Inside NATURE on PBS

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-winning journalist Rachel Nuwer wrote an in-depth article about Sudan and his family for NATURE in 2016. Her article lays out Sudan’s entire backstory, how he ended up in a Czech zoo and eventually at the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya. We caught up with Rachel to ask if she had any updates on Sudan or the plan to save the Northern White Rhino. We also hoped to find out why this subspecies has fared so poorly compared the closely-related Black Rhino and Southern White Rhino. Links: "The Last Rhino" film http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/can-science-save-northern-white-rhino-sudan-najin-fatu/ Rachel's article "Do the World’s Three Remaining Northern White Rhinos Have a Future?" http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/can-science-save-northern-white-rhino-sudan-najin-fatu/

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 drowned in gill nets, the main culprit in their dwindling numbers. The ambitious, last-ditch effort, now dubbed VaquitaCPR, was designed hoped to round up the remaining vaquitas and move them into holding pens. For an intimate look at how the VaquitaCPR operation fared, we talked to one of its lead scientists, Barbara Taylor, a marine biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and Frances Gulland, the veterinarian responsible for the care of captured vaquitas. More resources on the vaquita from NATURE on PBS: Featured Creature: The Vaquita http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/featured-creature-vaquita/ Previous podcast interview with Barbara Taylor http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/uncertain-future-vaquita/

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 seven years, elephant populations had declined by an astonishing 30 percent, mostly due to poaching. Mike spoke to us about the study from a remote research station in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. You can read a transcript of the podcast on the NATURE website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/?post_type=blog&p=15433&preview=true

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 spoke to conservation biologist Barbara Taylor. Taylor is a scientist with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California who has been studying the vaquita for more than 20 years. She is also a lead member of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, which is working on the plan remove the species from the wild in order to save it.

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-species/

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. Canada). Photo by Steve Forrest

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.)