Saving Animals Through Photography | Nat Geo Live

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