PASADENA, Calif. _ Noah certainly had his problems shuttling animals onto the ark two by two. But he had nothing on Joel Sartore. Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, has undertaken a similar task.
He's determined to photograph the rarest of animals around the world up-close-and-personal before they die out.
For 11 years Sartore has populated his unique "ark" with salon-worthy photos of these exotic creatures. On July 18 PBS will premiere the results so far: "RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark."
"We stand to lose half of all species to extinction by 2100," say Sartore. "That's a conservative estimate, because the human populations are on our way to going to 11 billion, and we're already in pretty tough shape at 7 billion. So we see what could happen if people don't stop and pay attention.
"So beyond just preserving these things for posterity _ whether it's in 4K video or high resolution stills _ we really want people to be moved to the point where they will take action," he says.
"For most of the species that we're covering, this is the only chance they're going to have to have their voices heard, before they go away."
It was a family crisis that triggered Sartore's quest. "Twelve years ago my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I had never really been home with my three kids. I'd never changed a diaper on the youngest one, sad to say. I was gone. My wife was a very tolerant person, let me go out and shoot these stories. They were mostly conservation related, trying to make the world a better place," he recalls.
"But I was home for a year, and I had a lot of time to think. And I thought about the work of John James Audubon, who devoted his entire life to painting and describing the behaviors of the birds and mammals of North America. Thought of Edward Curtis who could see that European settlement was really going to change the life of Native Americans. And he devoted his adult life to documenting tribal customs and dress before that was really eaten into by European society."
At 42 Sartore suffered a mid-life crisis of sorts. "I thought, 'While my life and career is half over, if Kathy survives and we don't lose our house,' because I wasn't able to go work anymore, 'if she makes it, I really should do something that sticks.'"
With his wife recovered, he says the work he'd started in the field seemed to resonate with people.
"So I thought, 'Well, I'll just do a giant catalog, and the strength of it will be when you see that there are thousands of species of rodents, not just the house mouse you may see running across your garage once in a while. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of beetle species. There are so many different species out there that nobody knows about.' So that's how the 'Photo Ark' was born.
"And my wife's fine now, but it was kind of a close call and the Photo Ark was born out of wanting to do something that stuck. A magazine story comes and goes in a month, and hopefully this will be around and maybe it's for future generations, because, really, people don't seem to care much about extinction at all right now."
National Geographic is showcasing the Photo Ark project on multiple platforms all year, including world wide exhibitions, two books and digital features, as well as the series.
Most of Sartore's animal portraits were done in zoos or wildlife rehab centers or aquariums, he says. "And to be honest with you, those are the keepers of the kingdom. A lot of these animals don't exist in the wild anymore. They're only found in zoos or at private breeders. The wild is gone. The habitat's cut. So they really are the ark, (the) true ark, a lot of these institutions. And I try to work at places that have abundant attention and care. For the times where I have shot the wild, it was a little tricky."
Actually Sartore traveled to nearly 40 countries to photograph 6,395 species for the Photo Ark so far. The three-part series travels with him to the wilds of New Zealand, China, Spain and Africa.
"It's absolutely catastrophic if we lose biodiversity. It's catastrophic," he insists. "It's hard to picture in L.A. You're in your car. The radio's turned up. You go to a nice place to eat. You hang out here. You go back ... But it is absolutely catastrophic if we collapse the ecosystems on the planet. It is. We have to have rainforests to provide us with oxygen and to regulate precipitation. We have to have bees to pollinate fruits and vegetables that we eat. I mean, it's not something anybody's talking about, and I'm hoping that people will wake up eventually and start to do so."
MAGICIANS 'FOOL US' AGAIN
Magicians Penn and Teller return to the CW this week with their "Fool Us" series. They watch while other magicians try to deceive them with fancy new sleight-of-hand tricks and illusions. Teller � the silent and shorter one of the pair _ tells me he owes his career to a wooden puppet.
"I had a little heart problem as a 5-year-old and sent away for a Howdy Doody magic set because I was confined to bed for a long period of time," he says. "And my Howdy Doody magic set struck a kind of psychological bedrock that I haven't ever been able to escape."
FILM HELPS SUPPORT CHIMPANZEE REHABILITATION
It may be a bit of a stretch but 20th Century Fox has joined the Jane Goodall Institute in helping to rehabilitate chimpanzees that have been used or abused and are cloistered in a rehabilitation center in the Republic of Congo.
This alliance lies in connection with the newest "Planet of the Apes" saga, "War for Planet of the Apes" opening Friday. These apes, which so closely resemble man, have been Goodall's life work since she was a girl. She says studying these primates has helped us understand that we're not so different.
"We're not as different as we used to think," she says. "We're not the only beings with personalities, minds, and feelings � above all feelings. We've blurred the line that science has always tried to make so sharp between us and them. And, of course, drawing a sharp line between us and them is the same thing that happens with civil war � the in-group, the out-group," she says.
"It doesn't matter what we do to the out-group. We shut them up, do experimentation, we can slaughter them in unspeakable ways, we can fasten them in intensive cages, it doesn't matter because we're 'different.' Just like we can go kill those (other) people because they're different from us."
WRITER LENDS EXPERTISE TO BAWDY TALE
His name may not be on the tip of everyone's tongue, but Welsh writer Andrew Davies is the unheralded hero of the classic novel adaptation for TV. The soft-spoken Davies has adapted such great television series as "Pride and Prejudice," "Mr. Selfridge," "Little Dorrit," "War & Peace" and the original (and better) British version of "The House of Cards."
His masterful take on the bawdy "Fanny Hill," will begin streaming on Acorn.TV July 31. Davies says he's proudest of his original works, but adaptations hold a place close to his heart.
"I do love doing adaptations and used to lecture on English literature and, in a way, there's a kind of similarity because I'm taking a book and saying, 'Look, these are the interesting things about it. Have you noticed this? And this, and that? And putting it on the screen, I sometimes think it's like doing a lecture only having millions of pounds of visual aids.
"All these beautiful young girls in period costume and so on. So it is partly that. And also I guess the thing about writing original work that I always found the hardest was making up a really good plot. So if you're adapting a book somebody else has done that for you."
