Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i National Geographic Magazine

Around Vostok and other southern Line Islands in the remote central Pacific, abundant small reef fish support a thriving population of top predators. Here a gray reef shark swims over Montipora corals in a sea of fusilier damselfish and Bartlett’s anthias. Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer in Residence, visited the area in 2009 for his Pristine Seas project, which conducted the first scientific surveys of marine life around the islands and recommended protection. Now the sea around the islands is a reserve, which may have helped it recover from a dramatic coral die-off in the wake of a 2015-16 El Niño warming event. On this more recent trip, Sala captured the reefs restored to their former glory.…

What’s the one item you always take on, or bring back from, an assignment? " My son, Oliver, was born in May of 2021. Since then I’ve kept one of the socks … he wore as a newborn. I have taken it everywhere with me.—SAUL MARTINEZ I always bring tobacco to offer the land as a spiritual gesture of respect for nature and to ask for safety when traveling.—PAT KANE There is a bobcat fetish that lives in my camera bag … [It] comes all over the world with me.—KARINE AIGNER An FDA-approved device for motion sickness that looks like a watch but shocks like an electric eel … which is very handy when flying in bush planes or rocking around ocean swells on a boat.—KILIII YÜYAN I like to…

Shrouded in morning mist, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) looms over Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B in March as the rocket awaits testing. The 322-foot-tall vehicle is the linchpin of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon and use it as a stepping stone to Mars. With two boosters and four main engines, SLS can fling a crew capsule moonward with 8.8 million pounds of thrust—15 percent more oomph than the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket. Each SLS will be used only once. After this rocket’s launch during an uncrewed test flight planned for this year, its pieces are expected to either fall into the ocean or enter orbit around the sun.…

Ranobi Islomova, 63, of Farkhor, Tajikistan, lies in the back of a car while waiting to return home from gallbladder surgery. In the background is the reservoir formed by the 984-foot-high Nurek Dam, the second highest dam on the planet, whose hydropower plant on the Vakhsh River supplies about 50 percent of the country’s electricity. Climate change—in the form of rapidly melting glaciers and growing instances of drought—is making hydropower in Central Asia an increasingly unreliable energy source. Tajikistan is on track to complete the world’s largest dam, the 1,099-foot Rogun, in the next decade at the estimated cost of eight billion dollars.…

An elephant gathers the fruit of a Detarium macrocarpum tree off the forest floor in Gabon’s Lopé National Park. Research suggests that a decades-long decline in Lopé’s tree fruits, most likely driven by rising temperatures and plummeting rainfall, may be causing forest elephants to starve in one of their last strongholds in Central Africa. Forest elephants are important seed dispersers in such ecosystems, as they range widely and their dung contains nutrients that help seeds germinate successfully. African forest elephants are now critically endangered by poaching and habitat loss, and their numbers have fallen by more than 86 percent over 31 years. Depletion of these elephant populations in turn has the potential to further contribute to the trees’ decline.…

A small refinery on the roof of a laboratory at ETH Zurich pulls carbon dioxide and water directly from the air and feeds them into a reactor that concentrates solar radiation. This generates extreme heat, splitting the molecules and creating a mixture that ultimately can be processed into kerosene or methanol. Researchers hope this system will eventually produce market-ready, carbon-neutral jet fuel. One Swiss airline has already announced plans to use the fuel.…

HOW DO YOU PROTECT a delicate camera while photographing a powerful yet sometimes skittish animal? That was the dilemma faced by Jasper Doest last year when he was in Gabon to cover the effects of climate change on forest elephants. (One of the resulting images appears in this issue on page 54.) He needed a way to capture the foraging pachyderms without frightening them away from their food source. For help, Doest turned to National Geographic photo engineer Tom O’Brien, who designs and builds solutions for all kinds of field assignment hurdles. In this case, that meant developing an extraordinarily strong camera trap that wouldn’t disturb the elephants or the area’s protected trees, and making multiples of everything as backup.…

Blue-and-yellow macaws perch on a rooftop in Caracas, waiting to be fed by locals. Native to the tropical forests and savannas of South America, these macaws have proliferated in Venezuela’s capital city over the past few decades because of the pet trade. “Entire generations grew up with a parrot, parakeet, or a macaw at home,” says biologist María González-Azuaje, a professor at Simón Bolívar University. “Some escaped; others were released.” Four species populate the city of three million, though blueand-yellow macaws dominate the others. Before raucous anti-government protests in 2017 and 2019 drove birds to the outskirts, blue-and-yellow macaws numbered around 400. González believes they’ve increased since the pandemic: “They came back to recover the empty spaces.”…

Pedestrians, motorcycles, and taxis crowd a street in the financial center of Mumbai, a metropolis that’s home to about 21 million people. Two- and three-wheelers are the most popular private vehicles in India, and the country has pledged that 80 percent of them will be electric by 2030. This shift is an important part of the country’s efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by embracing renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydrogen. But progress on that front is challenged by India’s explosive growth: Its energy-hungry middle class is doubling as the country is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation.…

A taxidermied African lion is transported on a dolly during the Dallas Safari Club’s convention. U.S. hunters used to account for the majority of South Africa’s multimillion-dollar lion-breeding industry, which supplies the adult animals for trophy hunts, cubs for tourist interactions, and their bones for traditional Chinese and South-east Asian medicines. Many of the estimated 10,000 captive lions in South Africa are kept in dirty, overcrowded spaces and fed poor diets. In 2021 the government announced its intention to end the industry, saying it does not contribute to helping the species, which has lost 90 percent of its historic African range in the past 120 years. Since then, few steps have been taken toward this goal.…

Sparkling hollow rocks known as geodes are often thought of as desktop curios. But some of them can be gigantic monuments to geology. The 390-cubic-foot Pulpí Geode was found in 1999 within an abandoned mine, and it is filled with gypsum crystals up to seven feet long. Here, University of Almería researcher Fernando Gázquez measures the geode’s atmospheric conditions to see whether tourist visits are affecting the formations. He reported in 2022 that the shining spires grew between 164,000 and 60,000 years ago, when rainwater seeped into an aquifer and dissolved deposits of gypsum and anhydrite. Over millennia, the gypsum came out of solution and crystallized on the sides of the chamber.…

SO I’M IN A PARK in Cleveland, where I happen to be visiting a friend, and I’m just … looking for human touch. Pure. Simple. And here is this young couple lying in a hammock, facing each other, legs intertwined. You can see them touching, but also you can feel it, her response to it, the quiet in her dreamy eyes. I have to get up the courage, always, doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing this: Hi. My name’s Lynn, I’m about to start a project about touch for National Geographic; I saw you here, I thought maybe you’d have something to share about that. Do you mind if I take a photograph? Because I’m going to have to move into their personal space, if they say no, I…

Wild Asian elephants mingle with cattle at a garbage dump near Minneriya, in central Sri Lanka. The island nation is home to some 6,000 pachyderms living in close contact with people. Having lost their lowland forest home, elephants now seek out humanaffected habitats, including croplands, and are master generalists, capable of eating at least a hundred different plants. That doesn’t mean that Sri Lankan elephants are thriving; they instead may be coping. Researchers are tracking levels of cortisol—a stress hormone—that could be detrimental to the elephants’ health.…

Hunters bring dead coyotes to be weighed in the parking lot of the White Sulphur Springs Fire Department in New York. Each year, Sullivan County’s sportsmen’s clubs sponsor a three-day coyote-killing contest, offering $2,000 to the hunter who bags the heaviest animal. Despite being one of the most persecuted animals in the U.S., coyotes have expanded their range to 49 of the 50 states. At least half a million coyotes are killed each year for the fur trade, for predator control, and for sport, but hunting them with the goal of reducing their numbers usually doesn’t work. Eliminating coyotes only creates a vacuum that is filled by transient coyotes. In addition, females that lose family members have larger litters at younger ages.…

Five weeks into the 112-day journey of the National Geographic expedition ship Polar Sun, photographer Renan Ozturk found himself exploring a bay off the coast of Greenland. The boat played peekaboo with pale blue icebergs as Ozturk readied his camera drone and held his breath. “Launching the drone from a moving boat is always a dangerous and exciting affair,” he recalls. “It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience to shoot such a feature.”…

▪ Locations of photos found in this issue of National Geographic Where National Geographic has sent photographers in the past year Photographers sent to highlighted countries Washington, D.C. Populated place Lake Champlain Water feature Camp Adventure Point of interest Mt. Everest Physical feature Lopé National Park Protected area 132 Photographers sent out 60 Countries visited 120°F Heat recorded by Matthieu Paley as he followed Sufi pilgrims in Pakistan’s Sindh and Balochistan Provinces -49°F Cold measured by Pat Kane in Canada’s Northwest Territories while covering Indigenous trappers…

With winged arms in a protective spread, this relief of the Egyptian goddess Isis has stood guard for millennia on the stone sarcophagus of the pharaoh Tutankhamun. Isis has witnessed a great deal: Soon after Tut’s burial in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in the 14th century B.C., grave robbers ransacked parts of the tomb. Then, in 1922, a team led by British archaeologist Howard Carter rediscovered the burial site and fully excavated it. Nearly all of Tutankhamun’s belongings now reside in the lavish Grand Egyptian Museum, which opens soon outside Cairo. The sarcophagus, though, remains within the necropolis, along with the boy king’s mummy.…

WE’D SIT AT THE water’s edge, on the seawall in front of Gena’s family home, and listen. Soon we’d hear them: gusts of breath when the manatees came up for air before sinking back below the surface of the spring-fed Florida bay. I began calling them “the sounds of the ancients,” as these docile marine mammals’ lineage leads back to grass-eating land mammals from about 50 million years ago. Yet in the places that manatees inhabit today, many populations are seriously threatened. WRITER-photographer Gena Steffens and I were paired at a National Geographic mentorship program in 2019 and had discussed working on a project together. I had moved to South Florida only a few years before, and Gena was living in Colombia. Gena had spent many childhood days in Crystal…

To create this image of Bears Ears, Stephen Wilkes took 2,092 photos over 36 hours, combining 44 of them to show a sunrise, a full moon, and a rare alignment of four planets. “Beyond the sense of awe and beauty,” he says, “there’s a palpable sense of history with every step you take.” This spectacular landscape in southeastern Utah exemplifies the risk to some of the country’s unique, irreplaceable places. One president preserved it at the urging of Native Americans who hold it sacred; another tried to open it to drilling and mining. The national monument is rich in archaeological sites, including the Citadel, an ancient cliff dwelling now popular with hikers.…

Ali Haider, 19, Najib Khan, 20, and Atif Amin, 24, pose in pumpkin masks trimmed with goat hair during the reenactment of a glacier-mating ceremony on the Shispare Glacier in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley in December 2021. The ceremony, which locals say last took place in Hunza in the 1970s, involves the collection of ice from a “male” and a “female” glacier, which is deposited in a hole in a shadowy area of the mountains in the hope that it gives rise to a new ice flow to irrigate the valley below. The men, all from Hunza, chose to re-create a moment from the full ceremony on the (female) Shispare Glacier to preserve the tradition for future generations.…

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched from Cape Canaveral in the early hours of June 19, streaks above a stand of bald cypress trees. This was the second time in less than a year that a SpaceX rocket appeared in photographer Mac Stone’s frame while he was shooting at night in a remote swamp. Stone says that the increased frequency of launches without fanfare “suggests that we have crossed over into a new era where cosmic missions are simply business as usual.”…

The family of the Indigenous Misak leader Nazaria Calambás Tunubalá mourns at her funeral in Cauca. In October 2021 the former mayor, then 34 years old, was gunned down while defending a water source. A 2016 peace deal between Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was meant to end bloodshed and open up opportunities in former conflict zones. Instead, more than 1,300 Colombians—many of them Indigenous and Afro-Colombian land defenders and environmentalists—have been killed resisting mining, logging, and drug trafficking in former FARC territories.…

Researchers gently take samples and measurements of a tranquilized baboon named Olduvai in the Amboseli ecosystem of southern Kenya before releasing him unharmed back into the wild. Since 1971, scientists have monitored Amboseli’s baboons to understand how they age and how social behaviors affect their survival—findings that could help us understand our own biology. Recent studies show that the biological ages of baboons—as measured by their DNA’s chemical wear and tear—differ from their calendar ages. The baboons most prone to living fast and dying young: males that had clawed their way to the top of the social hierarchy.…

A Townsend’s bigeared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) may look conspicuous lit up by a strobe light. But make no mistake: It’s a stealth predator. The echolocating calls of C. townsendii are 20 to 45 decibels quieter than those of other aerial-hunting bat species, according to work by Aaron Corcoran, a University of Colorado, Colorado Springs researcher and National Geographic Explorer who studies the evolutionary arms race between bats and their moth prey. As a result, moths are less likely to take evasive action as the bat draws near, as seen in this four-photo series. After closely approaching a moth (1), C. townsendii reaches to grab the prey with its wing (2) before transferring it into its tail pouch (3). Meal secured, the bat curls its tail to chow mid-flight (4). The…

Captured by drone, caribou from the Western Arctic herd gallop across a valley near the small town of Ambler during their spring migration. Caribou populations throughout much of North America are declining mysteriously; they have already disappeared from the contiguous United States. The Western Arctic herd now numbers fewer than 200,000, its lowest point in decades—a concern for Indigenous Alaskans such as the Inupiat, who rely on caribou as a staple food source and consider it an integral part of their culture. Climate change, industrial development, and increased hunting efficiency may all affect the survival of these ungulates.…

After lying dormant for 800 years, Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula erupted twice in less than 17 months, most recently on August 3, belching scarlet streams of molten rock into the uninhabited Meradalir Valley and initiating what some scientists suspect may be decades of fresh volcanic activity. Just an hour’s drive from Reykjavik, the spectacle drew thousands of curious onlookers. When eruptions are new, says photographer Chris Burkard, “you never really know what they are going to do. It’s a bit unnerving.”…

Istanbul-based photographer Rena Effendi traveled to Armenia and Azerbaijan in search of Satyrus effendi, a rare and endemic butterfly named after her father, the late Soviet Azerbaijani entomologist Rustam Effendi. While Effendi hasn’t yet spotted the butterfly in the wild, she did photograph a preserved one in the specimenpacked cabin of her father’s protégé Parkev Kazarian, a taxidermist in the mountainous town of Gyumri, Armenia. “I loved that it was still beautiful, even dead,” she says. Kazarian, an ethnic Armenian born in Azerbaijan, has lived in Armenia since 1989 due to the ongoing conflict between the two countries. “I wanted to capture his loneliness and isolation,” says Effendi. “It’s like he’s trapped in a time capsule.” " We had this war, and we have generations of people who grew up…

For a peso (less than two cents), internet vending machines bring the boundless digital world to Filipinos for a few minutes in a Manila neighborhood. Filipinos spend an average of four hours a day on social media, making them some of the world’s most active users. But false content flourishes on the country’s online platforms, leading media analysts to dub the Philippines patient zero in what has turned into a global disinformation pandemic. Dis- and misinformation became particularly acute in the run-up to this year’s presidential election, which saw Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., the son of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, elected leader of the nation’s more than 110 million people. “Lies travel faster than the truth,” says Celine Samson of Vera Files, one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners.…

Rafiullah, 10, packs dirt into a bomb crater on Afghanistan’s National Highway 1 near Maidan Shahr, Wardak Province, in March. The 1,400-milelong ring road was first built in the 1950s and ’60s but has been ruined by decades of war and neglect. When the restored Kabul-Kandahar stretch was reopened in 2003, it was proclaimed the “road to Afghanistan’s future.” But now boys like Rafiullah and his 15-year-old brother serve as ad hoc repair crews, relying on tips from passing motorists—the equivalent of two dollars on a good day—to help support their families. Save the Children estimates that nearly one-fifth of Afghan families have sent children out to work, as incomes have plunged since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.…

History was made on May 12, 2022, when seven members of the first all-Black Everest expedition—along with eight Nepali guides—summited the world’s highest peak (at 29,032 feet). James “KG” Kagambi reclines on the Balcony, a flat expanse at 27,600 feet where climbers rest and sip from oxygen tanks before ascending or descending. After training alongside the team for nearly a year, photographer Evan Green says he felt ready “to capture little pieces of personality, times when people relaxed a little bit.” At sunset on April 27, Green caught climber Thomas Moore walking amid the tents pitched at Camp I and framed by Everest (at left), Lhotse (center), and Nuptse (at right). “I was so cold, but I was just trying to get a final shot before the sun went down,”…

Wearing a protective suit, Armando Salazar steps carefully across sizzling rock, carrying a chunk of glowing lava on a pitchfork. It’s just another day on the job for Salazar, an emergency specialist in the Spanish military, as he collects samples during a 2021 eruption at La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge. Scientists and others also ventured across fresh flows to monitor gases, record earthquakes, and more, hoping to better understand the event, which lasted for almost 86 days. Their findings can help them determine Cumbre Vieja’s potential for future blasts.…

When cracks opened up in La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja ridge in September 2021, they set off one of the most destructive volcanic eruptions in the Canary Islands in 500 years. Carsten Peter arrived shortly after to cover the event, the 10th volcano he’s photographed for the magazine. Over the next three months, molten rock splattered from the volcano’s vents, while lava fountains blasted nearly 2,000 feet high. The eruption sent millions of cubic yards of lava on the march, bulldozing more than 2,800 buildings, 864 acres of farmland, and over 43 miles of road. Years of recovery now lie ahead for La Palma’s roughly 86,000 inhabitants.…

I AM GLIDING ON ICE, inhaling the crisp April air of Greenland’s high Arctic, accompanied by the rhythmic whooshing of sled dogs. I kneel on the back of a sled, making photographs of Inughuit hunter Qumangaapik “Quma” Qvist and his dog team. (That’s me holding the camera, above.) I’m on the quintessential National Geographic assignment, dogsledding across roughly 30 miles of sea ice in search of the unicorn of the sea: the narwhal. Week after week, we’ve been coming out on the sea ice of Inglefield Fjord, seeking a path to where ice meets water. After five weeks, when we finally come up on a small area of open water, Quma tests the ice with a heavy pole. It’s mushy, but underneath the softness lies dependable ice—our lives depend on…

Explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton and his crew in 1915 all survived when ice crushed their ship, Endurance, off the coast of Antarctica. The three-masted, oak-hulled barkentine, long lost in the depths of the Weddell Sea, was discovered in astonishingly good condition nearly 10,000 feet down in March 2022. The Endurance22 expedition, using autonomous underwater vehicles, located the ship and spotted the brass lettering on its stern, wellpreserved by cold temperatures, lack of light, and low oxygen. Esther Horvath photographed Agulhas II plowing through thick Antarctic ice floes. The treacherous weather made securing camera equipment on board a challenge. “It was so windy out there, I had to use my entire body weight to hold down my tripod,” she says. " Searching and moving in the polar darkness has a certain…

A manatee munches on a wisp of eelgrass in Florida’s Ichetucknee River, whose clean, warm waters can be a winter refuge for the aquatic mammals. Manatees can’t tolerate water colder than 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Declining water quality due to pollution, sedimentation, and algal blooms along central Florida’s Atlantic coast has decimated seagrass, one of the manatee’s main foods. As a result, a record 1,101 manatees died last year, most from starvation. During the winter of 2021-22, state and federal wildlife officials carried out a pilot supplemental feeding program in Indian River Lagoon to save as many manatees as possible before they could leave for warmer foraging grounds in spring. By mid-September of this year, 694 manatees had died.…

Draped in moss and fringed with ferns, the laurel forests of Madeira are echoes of the ecosystems that held sway across southern Europe millions of years ago. Norway-based photographer Orsolya Haarberg recalls that when she hiked among these trees, some perhaps 800 years old, she felt as if she were “entering a holy space.” Haarberg’s images, which ran in our May 2022 issue, bring attention to the beauty of Europe’s old-growth forests. About 2 percent of the European Union’s forested area is undisturbed by human activity, preserving a rich tapestry of nature. Haarberg took 522 images in the field in Madeira. Photo Editor Kurt Mutchler had the tough job of choosing among them. Orange (FINAL SELECTS) marks photos that reached the last round, blue (PUBLISHED) those appearing in the magazine.…

A Lada is enclosed in a glass box at a memorial to early heroes of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Lladoc, Kosovo. The car was carrying KLA members Zahir Pajaziti, Edmond Hoxha, and Hakif Zejnullahu when it was ambushed by Serbian forces on January 31, 1997. A decade of hostilities resulted in 78 days of NATO bombings of then Yugoslavia in 1999. The Republic of Kosovo declared its independence in 2008 and is now recognized by nearly a hundred countries. A musician prepares for the inaugural performance of the Kosovo Opera in Pristina’s Palace of Youth and Sports. Albanian-majority Kosovo has nearly 1.8 million people and one of Europe’s youngest populations; more than half of its citizens are under 30. "It was both touching and inspiring to see the…

Photographed at night with an infrared camera, a spotted hyena that scientists nicknamed Palazzo submissively grins and lays her ears back as Moulin Rouge, the clan’s dominant female at the time, towers over her. Palazzo’s cub peers out from between them. Unlike most social mammals, females rule among spotted hyenas, maintaining their hierarchy through relationships with female allies. These African predators, the largest members of the hyena family, weigh up to 190 pounds, and females are on average 10 percent heavier than males. Clans, some topping a hundred animals, form complex societies.…

I GREW UP in Central Java. My first job was working as a travel guide for visitors, then for student interns from Europe. That’s when I started using a camera, and then I knew I wanted to be a photojournalist. I began to freelance, but I wanted more training. In 2015 I got to go to Bali for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, where professional photographers teach students like me at low cost. And that’s the start. In the workshop class taught by [National Geographic contributing photographer] Maggie Steber, it’s like I was a baby, or blind, or starting from zero. But I tried to learn and to hear every single word that Maggie said. At the end, there was a festival and awards for the best students in each class.…

In northern Australia’s Arnhem Land, Rosemary Nabulwad, Arijay Nabarlambarl, Margaret Nabulwad, Janice Nalorlman, and Lorna Nabulwad probe marshy grasslands with long-handled crowbars to hunt turtles, a popular local delicacy. Turtle hunts happen during the hot, dry kurrung season, which begins in September when water has dried up and the reptiles retreat into the mud to keep cool. The five hunters, all family members, are rangers for the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area. Dedicated in 2009, the nearly 5,400-squaremile reserve is managed and protected by its traditional Aboriginal owners. Earlier in the year, Indigenous work crews set small fires in nearby grasses to help keep future wildfires from raging out of control. For these rangers, six hours of hunting on their day off yielded only two turtles.…

A long camera exposure blurs the crowd of tourists inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Carved from 38,000 tons of marble, limestone, and granite, and visited by millions of people each year, the edifice honoring the 16th U.S. president holds a massive statue of Abraham Lincoln by sculptor Daniel Chester French. The monument, which celebrated its centennial this year, has been the backdrop for civil rights protests, a prayer vigil for COVID-19 victims, and countless family snapshots. “In using a long exposure, I was trying to capture a feeling of the sea of visitors to the memorial each year, while positioning the Lincoln statue as this steady constant,” says photographer Sasha Arutyunova.…

A rat tries to rescue a trapped comrade at Tel Aviv University. Research indicates that when adult rats come to the aid of others, the reward center of the helper’s brain activates, just as in humans. But the rodents show empathy only toward rats in distress that are from familiar social groups, and choose not to assist rats from unfamiliar groups. In contrast, adolescent rats typically help the trapped rat no matter what. For rats, at least, the empathy bias for members of one’s own group emerges in adulthood. “What we found is that biologically, the helping response is best predicted by the value we place on the well-being of others, rather than on sharing their pain,” says neuroscientist Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal.…

Under a full moon on a hazy morning in Brazil’s Emas National Park, a lowland tapir known to park staff as Preciosa ambles down a road. Photographer Katie Orlinsky recalls the surprising encounter, noting that animals can behave unpredictably under full moons. “It was definitely not this tapir’s usual route,” she says. The stubby-trunked creatures go back some 50 million years and are among the few large-bodied mammals to have survived the last ice age’s megafaunal extinctions. As they voraciously eat fruit, tapirs also efficiently spread the seeds of many plant species. In fact, Brazil’s lowland tapirs like Preciosa tend to travel and defecate more often in degraded forests than in undisturbed ones, which helps reseed the landscape. But tapirs are declining because of deforestation, agricultural development, hunting, and vehicle…

Shadman Ali, 26, shades his head from the brutal heat as he holds aloft his pigeon near the holy spring of Naing Sharif in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The pilgrim and his winged companion, brightly colored for easy identification, are traveling an ancient 124-mile Sufi route across deserts and mountain passes to Balochistan Province. Those who complete this journey are blessed with the honorific “Lahooti”; a cave complex called Lahoot Lamakan lies close to the final stop on the journey. Also a pilgrim, Safar Ali, 53, stands in the waters near Naing Sharif. “We have all come from the same stream,” he says. Heavy rains and glacier melt, an increasing occurrence due to climate change, flooded the region in summer 2022, displacing nearly eight million people. "Meeting the pilgrims was an…

Fringed in clouds against the south-eastern night sky, the snowy peak of Nevado Auzangate, the highest mountain in the Andes of southern Peru, looms large above a waterfall. Glacial melt from Nevado Auzangate is a primary freshwater source for ecosystems and communities downstream, with ripple effects across the huge watershed of the Amazon River. In August, the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition worked with Peruvian partners to install a weather station on the mountain at 20,830 feet—the highest in the tropical Andes. The station is just one part of a broader effort to document the watershed from the Andes to the Atlantic. Photographer Thomas Peschak made this image in June and will explore Amazonia’s diverse aquatic ecosystems for 396 days through 2024.…

Hammered by wind and waves, the crew of the 47-foot Polar Sun crosses the mouth of northern Canada’s Lancaster Sound—with nearly 3,000 miles of sailing already behind them. This National Geographic expedition charts a path through the Arctic from Maine to Alaska, retracing the steps of Sir John Franklin. In 1845 Franklin led an ill-fated British Royal Navy attempt to navigate the North-west Passage, the fabled Arctic seaway bridging the Atlantic and Pacific. Instead, Franklin and his crew of 128 found nothing but horror: Erebus and Terror, their two ships, were trapped in ice and had to be deserted. The entire party perished. Led by adventurer Mark Synnott, the new expedition aims to uncover the mystery of what happened to the sailors, based on the testimony of local Inuit.…

SINCE LAUNCHING in 2011, National Geographic’s main Instagram account—@natgeo—has been a creative collaboration of more than a hundred photographers. Posting only when they capture a remarkable sight, these storytellers have been delighting audiences with authentic scenes of the world and all that’s in it. The feed, now with over 230 million followers and counting, offers not only compelling images but often behind-the-scenes details on the subjects, why they matter, and what went into documenting them. Here are five photos that resonated strongly with viewers this past year. MATTAWA, WASHINGTON Erika Larsen @erikalarsen888 While working on a story about Native American cultures’ connection to horses, Larsen met Destiny Buck, a member of the Wanapum tribe, in Oregon. Months later, Larsen photographed Buck at home in Washington, where she stood “poised and proud,”…