geographic Explorer and Photographer Brian Skerry.

Last Earth Day, Goldberg published a “fl ip issue,” with one cover on the front and another on the back. If you read it from one side, there was an optimistic perspective about what was being done to help the planet. Read from the other side, it presented a darker view of a glob-

“To me, it goes to a higher-order, almost a philosophical level.

Are we going to be the caretakers, or are we going to be the takers?”

James Cameron

producer, director, and environmentalist

al tipping point. Goldberg, like many, isn’t willing to give in to pessimism. But that does not mean we can let down our guard. Things need to change, and some things simply must stop.

“This year, our May issue, which we are calling The Ocean Issue, includes prominent ‘How You Can Help’ features, giving readers actionable advice on things they can do to help make a diff erence,” Goldberg says.

Corporations “need to get out of the extractive practices,” says Shirell Parfait-Dardar, Chief of the Grand Caillou/ Dulac Band of the Biloxi-ChitimachaChoctaw Tribe in Louisiana. “You can’t keep damaging and taking from the planet and expecting it to be OK, without

even doing anything to repair the damage you caused. That needs to stop. We have many, many highly intelligent people who are coming up with wonderful, healthy ways of innovating energy and producing jobs that are good for the environment and the people.”

It’s not as if this is breaking news.

Some of these warriors for the Earth have been fi ghting the good fi ght for decades.

“I mean, we’ve known the answer for a long time,” says James Cameron, producer, director, environmentalist and National Geographic Explorer at Large.“We became aware of the problem of global warming in the ’70s. It wasn’t widely understood, but it was certainly understood by the science community.

You didn’t have the vast and irrefutable amount of evidence of it as a proximal, daily changing sort of process on our planet then. It was a little more hypothetical. But the oil companies knew about it back in the ’70s. They didn’t say a damn thing, of course.”

So much of helping the planet is a result of understanding our connection to it. Can we just take without giving? Do we have the right to drill into the land?

Can we expel poisons into the air and expect to be able to breathe it? Eat whatever moves because we’ve developed a

taste for it? Kill because it’s fun to shoot?

“To me, it goes to a higher-order, almost a philosophical level,” Cameron says. “Are we going to be the caretakers, or are we going to be the takers? And it applies to everything in your life — spiritually, politically, are you a caretaker?

Are you helping people? Do you care about your fellow man? Do you care about your fellow inhabitants of the planet? The whales, the great whales, the smaller whales, the dolphins?

“Or do you just believe in the ascendance of humans at all other expense — and not just all humans, but your group of humans, your state, your party, your sports team, your country?” Cameron continues. “Whatever it is, however you draw your family, your race, wherever you draw your little perimeter of empathy and then toggle into active non-empathy for everybody beyond that.”

As all conservationists stress: Every single ecosystem on Earth is interconnected. The ramifi cations of not changing our ways are dire.

“We’ll exhaust the planet’s resources, and we’ll kill everything else on it but us, and then we’ll die,” Cameron says. “So it’s all going to come to a head in the next couple of decades. So some people are going to be dragged kicking and scream-

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

“I hope this pandemic, which in many ways has its roots in environmental exposure, has given people some time to reflect on the need to protect this fragile planet we live on.”

Susan Goldberg

National Geographic editor-in-chief

ing into a more plant-based diet. And other people will say, ‘You know what? I feel good about this. I’m doing something. I feel a sense of purpose. Oh, and by the way, I feel better. I’ve got more energy, and I’m healthier, and I’m not going to die of a heart attack.’ ” After four years of administrative rollbacks on federal environmental protections, many, including Sigourney Weaver — narrator of “Secrets of the Whales,“ debuting on Earth Day on Disney+ — are thrilled to see a return to caring about the planet.

“Luckily, now we have a president for whom it is a priority,” Weaver says.

Considering herself fortunate to have grown up near the water, Weaver says her “earliest memories are of fl eeing from horseshoe crabs, so I think that I grew up having a love and respect for the sea.”

National Geographic Explorers Sylvia Earle and Skerry, both as amphibious as humans can be, also have been infl uenced by the water since they were kids.

Skerry, like Cameron, cites TV for igniting his passion.

Both men were enraptured by Jacques Cousteau, who introduced them, and millions, to the undersea world.

Skerry and Earle have seen the ravages of pollution in remote outposts. Specks of uninhabited land have piles of plastic washing up on the shore. And if it takes April 22 as the date to make everyone stop and take stock, that’s fi ne, everyone says.

Where would we be without Earth Day? “A planet unlivable, uninhabitable for us,” Earle says.

“Microbes might prosper, but a planet that is suitable for humankind has not always existed, and perversely it seems we are attempting to wreck it by altering the fabric of life. The air we breathe is generated not by rocks and water but by living things, and their existence really depends on the 4.5 billion years spent fi ne-tuning this planet. Earth works in our favor.

“By contaminating the air, the water, and destroying the fabric of life, we have altered the fabric of nature in ways unfavorable to us.”

Oddly, the pandemic may help us appreciate the planet. Having been stuck indoors, people crave the feeling of being part of nature again. Perhaps this time has taught us that humans must act diff erently. If nothing else, Earth Day is the day to make us refl ect on the glory of this planet — before it is too late.

“What the pandemic has caused many to see is that nature rules, and to refl ect on the imperative of the natural world,” Earle says. “What can you do? If you have a lawn, consider planting native fl owers, shrubs and

Nature paints scenes of incomparable beauty at places like Rainbow Lake, Maine. SAM ABELL/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

trees. If you have the space, grow something that you would eat yourself, even a pot with a tomato plant in it.

Where will the world be in 20 years, even 10 years, if we continue what all of us are doing today? And what commitment will you make? What change are you willing to make in your life that will get us closer to a planet favorable to us?”

Certainly, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. With more than 2.7 million people around the world dead of COVID-19 as of this writing, and millions of other lives upended, this has been a year like no other. But spring has also brought hope in the form of vaccines. This can be a time to celebrate rebirth and renewal.

“Earth Day should be joyous,” notes Janet Han Vissering, senior vice president of development and production for National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Disney+. “It is a birthday celebration for Earth, and it is a moment where we can celebrate the Earth because it deserves it. Hopefully, it gives a moment of pause to just be gently reminded we have to protect this place.”

Programming spread across all platforms needs to refl ect that — and, she stresses, it should be celebratory.

“It needs to be awe-inspiring and uplifting,” Han Vissering says. “It also needs to be transporting. The goal was to have shows that really inspire people and — I guess it sounds very pedestrian in a way, but make them feel good. I want people to fi nd some happy space when they are watching this.”

“It has, obviously, been an incredibly challenging year for all of us individually and collectively as a society,” Goldberg says. “I hope this pandemic, which in many ways has its roots in environmental exposure, has given people some time to refl ect on the need to protect this fragile planet we live on. Maybe this terrible moment has made people realize this is a small world we live in, and we have to work together.

“The main point for us is, every day is Earth Day,” she says. “We have been covering the Earth and the creatures on it for 133 years, and this is the core of what we do. And so this is a story that never gets old to us.”

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

ADVENTURE IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD

National parks belong to the people. Get out and explore!

Arches National Park in Utah is famous for its stunning red rock formations, including more than 2,000 arches created by millions of years of erosion. JULIE JACOBSON/AP

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f you’re looking for your next outdoor adventure, you don’t have to look very far. With 423 parks, monuments and other sites in the national park system and 6,600 state parks throughout the United States, there are millions of acres to explore right in your own backyard. All you have to do is know where to fi nd them. There are plenty of things to do and see in just the 63 designated national parks, which are found in every region of the country. So get ready to pack the car and explore. The great outdoors await!

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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WEST COAST You can stand among giants — thousand-year-old sequoias, the largest trees in the world — at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, nestled side by side in the Sierra Nevada in California.

Make a special trek to the Giant Forest grove, where the Grant Tree Trail leads to the General Grant tree, the second-largest tree in the world.

The body of water that gives Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park its name is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet. With a surface area of 21 square miles, the lake contains more than 5 trillion gallons of water. Beyond the lake’s size, it is the stunning sapphire water that etches itself in your memory.

While the core of the park is the lake itself, the surrounding mountains and high plateaus off er visitors unique opportunities to explore volcanic terrain.

Towering nearly 8,000 feet above the neighboring Cascade peaks, Mount Rainier forms the roof of Washington state, reaching 14,411 feet. Mount Rainier National Park, in all its diversity, is a unifying icon for Washington’s grand landscapes — the most identifi able landmark around. The park boasts an array of terrain including fl owering parklands, 300 lakes, dozens of waterfalls, 25 glaciers, and 50 permanent snowfi elds.

MID-ATLANTIC AND NORTHEAST Acadia National Park in Maine proves that a park doesn’t need vast tracts of wilderness to off er gorgeous scenery and the chance for immersion in the natural world. Small for a national park, it is still among America’s most visited. And for good reason: The park preserves a glacier-carved landscape of rugged mountains, pristine lakes, lush forests, and long stretches of Maine’s famous rocky shore — all ripe for exploring.

The newest full-fl edged national park, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia is a haven for hiking, climbing, and rafting. The park encompasses 72,000 acres, with plenty to do and see, including whitewater rafting on the river, ziplining through old oak forests, 1,400 established rockclimbing routes and immersive history lessons in 17 stops along the African American Heritage Auto Tour.

SOUTHEAST Biscayne National Park preserves the beautiful blue waters of Biscayne Bay, just outside the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. Within sight of the city skyline, the 270-square-mile park, 95%

Arches National Park’s other formations include soaring pinnacles, massive rock fi ns and immense mesas. CRAIG MELLISH

of which is covered by water, off ers a wealth of opportunities for cruising, fi shing, and picnicking along the shore.

Among the least crowded national parks, with just 110,000 or so annual visitors, Congaree National Park is a hidden treasure in South Carolina. The largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the United States off ers plenty to see and do. Head away from the northwestern corner of the park, where most visitors wander, and make your way instead to the trails among the moss-draped tangle of primeval fl oodplain forest in other parts of the park.

One of the world’s great natural wonders, Mammoth Cave National Park sits beneath Kentucky hills and hollows.

It earned its grandiose designation in the 19th century, when visitors marveled at the sheer scale of the underground chambers. With more than 400 miles of mapped passageways, Mammoth encompasses the planet’s longest known cave system, with fi ve levels and caves yet to be discovered.

MIDWEST Between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, sits Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a patchwork wonder with a vast array of pleasures. In what other park can you ride a scenic railroad, stop at a roadside farm to buy fresh-picked blueberries, watch a glassblower create a decorative bowl, jog alongside a 19th-century canal, and hear a concert by one of the nation’s fi nest symphony orchestras?

The only national park named for a

person, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota is a fi tting honor to the president who helped establish fi ve national parks, 18 national monuments, and scores of wildlife reserves and national forests. The park’s landscape includes streams, canyons, bluff s, buttes, and colorful mounds dotting the badlands. Signature park attractions include bison, pronghorn sheep and elk that are easily spotted in herds around the park.

Imagine camping on your own private island, cooking freshly caught walleye for dinner, and walking in the morning to the sound of loons and the sight of a bald eagle fl ying over the sparkling water of a beautiful lake. All of that is possible within Voyageurs National Park in the North Woods of Minnesota. The park is 40% water, including four major lakes, but also off ers 655 miles of shoreline and 500 islands to roam.

SOUTH CENTRAL With its intriguing mix of history, geology, and nature, Arkansas’ Hot Springs National Park holds a unique place in the parks system. The smallest of the designated national parks, it wraps around a modern urban area set within a valley of the rugged Ouachita Mountains. The park’s 5,500 acres encompass wooded uplands, crisscrossed by 26 miles of hiking trails. Of course, the center of many park activities is Bathhouse Row; the Buckstaff Bathhouse has been in continuous operation since 1912.

First designated as a national monument in 1933, White Sands National

Park gained full-fl edged park status in 2019. The white sands here represent the world’s largest expanse of gypsum dunes, shaped over more than 200 million years and spread across 275 square miles of New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin.

Protecting about 40% of the dune fi eld, the park off ers many ways to explore and enjoy the strangely beautiful terrain, including short drives and a challenging desert hike.

SOUTHWEST More than 2,000 stone arches rise throughout the 240 square miles of Arches National Park in Utah, the world’s most concentrated display of these natural formations. To experience the best of the park, take the 18-milelong paved Arches Scenic Highway to spots where you can get out and hike through some of the park’s most iconic features, including Devils Garden, Park Avenue, and the Garden of Eden.

Carved by glaciers and dominated by Wheeler Peak, more than 13,000 feet high, remote Great Basin National Park protects Nevada landscapes of high-altitude desert valleys, salt fl ats, and rolling ridges. Explore the lake, which refl ects rocky scenes; the Lehman Caves brimming with palaces; and stay until dark to see the night sky dazzle with stars.

Looking for more parks to visit?

Check out National Geographic’s Guide to the National Parks, 9th Edition and Secrets to the National Parks, 2nd Edition, available wherever books are sold.

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EARTH DAY 2021

BOOT UP: TOP 10 HIKES IN U.S. Can’t make it to one of the parks on the list? Scenic trails abound all across the country. Above: Maroon Lake Trail near Aspen, Colorado. LINDA ARMSTRONG/SHUTTERSTOCK

Spectacular trails within national parks off er exercise and exhilaration

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t’s been estimated that up to 90% of visitors to U.S. national parks never leave the road, choosing to experience some of our nation’s most exquisite treasures from the front seat of their car rather than stepping out onto a trail. It doesn’t have to be like that. These 10 spectacular hikes — for experience levels ranging from beginners to trail masters — are worth opening the car door for. Head out for one-of-a-kind scenery, wildlife spotting and plenty of adventure in the comfort of the great outdoors.

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1. Hoh River Trail

Olympic National Park, Washington Magical. Enchanting. Straight out of a fantasy fi lm.

These are some of the words visitors use to describe the Hoh River Trail through a swath of old-growth temperate rainforest on the west side of Olympic National Park. The trail’s full length (34.8 miles out and back) can take three days to complete, so many day hikers simply do an out-and-back trek on the fi rst section, where you’ll fi nd veritable hallways of green, sitka spruce and western hemlock growing to as big as 15 feet, lichens and mosses draping off their branches, and ferns covering every conceivable surface, making the forest fl oor look carpeted.

2. Angels Landing

Zion National Park, Utah Visitors fl ock to the red-rock canyons of Zion National Park to take in the grand results of millions of years of geological forces. One of the most popular spots to take it all in is Angels Landing. Set atop a precipitous tower of rock in the middle of a valley, the landing is reachable only via a challenging 5-mile round-trip trek that rises nearly 1,500 vertical feet from the valley fl oor. There’s a 400-vertical-foot climb (with chains to hold for support) to the top, but the adrenaline-spiking ascent is worth it for the incomparable view: Enormous striped cliff s dotted with greenery stand sentinel over this serene valley in all directions.

3. Sugarlands Valley Nature Trail

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee For a quick day hike accessible even to novices, head to the Sugarlands Valley Nature Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Just a half-mile long, the hike takes only a half hour to loop, but it off ers plenty to do and see for a longer day. The trail is fully paved to be stroller-friendly and wheelchair-accessible. Though short, it still ticks several Great Smoky Mountains boxes: a serene forest setting, remnants of settler homesteads, including original stone chimneys, and access points and overlooks to the rushing waters of the West Prong and the Little Pigeon River.

4. Old Rag

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia This 9.2-mile trek up Old Rag Mountain, one of Shenandoah’s most popular trails, includes a 1.5-mile scramble over giant granite boulders but is still easily accomplished by moderately experienced hikers looking for an epic full-day hike. The mountain’s exposed summit rewards hikers with a 360-degree view of about 200,000 acres of the Shenandoah park. If you still have energy after the hike, take the nearby Hawksbill Summit trailhead from Skyline Drive, where you’ll climb to 4,051 feet, the park’s highest point.

Angels Landing provides sweeping views of Utah’s Zion National Park. MICHELE FALZONE/GETTY IMAGES

5. Great Marsh Trail

Indiana Dunes National Park, Indiana This short and easy trail is also one of Indiana Dunes’ most rewarding hikes. The 1.2-mile Great Marsh Trail traverses part of the largest wetland complex in the Lake Michigan watershed. About 500 acres of marsh hosts an extensive array of wildlife that you can spot from an observation deck, including herons, egrets, warblers and red-winged blackbirds.

6. Trail of Time

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona You often hear about the Grand Canyon’s epic trails and hikes that take you all the way down to the bottom.

Those are certainly worth experiencing, but an oftenoverlooked yet not-to-be-missed hike is the Trail of Time, a 2.8-mile path also known as “The Million Year Walk.” The relatively fl at, wheelchair-accessible trail is presented as a timeline: Each meter signifi es one million years of the Grand Canyon’s geological history, with bronze markers to describe where you are in the timeline’s history and stopping points to take in sweeping canyon views.

7. The Lost Mine Trail

Big Bend National Park, Texas A little over 5 miles from the Basin Junction in Big Bend National Park is the trailhead for one of the most popular moderate hikes in the park. The Lost Mine Trail is a 2.4-mile out-and-back hike, ending in a wonderful panoramic view after an elevation gain of more than 1,000 feet. If you’re not up for the full hike, walk just the fi rst mile, stopping at a saddle where the vista is almost as good, taking in Casa Grande, Juniper Canyon and a long-stance view south into Mexico.

8. Prater Ridge Trail

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado The North Rim of Mesa Verde National Park is the best place for spotting wildlife. For the ultimate viewing opportunity, try the 7.8-mile Prater Ridge Trail, which loops through the woodlands west of the Morefi eld Campground (the only campground facility in the park). The trail leads to an overlook of Montezuma Valley and a chance to spot some of the Park’s mammals, including mule deer, Rocky Mountain elk, porcupines and, on rare occasions, bobcats and black bears.

9. Kaupo Trail

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii One of the less-traveled but most spectacular trails in the upper regions of Haleakala National Park, a must-visit on any trip to Maui, is the Kaupo Trail. Considered one of the premier hikes in all of Hawaii, this trail rewards trekkers with lush scenery and frequent waterfalls. The trail off ers broad views towards the Big Island of Hawaii and the southeastern shore of Maui.

10. Sentinel Dome

Yosemite National Park, California Most visitors probably won’t reach the top of Half Dome, one of Yosemite’s most iconic formations,but the 1.1-mile hike to the apex of Sentinel Dome serves up a stellar view with somewhat less eff ort. The trail winds around the huge granite mound to a much easier approach. While still somewhat challenging, Yosemite granite provides superb traction. The view from the top is equally magical: the valley, Half Dome, and Upper Yosemite Falls lay out before you.

Looking for more hiking adventures? Check out National Geographic’s 100 Hikes of a Lifetime, available wherever books are sold.

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EARTH DAY 2021

PLANET POSSIBLE

Sunburst Peak in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park in British Columbia. In the distance is the mountain that gives the park its name. GEORGE F. MOBLEY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Nat Geo Staff Writers Special to USA TODAY

Bad news about the environment isn’t hard to fi nd these days. From melting glaciers to raging wildfi res, examples of the challenges facing the Earth dominate the headlines and loom large in our minds. For people who love the planet, it often seems as if reasons for optimism are in short supply.

Enter National Geographic, which is working to fl ip that dynamic with a new initiative called Planet Possible.

At its core, Planet Possible strives to build on National Geographic’s storied legacy of changing the way people understand the world through a commitment to boundary-pushing storytelling and exploration. Yet it also refl ects a belief that one of the changes needed now, perhaps more than at any other time in National Geographic’s 133-year history, is a change in mindset — and a renewed faith in the possibility of progress. In that sense, Planet Possible represents un-

Nat Geo initiative focuses on potential for progress

Enric Sala: marine ecologist, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence MANU SAN FELIX/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

charted territory for an organization that has never shied away from the unknown.

As with all things National Geographic, storytelling is at the heart the endeavor. A new Planet Possible hub will reside on the National Geographic website as a home for content that “seeks to inform, inspire and empower us to live lightly on the planet” and teaches “how to help protect the place that we call home.”

While National Geographic remains unwavering in its commitment to indepth coverage of the world’s environmental challenges, Planet Possible will feature optimistic, solutions-oriented stories that celebrate the Earth and showcase the work of changemakers across the globe. Readers can sign up for a weekly Planet Possible email newsletter. And National Geographic will distribute aligned programming under the Planet Possible banner for its television channels and Disney+.

Beyond journalism and TV, National Geographic envisions Planet Possible as a way to empower environmentally con-

scious consumers to take meaningful action in their own lives. To that end, the initiative will eventually include everything from social media activations — leveraging National Geographic’s massive following of 150 million users on Instagram — to Planet Possible-themed ecofriendly products, live events and other experiences. Many of these will feature National Geographic Explorers, enabling consumers to connect on a more personal level with the nonprofi t National Geographic Society’s conservation efforts around the world.

The launch of Planet Possible comes as the world prepares to celebrate Earth Day on April 22.

This year, National Geographic is marking the occasion with a virtual Earth Day Eve celebration that will stream on YouTube, leading into the midnight launch of its new Disney+ original series, “Secrets of the Whales.”

Learn more about Planet Possible at nationalgeographic.com/planetpossible

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EARTH DAY 2021

DIFFERENT WORLD VIEW An epic series reveals ‘Secrets of the Whales’ Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

A family of sperm whales socializes in the waters of the Azores, a cluster of islands in the Atlantic Ocean about 900 miles west of Portugal. BRIAN SKERRY

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Migrating beluga whales rely on echolocation — sonar — to make their way through hundreds of miles of maze-like ice THOMAS MILLER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY+

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here’s a pure “wow” moment that hooks viewers toward the beginning of “Secrets of the Whales.” h In popular mythology — and it is just that, mythology — whales attack humans and come off as evil giants. Yet what if whales were caring and proved their empathy? They are, and they do, repeatedly, in this series.

That wow moment early on comes as a whale tries to feed a man — a fi rst, according to experts.

The gasp-worthy encounter takes place in the waters off New Zealand when an orca presents a stingray to underwater photographer Brian Skerry, a National Geographic Explorer.

Skerry was nearing the end of a three-year project chronicling whale cultures around the world. The result is this four-part National Geographic series, which is executive produced by James Cameron and narrated by Sigourney Weaver. All four episodes begin streaming on Disney+ on Earth Day, April 22.

During his time with the orcas, Skerry just wanted to be ignored, at least long enough to capture footage of the black-and-white whales eating. Instead, he wound up being presented with this unique gift, a stingray a whale had caught to feed her family. It’s the whale equivalent of cooking and presenting food to a stranger.

“In 40 years, I have never seen this,” Skerry says, the awe still in his voice. “She literally drops the stingray

Belugas don’t have vocal cords. Their distinctive squeaks and chatters are made by forcing air through their blowholes. PETER KRAGH/ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

while passing by me, maybe 30-35 feet deep. I kneel next to this dead stingray. Is she going to come back?”

The whale did! She seemed surprised that he didn’t start eating.

“She positions herself directly in front of me,” Skerry says. “She looks at me and looks at the ray as if to say, ‘Are you going to eat that thing?’ and reaches down and picks it up and has it in her mouth. I am hoping to photograph it, and I get the picture, and then another orca from her family comes in and rips off a piece.”

It’s an extraordinary moment, and like the rest of this four-hour series, it’s the result of research, passion, curiosity, planning and luck. A calm energy, something Skerry also has, helps as well.

The astonishing scene is just one of many in the four

episodes — “Orca Dynasty,” “Humpback Song,” “Beluga Kingdom,” and “Ocean Giants” — that bring us into their worlds. Viewers will cringe as a polar bear lunges toward whale calves and laugh as calves frolic in safety.

Although the series goes to remote locales few of us will ever visit, it all feels familiar and personal because Skerry shows us more than exquisite and exotic waters; he chronicles societies — ancient ones that we’ve been oblivious about.

“When Brian Skerry talked to me about the concept of whales and their culture, I literally stopped and said, ‘Tell me more,’ ” recalls Janet Han Vissering, senior vice president of development and production for natural history content for National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Disney+. “Culture in an animal series was kind of the fi rst time I heard that. Brian blew my mind with that, and I said to him, ‘What are you talking about?’

And he said, ‘As humans — you are Korean and you grew up with rice, and we grew up with bread. Some eat with chopsticks, some eat with fork and knife, and some eat with hands. You may have orcas, and they may eat one thing in one area and another in another area.’ ” Initially, Skerry approached this as a single documentary. But Han Vissering knew it needed to be a series. This deserved the expanse of four episodes. As with any fi lming done in nature, it could not be controlled the way productions can be in studios.

“This could have gone horribly wrong,” Han Vissering notes. “Climate change is around us. The world is not as predictable as it used to be. You are playing roulette with nature when you are there. I felt like the whale gods said, 'Janet, this is the show everyone needs to see, so we are going to bless you so they can see this and

16

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

A mother humpback with her calf and two escort males in the Cook Islands of the Pacifi c. BRIAN SKERRY

carry our message.’

“On every natural history (documentary), there is no call sheet for nature,” she continues “You are playing dice even with the best. And natural history fi lmmakers are feeling the impact of the planet change because you could have experts say, ‘This is where you go to fi nd X, Y and Z, and it is not always going to pan out. Bad weather here, food not here, and you’ve got to shift.”

“Secrets of the Whales” reveals how whale culture goes beyond their mesmerizing songs. Whales have unique calls, which vary from species to species and even place to place, much like the diff erent languages and dialects of humans. They teach their children, live in communities, and display genuine empathy — even sharing food with a strange human.

The series doesn’t anthropomorphize the animals by assuming human motivations. Instead, it chronicles them as the exceptionally intelligent, emotional, advanced creatures they are.

Diverse, too. “The orcas in Patagonia hunt in a completely diff erent way than they do in New Zealand, and they don’t communicate with each other,” Cameron says. “So this is independently worked out adaptive culture and a knowledge base that’s passed down from generation to generation.”

Cameron defl ects credit for the series, showering Skerry with praise instead.

“I’m there as a kind of narrative guru,” Cameron says during a Zoom chat from his New Zealand home. “How do you tell the story? How do you tweak the cut a little bit? They were doing pretty great by themselves.”

It was Cameron, though, who helped add Weaver to the mix.

“I’d really gotten to know her well over the last few years since we made the fi rst ‘Avatar,’ ” he says. “We wound up going down to the Amazon a couple of times together and working with some of the indigenous tribes down there, trying to slow down some damn development that was going to have a really adverse eff ect on thousands of square miles of rainforest and people.

“So I knew that she was just a really strong advocate for conservation, for indigenous rights and for the ocean and all that, and the ocean more so now based on our work over the last couple of years,” Cameron says. “I

Left: Photographed off Sri Lanka, this large male sperm whale is about 14-15 meters long, or about 46-49 feet.

Sperm whales produce a range of clicking noises to communicate and for sonar-like navigation. BRIAN SKERRY

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

17

“There is so much we don’t know.

Whales have complex lives and families, and rituals that are unique to each species.”

Brian Skerry

Underwater photographer and National Geographic Explorer

knew she was going to want to do this, but she also really connected to the material. And I think that comes through in the heartfelt way that she speaks.”

A longtime and passionate conservationist, Cameron has logged between 3,000 and 5,000 hours undersea. (He didn’t keep logs when he started and never picked up the habit.) He’s also discovered species. Yet, despite all of this experience, even he was surprised by Skerry’s work.

“What he brought back really just blew my mind,” Cameron says.

There’s plenty to blow your mind — a fi stful of fi rsts.

The series documents a cross-species adoption as a pod of belugas takes in an orphan narwhal. It also includes the fi rst footage of a sperm whale nursing a calf.

And it delves into whales’ diff erent and complex languages. Belugas even seem to name their calves, so it’s easier for mothers to keep track of wandering off spring.

Skerry brings us not just remarkable images but a way to relate. The intimate moments of nurturing, feeding and playing prove similarities between land mammals (us) and marine mammals (them). It’s undeniable that we share many of life’s touchstones.

Watching a mourning female swim with her dead calf is heartrending. In the episode “Humpback Songs,” the joy of the humpback mom nuzzling her new calf is universal. Anyone watching can feel the love.

“It is a tender language of love, commitment and sacrifi ce,” Weaver’s voiceover says. “This whale mother traveled more than 4,000 miles from Antarctica to the warmth of the equator to have her baby.”

Weaver’s enthusiasm is audible. She recorded the series from her Manhattan home and found she was so delighted and surprised by what she was watching tht she could only narrate one a day. She was thrilled to be asked to join this project.

“Sitting at home during COVID as an actor, I felt incredibly useless,” Weaver says. “I am not an essential worker or a trained health professional. I was so grateful to be part of anything. Each time I had to do one, Brian would send it to me. Otherwise, I would be so gobsmacked, and I would usually watch by myself and then share with my husband and daughter only to see it again, to see if what I saw is really what I saw, because they are so astonishing. I have never seen footage like this.”

No one has.

“They are so not what we think each species is,” Weaver says. “They are so unique, and yet they all have something that I found so moving. They have leaders, but it is always about the group, about the survival of the group, passing down these hunting techniques, language, music, migration roots. And it also opens a win-

Orcas hunt stingrays — both for themselves and for a human guest, it turns out — off New Zealand. BRIAN SKERRY

dow into their world that allows you to kind of think and feel like a whale.”

That window into their world is also behind Skerry’s new book, with the same name as the series, on sale now. He also has a spread in the current issue of National Geographic magazine — “The Ocean Issue.”

Yet even for those who have read about whales, gone whale sighting or just thought about these majestic creatures, the series shows these mighty mammals in a new way.

“I feel I knew almost nothing,” Weaver says. “Now this was really an intimate visit with each species, and I think we think of whales not even with a capital ‘W,’ and there is so much mythology and novels. And I knew nothing about sperm whales, only what I’d seen in terrible movies like ‘Moby Dick.’ ” Even professional whale observer Skerry witnessed novel scenes, like the tender, tactile expressions of love between sperm whales.

“Those are the kinds of things I took away from this,” he says. “There is so much we don’t know. Whales have complex lives and families, and rituals that are unique to each species. If we lose any one of them, we would be losing a whale culture; it would be like losing a human culture. If viewers could come away with that, that's a game-changer.”

While Cameron framed the narrative, Raphaelle Thibault’s rich score adds emotional depth. The music never overwhelms whale sounds yet builds with the action.

“Families who watch it, you can’t unwatch it,” Weaver says. “These go right into your heart. I will never see a killer whale again without seeing Brian’s lunch with them and understanding their music. It really gives you something lasting.”

The most enduring lesson may be the reminder that,

not only do we share this planet with whales, but they were here 49.7 million years before modern humans.

“I think everything is important,” Skerry says. “Let me just give context. Nature is like a fi nely crafted Swiss watch — far grander, of course, but all of the gears of that watch have to mesh together perfectly to keep time.

And that is what this planet does. Everything matters.

As we begin to remove any of those gears, things break down.

“We have done a terrible job and wiped out a lot of precious resources,” he continues. “Whales are sentient creatures and have these complex lives and singing competitions. I think, as ambassadors for the ocean, they can serve an important role to help us see that everything matters. If we begin to see these ancestral traditions — I believe for so long humans have seen themselves apart from nature or above it — the better steward of the planet we will be. It is hard not to be charmed by a whale.”

For all the beauty the four hours off er, there is still the ugly reality that humans are killing whales and plenty of other marine life. During the orca episode, a whale becomes snagged in a fi shing line. It would have been deadly were he not cut loose. Nearly 1,000 whales die daily tangled on those lines, the series says. Other whales ingest the plastic waste and toxic garbage choking our oceans.

“It might make you cry when you think about these sentient, emotional animals kind of at our mercy, at the mercy of the relentless expansion of human civilization,” Cameron says. “They are going to be extinct if we don’t protect them. So how do we do that? If people go to a position of lesser apathy by watching these four hours, we've done something. We’ve moved the needle — however imperceptibly.”

18

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

A lesson learned in years with whales: ‘They are like us’ Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

BEHIND THE SCENES AND UNDER THE SEAS Brian Skerry, pictured photographing sperm whales, doesn’t have the luxury of using telephoto lenses or waiting hours for the perfect shot. STEVE DE NEEF

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

19

An orca “poses” with its kill for Skerry’s camera. During production of “Secrets of the Whales,” an orca tried to feed him a stingray. “This is a dream happening!” he thought. KINA SCOLLAY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY+

Brian Skerry swims back to the surface after a deep free dive to photograph humpback whales in the waters off Tonga in the South Pacifi c. STEVE DE NEEF

B

rian Skerry has friends in low places.

And they beat most friends in high places. h This National Geographic Explorer and Photographer has spent years chronicling whales around the world, with the stunning results appearing in the Disney+ four-part original series “Secrets of the Whales,” a book of the same title and a spread in the current issue of National Geographic magazine, dubbed The Ocean Issue.

Watching the four-part Disney + original series from National Geographic that premieres on Earth Day, April 22, it becomes clear that the whales accept this human.

Skerry radiates a calmness in the water, and whales take to his laid-back, respectful nature. He’s so accepted that at one point, a mother orca even tries to feed him, sharing a stingray she’s caught.

Skerry, 59, refl ected on that moment and his latest adventures in this conversation, edited for clarity.

How did this project come about?

I fi rst pitched it to the magazine, but I knew I needed about three years and a lot of locations. Given that — I am working on my 29th story for the magazine and get maybe 12 to 16 weeks of fi eld time — I went to the Na-

tional Geographic Society and submitted a proposal for a fellowship. That was approved, and then went to (National Geographic) television, and we developed the four-part series. And then I went to books, and they wanted to do a book, so that was the evolution.

Are you a trained zoologist or marine biologist?

I have a degree in fi lmmaking photography but not in science. I wasn’t good enough in math.

It looks pretty daunting, being that deep, with the world’s largest animals swimming past. What are the specifi c challenges?

Unlike my terrestrial counterparts, surface wildlife photographers — and I am not putting them down — I don’t have the luxury of sitting in a camoufl aged blind in a remote location and using a 600-millimeter lens and waiting for months for elusive animals to wander by.

Underwater, you have to get within a few meters of your subject. You can't use a telephoto lens; the ocean acts like a giant fi lter, and it refracts light and scatters. With a big whale, you have to get within a few meters, and with sharks within a few feet, eliminating the amount of water between you and the animal. What that means is: It is on the animals’ terms. They don’t always want you in their world, but when it does happen, it is magic.

You’ve been at this for so long and traveled so widely. Did this project take you any place new?

Many of the locations were new. I had never been to Dominica; I had never been to Sri Lanka, where we also went. I had never been to Tonga until this trip. Some, I had been to before, like the Canadian Arctic, but these were still diff erent locations.

Despite all that you already knew about whales, what did you learn while immersed in this project?

What I didn’t know is the degree to which they celebrate identity, the degree to which they love their families and show empathy. There is that scene in the orca episode with the mom carrying its dead baby, and those

are the brief glimpses I have gotten to see that rip out your heart. That day in the Norwegian Arctic was the fi rst time in my life I was away from home on Thanksgiving. It was a cold, gray, snowy day, and I got up, and I was a little homesick and thinking about my wife and daughters home having turkey. And then I saw that orca with her dead baby, and it just breaks your heart. It is a funeral procession and a funeral rite they have, but clearly, she could not let go of that calf. We have a multibillion-dollar whale-watching industry on planet Earth, and people all over can go see a whale and then eat a hot dog and go home (thinking), “What a great day!” But they don’t know about the lives (of the animals). I was privileged to learn about the lives.

What was that moment like when a behemoth of an orca presented you with this gift of a stingray?

My heart is racing. I am in the zone, and I just want to get a great image. There is always a part of my brain like an 8-year-old- boy. This is a dream happening! I have a giant whale interacting in front of me. Here it is! It is hard to process.

What was your goal for “Secrets of the Whales”?

It was that simple tag line: I wanted people to see the ocean in a new way. A lot of great stuff has been done with whale science and documentaries. If we can view the ocean through the lens of whale culture, if everybody can start to see that this planet is a lot more like us, that ... changes everything. They are like us. Once you know something, you can’t unknow it.

What’s next for you?

I started a project last year for National Geographic on the Gulf of Maine, off Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. It is tied to the building of America, the epicenter of global ocean change. The Gulf of Maine is warming 99% faster than the rest of the ocean. Approved in 2019, my plan was to begin in it in 2022. (Skerry is a New England native.) “Guess what?” I said to my wife. “I will not be getting on a plane but driving to locations at home.”

20

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

WHALE TALES They smile, they speak, they sing, they survive Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

In the last days of sunlight before the Norwegian Arctic descends into months of darkness, a pair of orcas move in to feed on herring that migrate there in the fall and winter.

ORCAS Every year, hundreds of beluga whales gather at Cunningham Inlet on Somerset Island in the Canadian Arctic. There, they mate, raise their young — and scrub their bellies on the rocky sea floor in the shallow water. PHOTOS BY BRIAN SKERRY

BELUGAS Here’s a physical challenge: Watch beluga whales and try keep a straight face.

It may be impossible to look at these playful animals and not feel happy. Besides, these white whales always seem to be smiling themselves. In the “Secrets of the Whales” episode “Beluga Kingdom,” we learn that they have one of the largest vocabularies in the ocean and are among the most social animals on the planet.

“The journey begins every summer in the Arctic,” Brian Skerry writes in the “Secrets of the Whales” companion book. “After spending the long, dark winters in Canada’s Baffi n Bay, hundreds of beluga whales swim together through the Northwest Passage and make their way among the breaking, shifting ice to a small inlet on Somerset Island. It’s only a speck on the map.”

They are toothed whales, like dolphins and their Arctic cousins the narwhals. Their 20-foot long, gleaming

white bodies can speed through frigid water, under chunks of ice, at 20 mph.

Their skin is 100 times as thick as ours.

In “Secrets of the Whales,” we see pods come together at the inlet until more than 2,000 belugas have gathered.

To watch belugas “do the banana,” when their heads and tails jut out of the water as they rub their bellies on rocks on the sea fl oor in the shallow water, is an utter joy — for them and for us.

In the series, we see Skerry photographing belugas in Cunningham Inlet as mothers swim past with their newborns.

“It is a giant beluga whale nursery — unbelievable,” Skerry says.

As these absolutely joyful belugas cruise past him, that try-not-to-smile challenge can be accepted by viewers.

“When you look at the species, they just don’t have a bad day,” notes Janet Han Vissering, senior vice president of development and production for natural history content for National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Disney+. “Belugas have a permanent smile.”

“Brian is invited to share the feast,” Sigourney Weaver says, narrating “Orca Dynasty,” the fi rst episode of “Secrets of the Whales.” One can almost imagine the black-and-white whales setting a table for underwater photographer and National Geographic Explorer Brian Skerry, the force behind this series.

But that would be cartoon fantasy, and this is very real. It proves not only that cross-species communication is a reality but also that mothers around the world will feed any skinny creature (even a stranger) that crosses their paths.

In his wetsuit, swimming smoothly near an orca, Skerry is presented — and there can be no other interpretation — with a stunned stingray that the orca has caught. The whale turns toward Skerry and smiles as she leaves her gift.

“The orca, oh my gosh,” Weaver says months later, still astonished by the scene she’d narrated. “And I am thinking: I am quite involved with the ocean, but I don’t think there have been stories shared about whales that are this intimate and specifi c and mindblowing. Watching Brian cavorting with these killer whales, 5 feet away from the one that off ered him this ray for lunch — it is so moving.”

To be fair, orcas are not always this friendly and gracious where food is concerned. “When it comes to blood sport, orcas are capable of just about anything,” Skerry writes in the “Secrets of the Whales” book. “They can kill a shark with a fl ick of their tail. They eat seabirds and turtles, snatch sea lions from shore, and even bring down other whales.”

Scenes of an orca sneaking up on the shoreline to snatch sea lions prove this. Consider how diffi cult it would be to move stealthily if you weighed 6 tons and were 26 feet long. Yet, when an orca slides in with a crashing wave and opens that gigantic mouth to eat, the sea lions never saw it coming.

USA USA TODAY TODAY SPECIAL SPECIAL EDITION EDITION

2121

Humpbacks Humpbacks in the in the Pacifi c Pacifi c — one — one seen seen from from thethe top, top, one one from from thethe bottom. bottom.

HUMPBACKS HUMPBACKS

remarkable remarkable chorus. chorus.

Out Out onon thethe water, water, Skerry Skerry gets gets incredincredibly ibly close close to their to their action action and and is in is a inboat a boat In the In the “Secrets “Secrets of the of the Whales” Whales” episode episode when when a pod a pod all all butbut jumps jumps in.in.

“Humpback “Humpback Song,” Song,” wewe seesee just just how how comcom- HeHe captures captures them them “bubble “bubble netting” netting” off off plex plex humpback humpback whales whales are. are. thethe coast coast of Alaska. of Alaska.

That’s That’s when when whales whales They They communicate communicate in in a nuanced a nuanced and and work work together together to to catch catch fi sh fi sh by by circling circling involved involved language. language.

Lest Lest anyone anyone think think them, them, disorienting disorienting them them and and corralling corralling that that is not is not a huge a huge deal, deal, trytry texting texting with with a a them them into into a “net” a “net” of of bubbles bubbles made made by by teenager teenager who who considers considers “K”“K” to be to be a coma com- their their blowholes. blowholes.

Each Each whale whale hashas a specifa specifplete plete sentence. sentence. ic job ic job in the in the eff ort. eff ort.

It’sIt’s done done cooperatively cooperatively “Every “Every year, year, after after testing testing outout a variety a variety and and effi ciently effi ciently and and looks looks likelike a precisely a precisely of of tunes tunes —— sequences sequences of of moans, moans, howls, howls, choreographed choreographed dance. dance. cries cries and and other other noises noises —— male male humphump- Across Across thethe planet, planet, in in Australia, Australia, is is backs backs in in thethe Pacifi c Pacifi c settle settle onon a winning a winning where where thethe humpbacks’ humpbacks’ pop pop tune tune of of thethe song,” song,” Brian Brian Skerry Skerry writes writes in the in the “Secrets “Secrets season season starts. starts. of of thethe Whales” Whales” book. book.

“The “The fact fact that that it’sit’s a small a small group group of of “Eventually, “Eventually, that that melody melody willwill travel travel male male humpbacks humpbacks off off Western Western Australia Australia across across thethe entire entire Pacifi c Pacifi c Basin.

Basin.

Group Group by by that that actually actually composed composed thethe song song that that is is group, group, singing singing to to attract attract mates mates or or chalchal- going going to to be be thethe song song forfor thethe entire entire poppoplenge lenge rivals, rivals, thethe whales whales spread spread thethe song song ulation ulation of of thethe Southern Southern Hemisphere Hemisphere of of from from Australia Australia to French to French Polynesia, Polynesia, some some humpback humpback whales whales —— that’s that’s notnot just just culcul4,000 4,000 miles miles away.” away.” ture, ture, that’s that’s pop pop culture,” culture,” says says James James The The sounds sounds they they make make range range from from Cameron, Cameron, thethe series’ series’ executive executive producer. producer. that that of aofspooky a spooky attic attic door door creaking creaking open open “That’s “That’s thethe Beatles.

Beatles.

I mean, I mean, somebody somebody is is to to a powerful a powerful horn horn being being blown blown underunder- writing writing thethe music, music, and and then then everybody everybody water. water. gets gets that that damn damn tune tune caught caught in their in their head, head, The The results results areare haunting, haunting, and and when when all all and and they they can’t can’t stop stop singing singing it. it.

That’s That’s thethe humpbacks humpbacks pick pick upup thethe tune, tune, it is it ais a pretty pretty amazing.” amazing.”

SPERM SPERM WHALES WHALES “Group “Group byby group, group, singing singing toto attract attract mates mates oror challenge challenge rivals, rivals, the the whales whales spread spread the the song song from from Australia Australia toto French French Polynesia, Polynesia, some some 4,000 4,000 miles miles away.” away.”

Brian Brian Skerry Skerry

in the in the book book “Secrets “Secrets of the of the Whales” Whales”

A massive A massive bubble bubble fi llsfi lls thethe screen. screen.

AsAs sunlight sunlight illuminates illuminates itsits path, path, it percoit percolates lates to the to the water’s water’s surface. surface.

“This “This is the is the breath breath of aofgiant a giant — and — and notnot just just any any giant, giant, butbut a sleeping a sleeping one,” one,” narranarratortor Sigourney Sigourney Weaver Weaver says says in in thethe “Se“Secrets crets of of thethe Whales” Whales” episode episode “Ocean “Ocean Gi-Giants.” ants.”

The The image image segues segues to a toscene a scene of sperm of sperm whales, whales, 4040 feet feet long, long, sleeping sleeping vertically, vertically, A young A young sperm sperm whale whale calf calf dubbed dubbed suspended suspended in the in the water. water.

While While thethe behebehe- “Hope” “Hope” swims swims beneath beneath herher mother mother in in moths moths of of thethe deep deep have have long long fascinated fascinated thethe Caribbean Caribbean waters waters offoff Dominica.

Dominica. us,us, there’s there’s so so much much wewe don’t don’t know know and and Though Though only only 6 months 6 months old, old, thethe calf calf haven’t haven’t seen seen — until — until now. now. appears appears to to have have scars scars caused caused by by Brian Brian Skerry, Skerry, National National Geographic Geographic Ex-Ex- entanglement entanglement with with fi shing fi shing nets. nets. plorer plorer and and Photographer, Photographer, documented documented forfor thethe fi rst fi rst time time how how newborn newborn sperm sperm whales whales feed. feed. those those deep deep breaths, breaths, they they dive dive down down to to “She “She hashas nono lipslips forfor sucking, sucking, and and eat, eat, clicking clicking along along thethe way, way, communicatcommunicatmom’s mom’s nipples nipples areare inverted,” inverted,” Weaver Weaver inging with with one one another. another. says. says.

“The “The young young calf calf pushes pushes herher jawjaw into into Perhaps Perhapshe hemost mostfamous famoussperm sperm thethe nipple nipple cavity, cavity, and and thethe milk milk is injected is injected whale, whale, Moby Moby Dick, Dick, gotgot a bum a bum raprap from from into into herher mouth.” mouth.”

Herman Herman Melville, Melville, who who described described a mera merIt’sIt’s a remarkable a remarkable scene scene of life of life and and love, love, ciless ciless creature creature that that took took Captain Captain Ahab’s Ahab’s all all seen seen through through thethe blue blue haze haze of of water. water. legleg and and drove drove him him mad. mad.

Among Among thethe funfun facts facts to be to be found found here, here, “They “They may may be be more more than than 5050 tons, tons, butbut sperm sperm whales whales sleep sleep less less than than any any mammam- sperm sperm whales whales areare gentle gentle giants,” giants,” Weaver Weaver mal mal onon thethe planet. planet.

Their Their brains brains areare sixsix tells tells us.us.

“They “They have have deep deep family family connecconnectimes times larger larger than than ours, ours, and and their their blood blood tions. tions.

Generations Generations of females of females learn learn from from cancan hold hold eight eight times times more more oxygen. oxygen.

With With each each other.” other.”

22

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

URGENCY AND THE SEA

Sylvia Earle was chief scientist at NOAA in the early 1990s. ERIKA LARSEN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle sounds the alarm but still fi nds reasons to have hope Jacqueline Cutler

“T Special to USA TODAY

he ocean is Earth’s life support system,” an authoritative yet kind voice says as anemones and fi sh fl ash across the screen. “No ocean, no us.” h In “Perpetual Planet: Heroes of the Oceans,” Sylvia Earle explains how human beings depend on the very seas they’re destroying. The documentary, which airs on National Geographic on April 22 at 11/10c — Earth Day — highlights efforts globally to repair the damage.

Among marine biologists and oceanographers, Earle is revered. The fi rst woman to walk on the seafl oor, Earle has spent thousands of hours underwater, living in submerged laboratories for weeks at a time and diving in submersibles. As a National Geographic Explorer at Large, she knows what she’s talking about when she warns that people “perversely seem to be trapped by our old habits and traditions and policies.”

Even though oceans are on “the brink of collapse,” Earle says, “I still have great hope.”

“We have habits born of a time we overspent,” Earle says from her home in Oakland, California. “We took too much. Now armed with knowledge, everyone can make a personal decision. Knowing that bluefi n tuna are at perilously low levels, why would we continue to have tuna on our menu? That is just one small example.”

Her righteous frustration with humans’ toll on the planet does not end at the water’s edge. Earle is also infuriated about “grinding up a 1,000-year-old tree for lawn furniture or destroying acres for palm oil.”

At 85, Earle has been teaching about the sea for a long time. She was fi rst woman to be chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and was named Time magazine’s fi rst “Hero of the Planet” in 1998. As she continues her work to sound the alarm, Earle strikes a balance between ruing that the time to act was yesterday and providing reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

The documentary, which she narrates, focuses on people dedicated to helping save the oceans.

Among them is Emma Camp, who set up a coral nursery on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Images of the once-vibrant reefs having turned deathly shades of gray are tragic. Yet Camp’s work proves that undersea nurseries can grow coral.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

23

“I am not alone in saying the next 10 years will determine the fate of civilians for the next 10,000 years. The biggest problem is complacency.”

Sylvia Earle

In Peru, Kerstin Forsberg teaches children about giant manta rays native to the region. The largest on record had a wingspan of 30 feet. Forsberg understands what Earle has long known: Educate the children, and they’ll carry the banner.

But if adults continue to dump millions of tons of plastic a year into the oceans while removing marine life, there will be catastrophic results.

“I am not alone in saying the next 10 years will determine the fate of civilians for the next 10,000 years,” Earle says.

“The biggest problem is complacency.”

She appreciates how the digital age makes it possible for millions to learn quickly what once would have taken years to disseminate.

While scientists have long recognized the growing peril, they “have been notoriously inward-looking in the past,” she says. “Gathering evidence and sharing what they know with the public once was considered unprofessional.”

About 50 years ago, Earle had an epiphany. She could spend her life in academia or serve as an ambassador for the seas. “So who could fault me for telling the truth in the best way we can?” she asks. “That is the goal. Communicate to the best of our ability.”

That includes recognizing that the oceans, while seemingly infi nite and eternally unchanging, are not. “We have to adjust our behavior accordingly,” Earle says. “This is not a burden, just common sense. The cliff is right there. Do you want to keep walking?”

The way to get people to act is by helping them understand the risks and not allowing the sheer size of the problem to overwhelm them.

“You should never underestimate the power you’ve got, whether you’re 10 years old or CEO of a major company,” Earle says. “Because we know it is the power of knowing. Don’t let complacency get in the way of doing something right now.”

Perhaps the most straightforward path to success comes by seeing these issues through children’s eyes. Children tend not to overcomplicate situations and usually ask direct questions, which

Emma Camp checks out corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which she is working to save. FRANCK GAZZOLA/©ROLEX

“Everyone can make a personal decision” to reduce the harm done to the oceans, says Sylvia Earl, seen above on a dive boat in the Syechelles. STEFAN WALTER/©ROLEX

should yield direct solutions.

Even when tempted to despair, “I look at the progress, and I look at the kids,” Earle says.

And she’s heartened — though decidedly not satisfi ed — that “nations around the world are committed to protecting at least 30% of the ocean in a natural state.

We need to amp it up, and we need to take the need seriously. This is not a choice. It is vital — 30% by 2030. Right now, less than 3% of the ocean is safeguarded.”

She urges everyone to take stock.

“Ask what you can do today,” Earle says. “Don’t put it off . Don’t think there is plenty of the natural world to go around, and we can still consume the trees that have taken centuries to grow, we can still extract coal and oil and gas that have taken millions of years to form, and burn through it casually to fuel our short-term desires.

“We are seeing a shift from fossil fuels to sources of energy that will enable us to endure beyond this century if we keep doing what we are now doing,” she continues.

“Look at the trends, just look at the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we have burned the trees. When you take millions of tons of fi sh out of the ocean, you are destroying the mechanism that captures the carbon.”

She continues to lecture, drawing strength from the sea and diving in as often as possible. Earle has no intention of retiring.

“Why should I stop?” Earle asks.

24

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

CHILLIN’ WITH POLAR BEARS Studying these giants requires patience and a respectful distance Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

A mother polar bear and her cubs. Climate change is gradually shrinking the pack ice that serves as polar bears’ habitat and hunting grounds. ALEXEY SEAFARER/GETTY IMAGES

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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Scientists generally consider polar bears to be the largest bears on Earth. JOHN PITCHER/GETTY IMAGES

A

polar bear poking its head out into the world for the fi rst time may well be the most adorable image we ever see on television. h And when that 3-month-old cub and its twin emerge from an ice cave in “Kingdom of the Polar Bears,” premiering April 22 at 8/7c on Nat Geo WILD, a man who has spent his life around these apex predators is there to marvel with us.

“I was born and raised in Churchill,” Dennis Compayre says of the town in northern Manitoba where he still lives. “There’s always polar bears somewhere. We always caught fl eeting glimpses of them. Back in the day, they were discouraged from coming into town.

There were shots, and whenever there was an alarm, we would jump in my dad’s truck and catch a glimpse of the rear end of them.”

As a kid in that remote village, Compayre was understandably afraid of polar bears. After all, they can grow to 8 feet tall and about 1,800 pounds. He never knew when one was lurking around the next snowbank.

“We played road hockey, endless road hockey,” Compayre recalls. “There were no street lights, and once it got dark, it got kind of creepy.” Then, he says, “sometimes the neighborhood dogs would start to howl — a very noticeable bear howl that means ‘Get your ass home.’ ” One night, he recalls, “I started fl at-out running, and I was crossing the road to get to my house, and there

was a big old bear standing right in the road. There was no way I could stop. I ran within 4 or 5 feet of the bear’s nose, and I got to the porch and stopped and turned around. And there was the bear looking at me like I was a nutcase, and he didn’t Compayre give a damn.”

“I then said, ‘This is cool!’ That chipped away at the whole psyche of the bears being downright killers. From that moment on, I felt diff erently.”

Compayre’s calm fascination and ability to observe silently has served him well, as he proves in the fi lm.

He’s not a scientist, but he has spent much of his 69 years watching polar bears, leading tours over this frozen land. For “Kingdom of the Polar Bears,” Compayre set off to follow a polar bear for a year.

“My fi nal quest before I give it up,” as he puts it.

Just how cold it gets in this windswept wilderness near the Arctic Circle is apparent as Hudson Bay freezes over. A pregnant female starts looking for a place to have her cubs. Eventually, she retreats to a birthing den, a cozy cave in the ice, where she will settle in.

There’s wonderful footage of the babies, less than a pound at birth, snuggling into their mom. Living off her own stored fat, she nurses the cubs, who will grow to 25 pounds before they venture out. Compayre waits to see them. Finally, after 10 days of Compayre sitting close — but not too close — to the den, the mom exits. She needs food. When her cubs fi rst poke their heads out of the den, it would take someone with a heart as cold as these environs not to gush as they frolic in the snow. The male cub is more cautious, the female more daring.

Compayre keeps a watchful eye and a respectful dis-

Polar bears are one of the few large carnivores still found in roughly their original habitat and range, the World Wide Fund For Nature says. TIFFANY SPENCE

tance. A paragon of patience, he knew where they were and waited, as at ease on the tundra as most would be sitting on a lawn in the spring. He does what so few can: He waits, silently and patiently. His beard freezes, and yet he remains. Just watching this will make you reach for a blanket and a steaming mug of tea, but Compayre stays stoic.

“What better position can a guy be in?” he asks.

“There is absolutely nothing to do. You are totally relaxed. You have the right gear on and marvel at the fact that you are in front of a polar bear den.

“Just sit there and zone out and think. It is a great time for meditation.”

While it may look like nothing but an endless panorama of various shades of white, glittering in winter’s harsh sunlight, Compayre knows there is much to see.

“It is not a bunch of emptiness, by no means,” he says. “The landscapes change continuously; every time a cloud goes across the sky, it is a diff erent look, or a raven will go by. There is always something happening.

It is not a dead world, that is for sure.”

After all these years of watching polar bears, Compayre, naturally, is concerned about global warming and the animals’ melting habitat. Yet he is also convinced that the polar bears have long hunted belugas and seals in open water and that we’re only now noticing these patterns.

“I always say when humans, as a species, are nothing but cracks and rocks, there will always be a polar bear wandering around out there,” he says.

However, we cannot continue to destroy the planet and assume all will be just dandy, he warns.

“Like any other species on this dang-bang planet,” Compayre says, “where goes the bears, so go we.”

26

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021 A brownthroated sloth at the Dallas World Aquarium.

ONE LAST LOOK JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

Photo Ark preserves animals in images

Jacqueline Cutler

J

Special to USA TODAY

oel Sartore is on a mission, and he wants everyone to join him. h The founder of the National Geographic Photo Ark project, Sartore is determined to document every animal species in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries. h As of this writing, he’s photographed 11,341 of them.

Sartore

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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Oblong-winged katydids come in vivid colors, such as this pink one at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo. JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

“The goal with each shot is to have another chance to get the public to care about what happens to nature because what happens to everything else is what is going to happen to people, too,” he says from his home in Nebraska.

Essentially, all Sartore asks is that people care about the other creatures on Earth and do their part to respectfully share the planet.

Following a career that had him snapping photos in the wild, he has now taken pictures of the last animal of its kind on Earth for several species.

Please allow the gravity of that statement to sink in.

His portraits are all we have left of creatures that were once part of our ecosystem. By sharing his photos, the mild-mannered Midwesterner bears witness for us all. Consider how it lingers when you have stared into the eyes of a photo of someone who has since died.

In these instances, though, everyone has died.

“I think about a little frog named Toughie,” Sartore recalls. “He lived in the Atlanta Botanical Garden, and he was the very last of his kind, brown and smaller than a baseball, the last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog.”

Sartore photographed the frog during more than one visit. “I thought, ‘Will I be able to tell his story? If he does go extinct, I will tell his story far and wide,’ ” Sartore says. “And that may be the key to our own story, getting people to care about something small and brown. If we can get people to care about that, they will care about off spring and our children and grandchildren.”

That sentiment encapsulates who Sartore is: a man who can make you care about a small, brown frog.

Perhaps it’s easier to care about other primates that share 99% of our DNA and look so much like us, but conjuring up compassion for amphibians, bugs, or mollusks may take a moment.

(To appreciate the scope of Sartore’s work, scroll through the website at natgeophotoark.org.)

Even if you don’t know his name, you may well know his searing portraits. Sartore captures the essence of animals and insects and prompts the realization that humans are not the only ones with souls and feelings.

“When I look at them, and they look back at me, they are extremely intelligent,” he says. “They made it through hundreds of thousands of years, in some cases millions.”

“Toughie,” the last known Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog, photographed at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

“I was always aware of extinction. So that is why I am on this mission for most of my adult life. The bridge is out.

Stop driving and stop and think about what we are doing.”

Joel Sartore

Perhaps that is why his photos stay with us, and why if you pick up one of his six books, you can’t simply fl ip the pages but fi nd yourself drawn into each photo, genuinely looking at the subject, connecting.

Haunting images of animals — some of which may not exist for much longer — are captured against either a black or white background. A brown-throated sloth grinning, oblong-winged katydids in neon colors, the underside of the extremely rare peacock parachute spider — all are mesmerizing in Sartore’s lens.

Armed with his journalism degree, Sartore worked at the Wichita Eagle newspaper for six years before becoming a contract photographer for National Geographic. The seeds of his lifelong passion were planted when he was a child. His mom had a book about birds, which included a chapter about the last passenger pigeon.

“I was always aware of extinction,” he says. “So that is why I am on this mission for most of my adult life. The bridge is out. Stop driving and stop and think about what we are doing.”

Sartore had been a National Geographic photographer for 17 years when this mission took form. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer the day before

Thanksgiving 2005. They had three young children, and Sartore knew he needed to switch gears from assignments that took him away from home for weeks.

His wife is fi ne now, Sartore adds.

“I had a chance to think, what will I do with the second half of my life, and maybe I should try to document all species,” he recalls. “How about something very intimate, where all animals get a very equal voice? It gives a mouse as much of a say as an elephant; tiger beetles count as much as tigers. From minnows to sparrows to squirrels to spiders, you name it. It is everything we can get bigger than a grain of rice.”

The Photo Ark is true democracy in action.

“Each species we bring onto the Photo Ark gives us another shot in winning the public over,” Sartore says.

“Nature is on the run right now. We have reached the Anthropocene, the age of man. We dominate the air and land, and sea. We run the risk of altering crop production. Many, many people could suff er.”

If humans don’t care about other species, perhaps self-interest will motivate them to care about the planet. “Eliminating insects with pesticides, we lose pollinators,” Sartore reminds. “Will we be smart enough to save big blocks of habitat not just for animals but man, too?”

As daunting as his quest is, Sartore has hope. And he has plans to fi nish this mission. At 58, he fi gures on doing this for another 15 years. His kids have been traveling with him. If need be, they could fi nish.

“How can I get people to care?” Sartore asks. “This is a life-or-death question. Will humans fi gure this out in time? The fate of the natural world is tied to us. Will we be smart enough, or will we only pay attention to the price at the gas pumps, and who won the ballgame and fi ghting with our political opponents?

“Not if I can help it.”

28

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021 ‘IMPACT’: Documentaries follow 6 diff erence-makers Jacqueline Cutler

G

Special to USA TODAY

al Gadot is forging a movement of wonder women. h They are women who are confronting problems, including dire environmental issues, and are determined to solve them, as shown in “National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot.”

This six-part documentary short series focuses on women making a diff erence. There’s the Louisiana Native American chief fi ghting for her tribe as it quickly loses land to the ravages of human-made disasters.

There’s the Puerto Rican woman who, in her teens, began expanding access to clean water on the island still in dire need after 2017’s Hurricane Maria.

“We all thought of it as much more than these series of short fi lms, hopefully more of a movement.”

Vanessa Roth

Executive producer and director

‘WOMEN OF WONDER’ Gal Gadot produces “IMPACT,” a documentary short series premiering April 26. JASON BELL/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The women featured in the series aren’t just confronting environmental crises. There are young ballerinas dancing amid the rubble in Brazil’s favelas, where the ambient sound isn’t classical music but gunfi re.

There are African American girls ice-skating in Detroit, excelling in a sport dominated by whites.

There are trans women of color, survivors of violence, fi nally getting a home of their own in Memphis, Tennessee. And a heartbroken sister leading other mourning women into the waters of Half Moon Bay in California, teaching them to surf.

“There are endless stories to tell, but among the endless stories that we can tell, they are the stories that are more extraordinary,” Gadot said at a Television Critics Association press conference. “And I think that with all these women, what we can see is that all of them come from diffi cult circumstances, whether it’s violence, poverty, trauma, discrimination, natural disasters. And yet it fuels them. It gives them more power to dare, to dream, to change, to speak up, and to really make a change in their communities.”

Starting April 26, one new documentary per week will be available on National Geographic social media, including YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and will later air on Nat Geo. Each tells a complete story in under 16 minutes and leaves viewers moved.

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Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar and her people are trying to protect their ancestral land from the sea even as they prepare to relocate. JORDAN HEFLER/ENTERTAINMENT ONER

Even under miserable circumstances, these women sow seeds of hope.

“I keep on calling them my women of wonder because they are the true heroes,” said Gadot, star of the “Wonder Woman” movies. “I go to set, and I get dressed, and I get my costume and sword and everything, and I fi ght — but (it’s) make-believe. But they actually are there on the ground, sweating and doing all they can to really make the world a better place.”

Executive producer and series director Vanessa Roth went to grad school for social work and law, so making fi lms that tackle essential issues is natural for her. Plus, she liked the change to short-form from features.

“We all thought of it as much more than these series of short fi lms — hopefully, more of a movement,” Roth says. “And, hopefully, a way that women could connect with other women around the world. It doesn’t have to just be women, but this concept of really shining the light on people who sometimes don’t even necessarily mean to make such a huge impact. They’re just doing something because they fi nd it important. And then it

starts touching the lives of others.”

Each story began with a single inspiration.

“They were impacted by something which caused them to act,” Roth says. “That was the other thing, too — this idea of the word ‘impact.’ We have also been thinking about very deliberately as to where each person has been impacted by policy, socioeconomic circumstances, the environment, or grief and loss.”

Two of these women’s stories spotlight environmental crises, although neither sought the spotlight herself.

Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe is in the midst of many important issues: working to have her tribe federally recognized, looking for ways to relocate people who have always been on the bayou as the ocean swallows up more and more of their ancestral land. When interviewed, she was on her way to protest the proposed closing of a sister tribe’s public school.

The fi lm, titled “Killer Red Fox,” shows the role of energy companies and climate change in obliterating this sacred ground.

“Since the beginning, we have always been here,” Parfait-Dardar says. “We adapt. We have always adapted. We are a very resilient people, and we are familiar with the water. Now we are working with diff erent agencies and organizations to protect and preserve our sacred spaces and the land that we have left, by utilizing traditional ecological knowledge, to do what is called bulkheading. It is adding to the shoreline and can be done in many diff erent ways; it can be done by using a living shoreline with oyster shells, a very traditional practice of my people.”

The land of her ancestors, Grand Caillou Dulac, is shrinking at an alarming rate. Experts estimate it will be gone within 25 to 50 years. To be safe, she’s looking at the shorter time frame.

“We are going to do what we need to do to protect and serve the lands,” Parfait-Dardar says. “You don’t just abandon your homelands and Mother Earth. You are supposed to be protecting her. However, in my duty to my people, I have to be a realist; we are also planning ahead for resettlement. That is just the reality.”

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

Tuany Nascimento started a ballet dance company for young girls in the middle of one of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous favelas. SEBASTIAN GIL MIRANDA

Arianna Font Martin’s reality and the impact she’s making are also related to water, but in a profoundly different way.

In “The Ripple Eff ect,” Font brings the people of Puerto Rico fi ltration devices to produce clean water.

Now 20 and a third-year student at the University of Puerto Rico studying economics and languages, Font was 16 when Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

She huddled in her living room with her mother, grandmother and brother, waiting for the storm to pass.

For anyone who forgot, the chaos wrought by this massive storm was the reason Donald Trump visited the U.S. territory and tossed paper towel rolls to people, a scene shown in the fi lm. “We were disappointed but not surprised,” Font says evenly. “We certainly were expecting something like that from him. He described us as a drain of money on the U.S.” Hurricane Maria, though, was not the beginning of the island’s water struggles. Many people did not have access to clean water even before the storm. Afterward, however, the problem became a crisis.

Font’s older brother was involved in an organization, Enactus, a nonprofi t that helps Puerto Ricans have a more sustainable life. Font followed him to the university and into the group assisting the community.

“Basically, what we do is clean bodies of water in these communities that don’t have that clean, safe ac-

Arianna Font Martin is expanding access to clean water in her native Puerto Rico. ENTERTAINMENT ONE

“What a great way to spend your life — doing something you are really passionate about. And for me, that is helping people.”

Arianna Font Martin

cess to water,” she explains. “We also want to attack the issue from the source. We do two things at the same time: We want to provide people with clean and safe water and teach them to interact with water through machines, and so when it reaches the ocean, the least amount of pollution gets there.”

“I want young girls to see we are just like them, and if we don’t do it, no one else will do it,” Font says. “What a great way to spend your life — doing something you are really passionate about. And for me, that is helping people. I was very excited that we would fi nally have the spotlight. Men are in this, too, fi ghting for climate action. But women are also on the front lines.”

While the documentaries spotlight women, all were careful not to exclude men.

“At this moment, the world can be very divisive and

can be very discouraging,” Roth says. “This last year obviously has been just traumatic for everybody. But there are still incredible, brave, courageous, ambitious people who care about the community. They’re willing to step outside of their own comfort zone and make a change in someone’s life. And I think that’s why I also like these short-form documentaries that we’re doing because I think you can watch them, and they’re inspiring, they’re uplifting.”

The impact each of these women makes invariably leads to positives. Regardless of the awful eff ects of climate change and the looming tragedy of her tribe having to move from its ancestral lands, Chief Parfait-Dardar remains optimistic.

“I am beyond hopeful,” she says. “You have to be because it is about balance. We understand that. We are here, and every day is a day to grow and transition; and people grow and transition in their own time, and we love them and pray for them.”

It’s that potent combination of identifying the problem and working to solve it that results in impact.

“I remember thinking, how can I change the world?”

Gadot says. “How can I do such a thing? I’m just one person. And when you see all these women together, and in each of the stories on their own, you realize that you can make a change. You can aff ect people’s lives for the better.”

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

Maurice Oniang’o was a member of the inaugural class of National Geographic’s Field Ready training initiative for aspiring fi lmmakers. COURTESY OF MAURICE ONIANG’O

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES National Geographic gets diverse storytellers ready for the fi eld

N

Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

ature documentary fi lmmaking, like so many fi elds, has long been the province mostly of white men. h But National Geographic is working toward inclusivity with its Field Ready Program, which off ers mentorship and opportunity to diverse talent behind the camera. h “I appreciate my male counterparts, but it has been dominated too long by men cinematographers,” said Janet Han Vissering, senior vice president of development and production at National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD, and Disney+. “And so I really wanted an opportunity to highlight women and people of color — all these great, diverse storytellers.”

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

33

Daniel Venturini, right, a Brazilian taking part in the Field Ready mentorship initiative, prepares to record a mass hatching of Amazonian turtles along with Owen Carter, left. The fi rst Field Ready class included participants from the U.S., Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Nigeria and the Philippines CRISTIAN DIMITRIUS

The program, spearheaded by Han Vissering and Kaitlin Yarnell, will select 10 National Geographic Explorers each year who are entering the fi lm industry to work in production.

“For 133 years, National Geographic has told the stories of our world and everything that is in it,” said Kaitlin Yarnall, chief storytelling offi cer at the National Geographic Society. “The Field Ready Program allows a diverse group of storytellers to contribute their critically important perspectives and ideas in a meaningful way through fi lm.”

The pandemic sidelined the initial plans for an intensive one-week course of study at National Geographic’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Instead, the training shifted online. The 10 emerging fi lmmakers were matched with mentors, natural-history producers and directors. For six months, they took online master classes with fi lmmakers in the U.K. and the U.S.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

“Once you go through this process for six months, it is, ‘Is this what you really want to do?’ It is a real glimpse into what it will be like to be a filmmaker.”

Janet Han Vissering

Field Ready’s fi rst class included National Geographic Explorers from Kenya, Angola, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Brazil, Nigeria and Colombia, in addition to the United States. When the participants complete the program and become ready for the fi eld, they are then qualifi ed for National Geographic productions around the world.

They will also have a much better idea of whether this should be their career.

“Once you go through this process for six months, it is, ‘Is this what you really want to do?’” Han Vissering said. “It is a real glimpse into what it will be like to be a fi lmmaker. I think they all got a taste.

The mentors ranged from development executives to production editors. We talked about every aspect of a job inside the natural history fi lmmaking process.”

The inaugural class has already graduated. They are all, naturally, conservationists. Even before the six-month program, participants were tapping into

their interests in wildlife fi lmmaking.

Funded by the National Geographic Society, these fi lmmakers are conducting meaningful projects around the world. National Geographic Explorer Maurice Oniang’o from Kenya, is examining how traditional beliefs aff ect natural resources. Tessa “Ellie” Eleonore Schmidt, of the United States, an underwater photographer and fi lmmaker, is relaying stories of wildlife management in Alaska. Tamana Ayazi, a documentary fi lmmaker, brings the perspective of a female natural history storyteller from Afghanistan.

Beyond the training, Field Ready also helps participants form contacts, which are notoriously hard to come by. Ultimately, the program benefi ts everyone.

The fi lmmakers gain valuable experience and connections. The world gains new perspectives.

“If you want diversity, invite diff erent storytellers,” Han Vissering said.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021

NEXT GENERATION OF STORYTELLERS

T

Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

hey are stories that need to be told. h That while enslaved Africans were being taken to the Americas in chains, some 2 million died en route. That right now, in Colombia, deforestation is destroying habitats and wiping out wildlife. That in dozens of states, hunters compete in “killing contests” to see who can bag the biggest wolf or bobcat. h They are stories we need to hear, stories that spotlight history we must preserve and catastrophes we must confront. Now, a new generation of National Geographic storytellers is sharing their vision for how to make more people learn — and care. Here are three of them and the stories they are telling.

Filmmaker Filipe DeAndrade on location with the ambulance he converted into a camper. MCKENZIE BARNEY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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Tara Roberts h Writer, National Geographic Explorer and a fellow at the MIT Documentary Lab. In 2018, Tara Roberts began following a group of Black scuba divers who were searching for and documenting shipwrecks of vessels carrying enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. She started blogging about their work, then realized she wanted to tell the stories in a more nuanced way.

“Trying to tell bite-sized stories didn’t seem to make sense,” Roberts says. “The National Geographic Society has been supportive about this story, and they elected me as a 2020-2021 storytelling fellow so I could turn the story into a narrative podcast, and that is what I am working on right now with a team.”

“One part of the insidious slave trade is often ignored,” Roberts says. Although 35,000 voyages brought 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 ships were lost to the sea, to history. Those aboard were among the millions of souls who didn’t survive the passage. Others succumbed to disease, deprivation and violence.

“Of those ships that have been found, even less have been properly documented,” Roberts says. “You have got a whole lot of missing history that no one was looking for.”

Roberts pauses as she stresses that there was “no one to mourn these people. No one to honor them. No one to remember them — just lost souls. Me doing one podcast is fantastic, and it is one story. It is nowhere near enough. There is a lot more storytelling to do.”

She is working on a six- to eight-episode podcast. So far, Roberts has traveled to Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin and Togo in Africa; to Costa Rica and St. Croix in the Americas, and throughout the U.S. Roberts explored her own ancestry in the process.

“I turned it into a personal story as well,” she says. “It is also about my own assumptions, upending ideas I had about my own Blackness and the changing notions of what is Africa. What is the African American relationship to Africa? My own immediate past and really looking into where the journey stops for me and how far back I am able to trace. All these questions are bubbling up, and I will be trying to answer them.”

Federico Pardo h Biologist, photographer, fi lmmaker and National Geographic Explorer Federico Pardo is based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, but was about to return to his native Colombia for two months to work on his National Geographic Societyfunded project, “Vanishing Primates.” It’s an eff ort that pulls together all he has done as a conservationist and multiplatform storyteller.

“The goal is to help save Colombia’s most endangered monkeys — Caquetá titi, cotton-top tamarin, brown spider monkey and the northern woolly monkey.

Basically, what I am doing is building an immersive multimedia experience and trying to re-create a multimedia jungle,” Pardo says.

Pardo is building a pop-up museum made up of booths, or cubes. The project is still in the design stage,

Tara Roberts speaks at the National Geographic Storytellers Summit.

ERIN SCHAFF FOR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

but the cubes will have video boards on the walls and ceiling. Someone inside the cube will be surrounded by the sights and sounds of the jungle. He wants to keep the price low, likely $5 for a visit, and a portion of each ticket would go toward planting trees in Colombia.

“The video and the sound will be completely compelling,” Pardo says. “And the city will stay outside. You walk into the cube and are in a multimedia jungle, and the story follows a day in the life of a monkey as they look for food or encounter a predator. It is all about connecting monkey life with human life and making that connection very emotional.”

Pardo Growing up in Bogota, Pardo fi rst became intrigued by snakes because his mother had worked at a lab that dealt with snake venom. That evolved into a passion for animals.

“The long-term goal is creating a media experience that accelerates tangible conservation actions,” Pardo says. “Because basically, we are running out of ammunition to reverse the deforestation around the world. I am a little tired of creating media that just sits on a server or the internet and has no positive, tangible impact.

Awareness is very important. I cannot stress that enough. But how do you measure awareness and make sure kids or adults are shifting their patterns?

“I wanted to go a step further and create the tangible impact of planting trees, something we can measure in fi ve years.”

Filipe DeAndrade h Photographer, fi lmmaker and National Geographic Explorer Filipe DeAndrade was hunting the hunters. He was determined to get pictures of a gruesome event — a wolf-killing contest near Yellowstone.

“The goal is to kill as many animals as possible,

based on a point system,” DeAndrade says. “So the teams that kill the most, or the largest, are the ones that win. This is happening in 43 states.”

He’s working with Nat Geo “in the capacity of social media and Wildlife Watch featured in their newsletter,” he says.

“The campaign has two goals: One, to inform people (that these contests) are happening, and two, to propose and pass a federal bill to prevent them from happening on public land.”

In the last 21⁄ 2 years, DeAndrade has attended more than 30 of these gruesome tournaments.

“Ultimately, my goal is to produce a feature documentary on our relationship with predators,” he says.

“What I am fascinated by is how human beings were a prey species, not the apex, and then through advancements in technology, or you could call it superior cerebral state, that allowed us to become the apex. Our fear and fascination, however, has not changed.”

DeAndrade won National Geographic’s “Wild to Inspire” short fi lm competition in 2015 and has since hosted Nat Geo WILD’s YouTube show “Untamed.” His fascination with wildlife began as a child in Brazil. He and his mom later moved to Ohio and Florida before DeAndrade settled into an unusual living arrangement as an adult: He rigged an old ambulance into a camper in Costa Rica.

“I’ve upgraded to a house and a second pair of pants,” he jokes.

In between documenting the killing contests, DeAndrade is lobbying legislators to outlaw them.

“My ultimate goal is to get people to look at animals diff erently,” he says. “In my opinion, you fall in love with a cause by falling in love with the ambassador. For instance, it is much easier to care about a reef when you fall in love with a dolphin, much easier to care about Yellowstone when you fall in love with wolves. There is more that connects us to every living species on this planet than divides us.”

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021 Brian Skerry, underwater photographer and National Geographic Explorer. STEVE DE NEEF

Q&A

What is the most pressing environmental threat? And what small change can people make that would make the biggest diff erence?

Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

Joel Sartore

Photographer, The Photo Ark The threat: Climate change. More than likely, that is on many, many people’s minds right now. But the reason it is so important is it will alter weather patterns: more violent storms, more drought, more fl oods, colder winters, hotter summers. When the planet heats up, it dries up; more moisture is evaporated, so there’s less water in streams and rivers that hold fi sh, and for crops that need irrigation. It is monumental, and we won’t solve it overnight.

The change: You can’t go wrong by planting native plants. That’s a big thing.

Plant milkweed to help save the monarch butterfl y, and nectar-bearing plants to bring back bees. That is something people can do right now. All around the country, you see so many acres devoted to lawns, people pouring poisons all over them. By putting more native plants in your landscaping, you are creating a space that is appropriate. And the less lawn you have, the less time you have to spend out there mowing.

Dennis Compayre Polar Bear tracker

The threat: Undoubtedly, it is the warming planet — our obsession with fossil fuels and reluctance to embrace alternative energy to save the world.

The change: It is about small changes, isn’t it? You have to consciously change your way of thinking and what you are thinking, and lobby politicians to make a change too. You don’t have to get in their face. But every little bit we do to conserve, or help us have a future, contributes to the well-being of the planet.

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Shirell Parfait-Dardar

Chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of the BiloxiChitimacha-Choctaw Tribe The threat: Greed. That is the biggest issue. On every single level, there is no love whatsoever. We have to fi nd a better way to do things, ways that cause minimal impact and benefi t all of the inhabitants of our planet. We should be striving for that every single day. However, that is not the case. You see it in companies with extractive practices and in our elected offi cials who are supporting the companies with extractive practices.

The change: Care. Just start caring. If you have children, look at your children. Everybody has a mother; look at your mother. Think about what you are doing and what impact it has on them and will have on our future generations. What are you doing today will aff ect our future, and you should care about that. Pretty much everything I am involved in is all connected, and it all has to do with protecting our environment and the inhabitants of this planet.

Sylvia Earle

Marine Biologist, National Geographic Explorer at Large The threat: Complacency based on lack of understanding. Call it ignorance if you will. People talk about the economy, health and security, but life itself is anchored in respect and care for the natural world.

That’s important to everyone, everywhere, all the time.

The change: Nobody can do everything, but everyone has the power. And with today’s knowledge, everyone has the superpower of knowing the facts.

When I was a child, no one had been to space. No one had been to the bottom of the ocean. We thought we could cut the trees and kill the birds and consume the fi sh with abandon. Knowing what we do now gives everyone the opportunity to do something. All of us in our everyday lives can make better choices about what we consume.

Tara Roberts

Writer, National Geographic Explorer and a fellow at the MIT Documentary Lab The threat: I actually think the greatest threat comes from human beings because we don’t understand each other and recognize each other as fully human. When there is true equity and acknowledgement and honoring of the other, when that happens, doesn’t that change the relationship with the environment and surroundings?

The change: The smallest and easiest change is likely an internal change, but it is not that easy. The fi rst step is to know somebody diff erent from who you are; talking to a neighbor that you have not talked to, opening your own scope of this idea of others. It is a really small step, but it can have huge implications if everyone is taking it.

Sigourney Weaver, narrator of “Secrets of the Whales.” ANDREW H. WALKER/VARIETY REX SHUTTERSTOCK

Sigourney Weaver

Narrator of “Secrets of the Whales,” actress, conservationist The threat: Right now, with COVID throwing living conditions in high relief, I think the most important thing is ridding neighborhoods of these fossilfuel power plants and incinerators. Children, especially in lower-income neighborhoods, grow up with so many more health problems. It’s heartrending to read about how much of it is caused by the bad air, the bad water. That is completely unacceptable, and to me, that is one of the highest priorities. If we’re going to tear down statues of the Confederacy, let’s please tear down this infrastructure of fossil fuels — they’re killing machines.

The change: Being consumers with a conscience, which means eating no meat or much less, and not eating fi sh on the endangered list. Being careful and trying to build green buildings, greener cars. People have to put it at the forefront of their day. We kind of all have to do absolutely everything we can think of.

Not using paper towels just because they’re convenient. Pouring a glass of water instead of grabbing a water bottle. I have been lucky to get a lot of education from Jim and Suzy Cameron, who send us Christmas presents that always have a lot to do with sustainability. We can read all the info, but we also have to walk the walk.

Brian Skerry

National Geographic Explorer and Photographer The threat: There are many big issues, but as I often say in my speaking engagements, the ocean is dying a death of 1,000 cuts. The ocean is strong and resilient and has the ability to heal itself, but we have overfi shed most of the species — 90% of the big fi sh in the ocean are gone. Tuna, bluefi sh, sharks, grouper, snapper, all the things that we eat, we have been way too effi cient at catching.

The change: The best thing people can do is to become an informed consumer. What you choose to buy or not buy makes a diff erence. For example, if you like to eat seafood, you can download seafood watch cards. You can look on there and see which species are overfi shed and which ones are OK to buy. The plastic thing — eliminate singleuse plastics, switch to refi llable, stainless-steel water bottles. When I started diving, I never saw plastic, now I see it all the time. Politics: Support candidates who believe in science. Margaret Mead said never underestimate the power of a dedicated group of individuals to change the world. It’s not too late. We have the opportunity, but the window of opportunity is closing.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

EARTH DAY 2021 The change: It is about consumption and really asking yourself, “Do I need this?” And this is a refl ection of what I have just gone through. We just bought another house. I love my Costco, and I love my Amazon. I have enough food to feed an army. But you need to be mindful. “Do I need six apples if I only end up eating two?”

You have to look at what it took, and the expenditure on everything, to create one apple. I am not professing that I have aced this, but I have given myself my own challenge. I ask myself, “Do I need to go to Costco?” When I was living in Korea, people just went shopping for what they needed that day. I think in America, because we have such an expanse of space, we take it for granted.

Filmmaker James Cameron. ROBERT ASCROFT

James Cameron

National Geographic Explorer at Large, executive producer of “Secrets of the Whales,” director, conservationist The threat: Well, I think it’s all interconnected. Obviously we’ve got to solve energy, because that solves climate. And it’s not simple. But climate drives everything: animal extinctions, droughts, crop failures and all the human misery that comes along with that. I think that’s our biggest single threat, if you had to rank them.

And animal agriculture — agriculture in general, but animal agriculture specifi cally, is the one that sits at the nexus point of so many problems — ocean pollution, ocean dead zones, biodiversity loss, mass extinction, loss of indigenous culture. It sits at the center of all these other eco-problems.

The change: Our biggest, quickest ability to sort of turn down the thermostat on climate change is modifying what we eat. Everybody in the world could decide not to eat fi sh or not to eat meat or not to consume dairy.

They won’t, of course, not overnight. It’s going to be a rollout. But it’s a diff erent type of rollout, the rollout of an idea or a philosophy. Pivoting to alternative energy or renewable energy takes a lot more time because you’ve got to build physical infrastructure. You don’t need to build physical infrastructure to decide not to eat meat and dairy and just eat plants. That’s kind of why I got into a 100% plant-based, vegan way of living. It was a way I could take action for sustainability instantly and see an instantaneous result.

Janet Han Vissering

Senior vice president of development and production for natural history content at National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Disney+ The threat: Personally, because I live on the water, I think it is conserving the health of the waterways and the oceans, and I think the world takes that for granted.

It always looks much bigger than you as a human, and you think that it will recover, but quietly it is suff ering over years of mismanagement. You can see areas of crisis, and we need to do things. Without our waterways, everyone suff ers.

Vanessa Roth

Director and executive producer of “National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot” The threat: We have terrible air and terrible toxic water in marginalized communities around the world and in this country as well. Impoverished communities, communities of color, are disproportionately burdened with major health hazards. Policies and practices force them to live in and next to toxic sources and suff er incredibly high rates of health problems. It’s environmental racism and discrimination, and the inequality of that is something I think we urgently need to deal with.

It’s too easy for more privileged people to really not understand the dire place that we’re in environmentally and to not realize that it actually impacts every single one of us.

The change: I actually think it’s a little bit of a misdirect to make this all about personal responsibility. I don’t want to say that individuals shouldn’t be cognizant and make changes — get electric cars and eat vegetarian and all these individual things. But I also think it’s the responsibility of policymakers and companies to work to protect the environment. And it’s on those larger levels where things have to change. I think individual responsibility comes in more about being active and aware of what’s going on with policy leaders and businesses, and making sure those policy leaders and businesses hear you.

Arianna Font Martin

The change: Start by looking inside and asking ”How am I interacting with water. With bodies of water?

With the water that comes out of the faucet? Am I taking showers for one hour? When I wash dishes, how can I use less?” Back in 2015, we had one of the biggest droughts here in Puerto Rico. It was up to me to fi ll up the water jugs; my brother was in college, and my mother had a bone condition. And we would store water in the guest room. We had to ration it. If you don’t need it, don’t use it. That made me realize how precious water is and how we can start doing these small things. Educate yourself. Join groups. Donate to organizations that help other people. Just these small things would make a difference. We can highlight all of these people trying to fi ght the issue and we can give attention to this issue.

We have to be more proactive. We have to fi ght for the access to water.

Filipe DeAndrade

Photographer, fi lmmaker and National Geographic Explorer The threat: The biggest environmental threat facing us is indiff erence. And it’s easy to say climate change.

It’s easy to say habitat loss. It’s easy to say diminishing natural resources as in biodiversity, as in loss of wildlife. All of those things come back to the fact that we are now at the point in modern society and humanity where most of us are aware that it is happening but don’t care enough to make daily decisions.

The change: The biggest thing one can do is educate themselves on how to make changes in their lives for a changing planet. Some of the biggest things you can do automatically is change your diet. I am not telling people to go vegan or vegetarian. In the U.S., around 47% of land is agriculture, and within that 47% about 70% is livestock. We are using an incredible amount of land just to produce food, the highest distributor of methane and greenhouse gases on the planet. Starting today, you don’t have to go vegetarian or vegan, but if you cut back the amount of meat by 50%, it would have a dramatic change immediately.

Federico Pardo

Clean water activist in Puerto Rico

Biologist, photographer, fi lmmaker and National Geographic Explorer

The threat: Although a lot of these things are very much connected, I believe that water is one of the biggest problems we are facing right now. And women are the most aff ected by this globally. There are women who are not getting an education because it is their job to get water, walking miles with 25-pound jugs on their backs. Here in Puerto Rico, we have a really big problem because we can’t drink directly from the faucet. I know it has a lot of Clorox in it and other pollutants. Even if we don’t think it is a problem aff ecting all of us, in a few years if we don’t do anything right now, it is going to be a much larger problem. Everyone needs access to clean water — for proper hydration, for nutrients. We need to have that access equally. And it is really sad how a lot of us don’t, simply because of where we were born.

The threat: Deforestation is a tangible threat, and it is growing in the Amazon but really in almost every country and continent. It’s destroying habitats for key species, whether it’s lions and tigers in Africa and Asia or smaller species like monkeys and birds in the tropics.

There was a report by (the World Wildlife Fund) that came out one or two years ago in which they were able to conclude that deforestation accounts for the biggest threat of extinction.

The change: Becoming a self-advocate with yourself and with your closest circle. Meaning if it is reducing plastic, use recycling more, not using straws — just being self-aware of your own consumption and trying to impact your closest circle. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I try to make sure no one uses a straw.

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