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the brink of extinction. Slowly their numbers have rebounded, but that ecological success has prompted a dire new problem and a race to save many of them from genetic collapse. It took fifty days of searching before the jungle revealed

its biggest secret to us. Fifty days of jostling along gravel roads in the Similipal Tiger Reserve in India's eastern state of Odisha, scanning between trees in the semi evergreen forest, hoping for a glimpse of an evolusive tiger called T twelve, whose striking appearance has made him a symbol of a population at a perilous cross roads. My partner in the quest. Ragu Porti, a staffer with the regional forest department, had

never set eyes on TA twelve. Most of his colleagues had only ever seen the tiger in images from camera traps set up to study animal movements throughout the reserve. But actually laying eyes on Simla Pal's tigers lets forest officials look for physical ailments that cameras may not capture, and also provides a reminder that there's a living, breathing purpose to the countless hours they spend patrolling in the

sweltering heat. A documented sighting of T twelve would be particularly valuable since the reclusive ten year old tiger, the eldest male in Similipal, was right then at the heart of a plan to ensure the survival of future generations. It was late in the afternoon of day fifty when in the blink of an eye, a dark shape dashed out in front of our pickup truck. I slammed on the brakes ahead of us. Spanning the width of the road,

an enormous tiger stared back at Ragu and me. It was an older male, clear from its size, and it had exactly the strange distinctive coat we'd been looking for it's black, Ragu said, in an insistent whisper. He pointed excitedly and repeated himself, it's black. The tiger T twelve had dark fur that draped over him like a ragged cloak. Slivers of orange peeked through along his body, with thicker

patches appearing on his face and front legs. This uncanny widening of a tiger's black stripes, a rare genetic mutation known as pseudo melanism, is shared among roughly half the thirty or so tigers that roam the Similipal reserve and

its an indicator of a conservation's success story. Facing a potentially catastrophic complication because while the number of tigers in Similopol is more robust than it has been in decades, the reserve is geographically isolated from other tiger populations, a tiger island, so to speak, with a dangerously dwindling gene pool. But during the weeks that Ragu and I scoured the area for Tea twelve, work was under way elsewhere to

find him a suitable mate. It was a crucial step in a targeted breeding program years in development, a mission shared between conservation agents and a team of groundbreaking molecular ecologists and genetic experts, all working to save the tigers of Similopol from inbreeding themselves out of existence. In many ways, India's tigers have faced the same challenges as big cats throughout the world have hunted to near extinction by trophy

hunters amid relentless habit destruction and fragmentation. In the nineteen seventies, alarm over the iconic species decline prompted the establishment of a state run reserve system, but the reserves lacked coordinated monitoring and enforcement until two thousand and five, when India created a dedicated central agency, the National Tiger Conservation Authority NTCA, which today hires and trains rangers, manages scientific oversight, and

guides habitat preservation across fifty eight reserves. A key concept underlying the reserve system is that tigers are typically able to travel between protected areas using what are known as natural corridors patches of connecting forests and other prey abundant lands. There are a number of benefits to these corridors, but the most important is that they encourage breeding among neighboring

tiger populations, improving genetic diversity. Similopol, at a little o over one thousand square miles, is one of India's largest reserves and its closest neighboring ones. Set Kosia to the southwest and Sundarban to the east, are both more than one hundred miles away, which isn't too far for a tiger to walk, but there are no tigers left in sat Kosia and no adequate corridor connects Similipal and Sundarban.

The land between them is mostly urban or agricultural Kolkata its suburbs and a vast area of rice fields with very little forest cover, which is where tigers prefer to stay hidden. Dozens of towns and villages separate Similipal from its two neighboring reserves. As well. For tigers, there is just no easy way in or out of Similipol. When the NTCA surveyed wild tigers across India in two thousand and six, Natalia was roughly fourteen hundred animals, down from

an estimated forty thousand a century before. In Similopol, the population bottomed out at just four tigers in twenty fourteen, only one of them mail, but in twenty fifteen a year or so before he died, the male fathered T twelve with his strange, predominantly black coat, and T twelve has since fathered male cubs of his own. India's tiger population has begun to rebound over the past twenty years, thanks in large part to the conservation work of the

NTCA and forest officials. As of a twenty twenty two estimate, the country is home to more than thirty one hundred tigers, and as Similipoul's population climbed slowly but steadily over the past decade, the growing number of tigers at first seemed like a microcosm of the national success story. Soon though, the reserve's managers began noticing more and more young tigers

sporting the same dark coat as T twelve. The mutation, as far as both foresters and genetic scientists can tell, is harmless, merely a cosmetic oddity caused by a random and naturally occurring quirk of DNA, but experts say it is also a tangible manifestation of a very real problem. If this mutation was able to pass so quickly through Similopaul's population, with all the tigers sharing very similar genetic makeup due to rampant inbreeding. Then so too could more

serious abnormalities. Now, the task facing some of the some of India's foremost tiger authorities has shifted from recovering tiger numbers to breaking this cycle of inbreeding before it's too late. Playing genetic matchmaker for tigers is tricky. In order to find the ideal breeding partners for T twelve in his offspring, the would be saviors of Simili Paul needed to understand the differences among not only the tigers that roam today,

but also the tigers of the past. That's what led molecular collegist Uma Rama Krishnan not long ago into a dimly lit trophy room in a grand home in Akhaltara,

a small town in central India. Rama Krishnan, a National geographic explorer in the head of a lab at Bengaluru's Bangalore National Center for Biological Sciences, was invited there by an Anupam Singh Sisodia, whose family had since held the role of chieftains across fifty one villages and the surrounding forests and farmland, responsible for protecting the locals from dangerous wildlife.

His family had done its share of hunting, and the room was full of mounted black bucks, sloth bears, and four horned antelope collected between nineteen twenty and nineteen seventy. But laid out on a table before Rama Krishnan was a set of tiger pelts, their massive heads intact and seemingly snarling. Killing problematic tigers Sisodia acknowledged was more of

a political necessity than a pleasure. Since two thousand and five, Rama Krishnan and her fellow researchers and students at the lab have been collecting samples of tiger DNA in order to build an extensive genetic map of the diversity among India's tigers. She secured roughly two hundred and fifty specimens

from historic estates like the Sisodias. She has plumed taxidermy collections at sites like the National History Museum in London, and ventured into Indian jungles to procure scat, blood, hair and saliva from live tigers. All that evidence has given her critical insight into how the animals have changed over generations as they moved throughout the region. Closely inspecting one of her tiger heads, Rama Krishnan slid her scalpel into

the eighty something year old pelt. Practiced and precise. She sliced off a small piece the sample into a vial and held it up. This is the real treasure, she said. When Ramakrishnan first began building her DNA database, her goal was to answer questions about tigers that couldn't be answered by observing them in the field. As their population was decimated. Tiger's loss not only territory, but also substantial genetic diversity.

Historic historical DNA offered important clues about what else might exist within the gene pool. Her research became ever more relevant in twenty seventeen when the antca alarmed by the dark coated tigers in Similopaul, asked her to formally study the reserve's tigers. The forest officials clearly saw that the impacts of the reserve's isolation were becoming measurable. They hoped Ramakrishnan could both verify the genetic culprit and help them

find a solution. Once she took a closer look at the animals sequestered within the reserve, Ramakrishnan quickly realized that the recessive pseudo melanism gene was spreading through the population. The genetic isolation on display, she said, was a ticking time bomb. Left unaddressed, it could prove devastating to the

reserve's tigers. It's impossible to know precisely what other maladies genetic mutations among big cats might introduce, But when Rama Krishnan and her colleagues analyzed a genetic mutation data set for the closest available comparison domestic cats, they found that these not so distant cousins faced issues like retinal atrophy, kidney disease, and hyperthyroidism, and with female tigers averaging litters of two to three cubs every two to three years,

health issues can quickly and dramatically compound. We're still trying to understand the full impact of this inbreeding, she says. But when thing's for sure, there's no upside to this kind of genetic erosion. Given Similopaul's lack of connection to other reserves, Rama Krishnan's recommendation was that wildlife managers identify a few tigers from a separate reserve and translocate them.

Once in Similipol, the tigrises the forest managers elected to move females would hopefully reproduce with T twelve or with his male offspring, which have begun to claim pieces of T twelve's territory as they mature and have cubs of their own. This Rama Krishnan said would begin the overdue

effort to diversify the reserve's genetic pool. By comparing Similipol tiger DNA to the array of records in her data set, she found that the most genetically diverse tigers with the lowest chance of more negative genes showing up in any future offspring, were located in a reserve called Todoba Anddari in the dense Tik forests of the district of Chandrapur, halfway across India. Of course, Ramakrishnan knew that identifying their

right reserve is one thing. Actually moving a three hundred pound wild animal hundreds of miles across the country is another. One morning last fall, Ravikante Cobro Cobragade stood up from his spot in the open air back seat of a two door Maruti Gipsy and looked out onto the Chandrapur landscape. The wildlife veterinarian turned his attention to his a shooter, A J. Marathe, who was cradling a tranquilizer gun and gestured to a young tigris just up ahead. I can

see her. She is sitting in that bush ahead, looking at us, Cobragade said. The tigris, later named Jumuna, was twenty eight months old and had spent all her life in or near the Tadoba Reserve. Her youth meant she hadn't yet established territory there, and crucially, she had no history of conflict with humans. Both of these things made

her a prime translocation candidate. Translocation work, particularly for animals as large and territorial as tigers, is highly sensitive under any circumstances, and in India's tiger reserves it requires a large number of verifications and approvals before it can proceed. High on the list of consideration is whether an area identified as having candidates has a population healthy enough to withstand losing breeding age females. In Tadoba, this is not

a concern. Although the reserve is two thirds the size of Similipal, it is home to roughly ninety five tigers, and it is no tiger island. Natural corridors connect to Doba to the umrad Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary around forty miles to the north, the Nawagioan Nagzira River Reserve seventy miles to the northeast, and the Kawal Tiger Reserve seventy miles

to the southwest. Tadoba's tigers regularly venture out in search of more forested space, and as their numbers have swelled over the past decade, all their movement has meant that tigers and people in the surrounding mosaic of forests, villages and farm lands have had to learn how to live alongside one another. Again, most important for Tea twelve and his kin, the network of connected reserves has allowed for

a constant exchange of tiger jeans. Jamuna would be the first of two Tadoba tigers translocated to Similipal in a matter of weeks, with others to potentially follow in the coming months and years if the experiment went well. But first she needed to be sedated. Is the dark ready, Sir, asked Marath. Maratha. The tigris rose from her spot in

the bush and marched closer to their vehicle. When she was around five yards away, Maratha calmly removed the safety key from his dart gun, brought the scope to his eye and took the shot. The pink tailed projectile land landed in Jamuna his thigh, prompting a lar loud growl that aqued across the landscape. As she bounded away, She made it about two hundred yards before the tranquilizer took its toll. The team found her laid out in a meadow. It took seven men to carefully slide Jamuna onto a

stretcher and move her into the shade. Cobragade checked her for injuries and drew a blood sample. After he fixed a GPS collar around her neck, the team moved her into a metal cage aboard a truck. Once safely inside, Jemuna was given a revival drug. Within minutes, the men heard rustling and banging the sound of her nails scratching against metal, followed by a roar. The road trip to deliver Jamuna to Similipol took twenty eight hours. The truck

was joined by a small convoy of support staff. The route had been carefully mapped to circumvent major cities and other areas where loud noises could cause Jimuna distress. Every few hours, the vehicles pulled over for a while to allow her to rest. Finally, the door opened and Jemunah leaped through the gate leading into her new home, a two and a half acre enclosure in Similopol, where she

spent almost two weeks acclimating. After that, the gate opened once more, this time with no cage on the other side, she was set free into the territory of t twelve. When it comes to restoring diversity among India's wild tigers, one critical step remained solely under nature's control. Mating and tigers engage in selective courtships before they breed, so in November, less than a month after Jamuna was released into the reserve, a second female tiger from Tadoba called zee Nott, was

sedated and transferred to an enclosure in Similopol. Whereas Jamuna settled into the Similopol landscape with relative ease, the stress of the relocation took a greater toll on ze Noot, and she quickly wandered beyond the reserve's borders. The forest Department, not wanting her to stray too far, sent a team out a tranquil her and bring her back to spend several more weeks in an enclosure to acclimate before she

was released into T twelve's territory. Both she and Jamunah wore GPS collars so that forest officials could track their movement and behavior. Knowing where the tigers were, forest officers on the ground used night vision cameras to observe them from a safe distance. They kept a close eye on the pair to see whether either of them would cross paths with T twelve or other males, but the observers only saw Jemuna and zeenat alone. Tiger courtship, by contrast,

is conspicuous. A pair of mating tigers might spend weeks together walking through the forest and vocalizing. Yet, as the tigres's established territory in Similapal, forest officials never saw any evidence that they so much as had contact with T twelve until one night in May. Reviewing the feed from a mounted camera that takes thermal and visual images, the forest department captured footage of Xenot with T twelve. It

was unmistakable evidence their mating ritual had begun. The courtship, citing signaled that the genetic rescue mission, if not yet an outright success holds promise. Meanwhile, this summer, as the teams behind the translocation awaited Xenot's first litter of cubs, the work continued. Rama Krishnan and her students collected more hair and scat samples left behind by Similo Paul tigers

to better understand the genetic variation within the population. Officials are hopeful that Jamuna will eventually find a mate, and everyone working in Simila Paul is eager to see whether

Xenot's cubs are born with T twelve's pseudo melanism. It's not yet decided whether or when the reserve will receive more translocated tigresses, or how many more might be needed to introduce sufficient genetic variability, but until a quarter links Similo Paul to other populated tiger reserves, more translocations could be the only viable option looking ahead, Similipaul Field director Prakash Chand Gogginini said his personal hope is that Samilopaul's

tigers can become a source population that helps return the species to places like the near Pye sat Kosia Reserve. That might happen with the help of a translocated Similopaul tigris, or perhaps via new quarters, even if the latter are still likely decades away. Witnessing all of this firsthand, seeing the pitfalls that India's tigers face as they begin to make their comeback returns me to certain moments from my childhood. I grew up on a farm not far from Chandrapur,

where my life revolved around animals and jungles. For better or for worse. Naming pet dogs was painful as leopards regularly took them away, and every now and then we would encounter a pug mark similar to a leopard's, but much better. The air would fill with fear and excitement at the realization we were sharing space with the true apex predator. The experience of living alongside something that powerful and elusive shaped how I saw the forest and my

place within it. I never came across a tiger at our farm, but I often dreamed of it. In the years since, I have seen, studied, and photographed countless tigers, but none of them looked like what I saw that day in Similopaul. While sitting in the idling truck with Ragu locked in a momentary steering contest with t twelve I didn't reach for my camera, I didn't move. There stood a black tiger, a testament to human's best intentions

gone wrong. In the best case scenario. For Samilopaul, this will someday be a rare and unforgettable creature, one that inspired a new discipline for safeguarding the species. In that moment, for four seconds in the roadway, it felt like a miracle of nature. Then, without a roar or a snarl, T twelve took a few powerful strides and vanished into

the thick evergreen forest, bringing tigers together. After being decimated by hunting and habitat destruction, India's tiger population has begun to recover in protected reserves, but in less connected areas like Similopol, sometimes called tiger islands. In Breeding has become an issue for reserves like Tadoba and Dari. Interconnected habitats and wildlife corridors help diversify the population and may offer

a solution for tiger islands. Landscape of the tiger forests provide spaces for tigers to rest and breed along with ample prey. Although agricultural lands interrupt forest cover, tigers can move across them between reserves, but highway and urban areas remain difficult barriers the benefits of linked reserves. In reserves with good connectivity, like Toadoba, tigers roame hundreds of miles along corridors to find mates among neighboring populations the pitfalls

of a Tiger Island. Tigers and reserves with no populations to mix with have limited mating options. In Similopaul, this has led to the rapid increase of a coat color mutation the power of moving tigers. Given Similopaul's isolation from linked reserves, forest officials have begun to translocate tigers four hundred and fifty miles from Totoba to the Tiger Island in eastern India. Next. Can We Save the orbiting Treasures

of the Space Race? By Brian Kevin. As human made objects proliferate proliferate in space, a coalition of scientists and historians have floated retrieving some of the most important In one view. Vanguard I is space junk, an antennaied aluminum ball that Soviet leader, the Kita Khrushchev dismissively compared to a grapefruit. The United States launched it in March nineteen fifty eight and the satellite returned radio signals until May

nineteen sixty four. Defunct since it's the oldest human made object in orbit, but to space historian Matt Bill that grapefruit is one of the most precious objects of the early space age, deserving of a place in the Smithsonian and scientists he says, could glean much from it about

long term exposure to space. Billy, along with a few like minded engineers and historians, made this case at a recent conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, presenting detailed plans for a hypothetical mission to de orbit Vanguard one and bring it home. The idea has turned heads, not least for challenging a preference for n C two preservation that's increasingly enshrined in heritage fields, including the burgeoning

discipline of space archaeology. Old satellites need to be left where they are, says Alice Gorman, who sits on the International Council on Monuments and Sites Aerospace Committee. They're safer in orbit, she says, where they belong to no one nation and can be studied via photography and other remote sensing methods. But space is getting crowded. Bill notes more than fourteen thousand satellites orbit the Earth, to say nothing

of debris. He and his co authors frame their technical paper as a thought experiment, should we ever consider nabbing historically significant satellites which might merit consideration. They offer eleven more candidates, each a national first or a pioneering mission, and all conceivably retrievable. Billis says, if one dreams big. Vanguard on US launched on March seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight, low Earth orbit, the second U S satellite in orbit.

The first Explorer one burned up upon re entry in nineteen seventy. Its most distinguished contribution was to confirm, via variations in its orbit, that Earth was less round than supposed. Bulging around the equator Luna ie USSR January two, nineteen fifty nine, solar orbit, a yoga ball to Vanguard's one grapefruit and the first spacecraft to escape Earth's gravity. The Soviets aimed for the Moon and missed by some thirty

seven hundred miles. Luna one became instead the first spacecraft to settle into orbit around the Sun. Pioneer four US March three, nineteen fifty nine solar orbit. Like Luna On the first American craft to travel around Earth's orbit, also blew its objective, passing too far from the Moon to photograph it as planned. It returned good data, though on the Earth's encircling radiation belts. Tiros Ie US April one,

nineteen sixty Low Earth Orbit. Today we take weather observation satellites for granted, but when Nassau sent up its first time tamped at one, a flying Ladies hatbox, as one Newsrael called tiros one, just how useful it would be for forecasting was still an open question. Telstar US July tenth, nineteen sixty two. Low Earth Orbit, the first ever active communications satellite, sporadically relayed TV images across the Atlantic until, as space historian Matt Bill puts it, we sort of

killed it by accident. Radiation from a high altitude nuclear test knocked it out after seven months. Luette I, Canada September twenty ninth, nineteen sixty two, Low Earth Orbit. Canada became the third nation in space with this workhourse, which sent back some two million data snapshots of the iconosphere, the atmospheric layer that reflects radio waves during a record setting ten years in operation. This concludes readings from National

Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marshall. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.