In February, we aired “The Last Rhino”, a film about the three remaining Northern White Rhinos; Sudan, an elderly male, his daughter Fatu, and his granddaughter Najin. Together, they are last living representatives of their kind. However, this dire situation hasn’t deterred a group of scientists from trying to rescue the Northern White. Using tissue collected from Sudan and his family, as well as frozen tissue from deceased rhinos, they hope to rebuild the population from the ground up. Award-wi...
Mar 01, 2018•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast In our latest episode, NATURE executive producer Fred Kaufman speaks with BBC cameraman and presenter Gordon Buchanan. Gordon hosts the upcoming NATURE mini-series “Animals with Cameras”, which premieres on PBS three consecutive Wednesdays, starting on January 31st. If the name doesn’t give it away, “Animals with Cameras” employs state-of-the-art cameras worn by animals themselves. These animal cinematographers have an important mission: to help expand human understanding of their habitats and s...
Jan 29, 2018•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This October, an international team of scientists set out to save the vaquita, the most endangered whale in the world. This October, an international team of scientists set out to save the vaquita, the most endangered whale in the world. Recent estimates suggest that as few as 30 individuals remain in the Gulf of California, the slim body of water that separates mainland Mexico from the Baja peninsula. These numbers are considered unsustainable given that every year many vaquitas are found drown...
Dec 11, 2017•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2007, writer and falconer Helen Macdonald lost her father tragically to a heart attack. The two were close, and in order to find a way through her grief, she retreated to a childhood passion for falconry. Helen adopted goshawk, a notoriously difficult bird to tame, and over the course of many months, trained her to become an obedient hunter. She wrote about the experience in her best-selling 2014 book H is for Hawk. Now, ten years later, Helen’s experience training a new goshawk is the subjec...
Nov 01, 2017•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today (August 12th) is World Elephant Day and we thought there was no better time to take a look at the state of Africa’s elephants. To find out how they are doing we spoke with Mike Chase, conversation biologist and founder of the non-profit organization Elephants Without Borders. Starting in 2014, Mike lead the Great Elephant Census, a groundbreaking two-year study that attempted to count, with great accuracy, all of Africa’s savanna elephants. What he found was startling. Over the previous se...
Aug 11, 2017•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of the InsideNATURE podcast is all about sloths; perhaps the strangest group of creatures evolution has ever produced. While other species get ahead by being the fastest, the biggest or the strongest, sloths do everything as slowly as possible, using the least amount of energy and remaining largely unnoticed. But don’t be deceived by their low-key lifestyle. Sloths have been around millions of years, much longer than humankind, so they must be doing something right! To guide us thro...
Jun 19, 2017•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast The vaquita is the smallest porpoise in the world and also the most endangered. Last year, a scientific survey determined there were about 30 vaquitas left in wild, down from the 60 or so found the previous year. With such low numbers, the species appears to be teetering on the edge of extinction, and scientists are now are developing a daring rescue plan to remove the vaquita from its home in the Gulf of California. To get some background on the situation and more details on the rescue, we spok...
May 17, 2017•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we speak with filmmaker Joe Pontecorvo, producer of the recent NATURE film “Yosemite”. As the name suggests, Joe’s film is about Yosemite National Park, one of America’s oldest parks nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. The film features a diverse cast of animal characters including rabbit-like pikas, big horn sheep and peregrine falcons as well as giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world. Filmed during the end of a historic drought which killed 100 m...
Apr 04, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we speak with David Biello, environmental journalist and author of the book “The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age”. The book details the many ways human activity has altered our planet, often for the worse, and examines efforts to rollback those alterations, or at least lessen their impact. Read an excerpt from David's book on the NATURE website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/could-we-bring-back-the-passenger-pigeon-or-other-extinct-sp...
Mar 23, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast What does it takes to make a 'spy creature' come alive? In this episode of the InsideNATURE podcast, we speak with animatronic designer John Nolan, who, along with his hardworking team, created the 30 plus robot spy creatures featured in upcoming NATURE mini-series Spy in the Wild (airing Feb 1st thru March 1st on PBS). The creatures range in size from a small worm-like grub to a full-size, fully-expressive orangutan. And while they all look very different from each other, they have two things c...
Jan 18, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This time of year one animal species gets all of the attention--that hardy, sled-pulling athlete of the North, the reindeer. To find out more about these cold-loving creatures, and their wild counterparts, the caribou, we turned to Justina Ray, senior scientist and executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Canada. She filled us in on the reindeer's unique adaptations to life in the cold and shared some alarming news about the species' future in the Great White North (a.k.a. Cana...
Dec 16, 2016•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast The new NATURE episode "My Congo" represents the first opportunity for cameraman Vianet D'juenget to film his native country and be in front of the camera rather than behind it. We spoke to him about his first experience presenting, conservation in the Republic of Congo and what he hopes to achieve with his monumental film. "My Congo" premieres Oct 19, 2016 on PBS. Learn more about the film on the NATURE website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-congo-about/14566/
Oct 06, 2016•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we speak with Anne Johnson Prum, producer, cinematographer and founder of Cone Flower Studios. Anne has produced a number of films for NATURE including "Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air" in 2010 and the Emmy-nominated mini-series "Animal Homes". Her latest, "Super Hummingbirds" airs on PBS October 12 (Check local listings.)
Sep 06, 2016•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alejandro Morales is a veterinarian with a job that many dream of. He rehabilitates animals recovered from the illegal pet trade in Guatemala and makes them strong enough to return to wild. You can see Alejandro and his team at work in NATURE's most recent episode "Jungle Animal Hospital". Alejandro spoke to NATURE about his work, the challenges of helping run the ARCAS wildlife refuge and filled us in on the status of the animals featured in Jungle Animal Hospital.
May 19, 2016•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
