Innehållsförteckning för June 2023 från National Geographic Magazine

THE ONGOING PROJECT of protecting natural lands and waters isn’t a uniquely American effort. But it’s one that the United States has enshrined and elaborated to a greater degree than any other country on the planet. Our world-famous national parks have captured imaginations for more than a century (the federal system was established in 1916). My friend Conor Knighton has traveled to every single park, a journey he documented in his 2020 book, Leave Only Footprints. The rest of us can virtually visit some this month when a new season of National Geographic’s series America’s National Parks begins streaming on Disney+. Of course, there are other federally protected areas. National marine sanctuaries. National wildlife refuges. National monuments. National forests. For this issue’s cover story, writer Peter Gwin and photographer Katie…

THE BUOYS MARKING Virginia Oliver’s lobster traps bear an ID number she inherited from her father. Now it’s Oliver’s son Max working 200 traps with her in Maine’s lobster fishery—as 102-year-old Oliver has done across nine decades. The debate over how the fishery affects endangered right whales has cost Maine lobster its sustainable seafood rating in two major guides. But a half hour before daybreak in season, mother and son still are putting out to sea, greeting fellow lobstermen with a wave or shout. “I might just go until I die,” Oliver says. “That’s when I’m going to quit.” —TED GUP…

THINGS HEAT UP each spring in the Sonoran Desert. As the cacti begin to bloom, thousands of cactus bees (Diadasia rinconis) emerge from the underground nests where they hatched and matured. The males exit first. The females come out later to find dozens of males awaiting them. No time is wasted with introductions. As soon as a female appears, a swarm of suitors descends upon her, jockeying for the prime position on her back. The writhing ball they form is a rarely seen spectacle of nature. It’s also the female’s launch into parenthood. Unlike honeybees, which are social, cactus bees are solitary. After mating, the female flies off to parts unknown and spends time in a state of suspended animation known as diapause, which allows her to survive desert temperature…

HISSING AND SPITTING HYDROTHERMAL VENTS ON THE SEABED RELEASE SUPERHEATED GASES THAT CAN REACH NEARLY 300 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. YET LIFE ENDURES. The night is beautiful and so is the sea as our ship glides south along Italy’s coast. I’m at the helm of the Victoria IV and could easily follow my course observing the sophisticated instruments on the bridge. But how could I resist relying instead on the ancestral navigation guide known as the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean? The small glowing light on the distant horizon is not the work of humans but rather fiery lava explosions from Stromboli, a volcanic island in the Aeolian archipelago north of Sicily. Though this flickering glow is barely perceptible from afar, it has persisted for thousands of years, and we’re headed straight for it.…

WHO A California-based hobbyist photographer focusing on nature WHERE Mexico’s Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve WHAT Nikon D850 camera with a 500mm lens Jiang wanted to capture images of flamingo chicks—but it was harder than she expected. After traveling to the Yucatán Peninsula, known for its flamingo breeding grounds, she was escorted by rangers inside the Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve. They set off before dawn, waded through a 300-foot stretch of water, and waited in a blind until sunrise. In the early light Jiang spotted the chicks, just a week or two old. She was charmed by their “fluffy gray feathers, which are so different yet harmonious with their parents’ colors.” National Geographic has more than 340 million Instagram followers. This page showcases images from our accounts: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure,…

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SCIENCE AND INNOVATION Most of the elements that fill up the universe (and our periodic table) come from extreme cosmic explosions. One such kablooey, the “kilonova,” yields many of the elements heavier than iron, including much of the universe’s gold. Triggering a kilonova, though, takes a specific scenario: the collision of two neutron stars, the ultradense leftovers from stars that died in supernovae. What are these collisions’ origin stories? In a first, a study in the journal Nature has shown that a star system within the Milky Way is doomed to end in a kilonova. The system, known as CPD-29 2176, is 11,000 light-years from us in the Milky Way’s outskirts. It consists of a neutron star with a circular 60-day orbit around a…

GIANNI CREA IS intimately familiar with the contours of history. Almost every morning for the past decade, he’s unlocked the doors to the Vatican Museums. He’s witnessed the splendor of the Sistine Chapel at dawn, studied the shadows of Caravaggio, and admired the textures of ancient Egypt. “Yes, I’m a key keeper, head key keeper, but I’m still a doorman that opens a museum,” says Crea, a devout Catholic. “But I open the doors to the history of art and the history of Christianity—and it’s the biggest and most beautiful history that exists in the world.” His workday begins around 5 a.m. in a secure bunker that holds 2,797 keys. Crea and his team of 10 clavigeri navigate some 4.3 miles of passageways through the museums to reach 300 doors—many of…

RINGED BY AQUAMARINE waters, Santa Rosa Island is a folded landscape of canyons, mountains, and hanging sea cliffs. But there’s more here than meets the eye. Archaeological intrigue lingers on this temperate isle, the second largest in California’s Channel Islands National Park. While digging in the island’s Arlington Canyon in 1959, archaeologist Phil Orr discovered two femurs that he suspected dated back thousands of years to the late Pleistocene epoch. That alone was not unique. Orr conducted fieldwork on windswept Santa Rosa for more than two decades. During his many expeditions, he excavated entire villages of the Chumash people and numerous graves and middens, as well as the large bones of pygmy mammoths, which roamed the area around 12,000 years ago. But nearly 40 years after Orr’s discovery, John R.…

Edges of Eruption Volcanoes form near the subduction zone where the African tectonic plate dives beneath the Eurasian one. Scientists study the converging plates to better predict eruptions and to increase preparedness for the populations that call the region home. Risk Management Scientists track the rate and composition of Jacuzzi-like bubbles in the shallows to gauge the volcanic and gaseous activity’s threat to the local population. A large gas release could be lethal; noxious discharge can suffocate anything unlucky enough to be in the water or on its surface.…

INSIDE A 4,400-YEAR-OLD ROYAL TOMB IN EGYPT, I STUDIED THE WALLS SEARCHING FOR A PARTICULAR SYMBOL. The shapes of one of the oldest writing systems—vultures and owls, eyes and feet, snakes and half circles—were etched into the limestone in neat columns. Flecks of brilliant blue pigment, a prized adornment in the Old Kingdom, still lined the crevices of the hieroglyphs. The symbol I was trying to find looks something like a bowl with a horizontal line just beneath the brim, as if it were filled with water. Fluorescent lights on the floor lit the dim antechamber, casting shadows across the texts as tourists and guides milled about. Rows of carved five-pointed stars covered the vaulted ceiling. Egyptologist Victoria Almansa-Villatoro scanned the hieroglyphs with two extended fingers. Wearing a white baseball cap,…

1 ANCIENT ARTIFACT Royal Rock of Ages For the past seven centuries, the Stone of Scone has been used for coronations in Britain, enclosed beneath the chair on which the new sovereign is crowned. Mystery shrouds the slab’s origins, but legends trace it to ancient Rome or Palestine. Later it reputedly traveled to Egypt, Spain, and Ireland. The roughly 335-pound block just took a jaunt to London’s Westminster Abbey for King Charles III’s ceremony. When it’s not in royal service, the stone sits on display in Edinburgh Castle. 2 FAVORED FLORA RECENTLY NAMED NATIONAL FLOWER, THE PEONY BLOOMS IN SEVERAL VARIETIES ACROSS ROMANIA. THEY BRIGHTEN GREEN SPACES FROM THE STEPPE PEONY NATURE RESERVE TO THE BUCHAREST BOTANICAL GARDEN. 3 CURIOUS HISTORY ARM ENIANS IN SINGAPORE Though the British founded the city-state,…

WE WERE CAMPED IN A GROVE of ponderosa pines and had built a fire from the deadfall. The horses had been tied up for the night, the dinner plates scraped; and we sat on our saddle blankets, hunched against the November chill, waiting for the coffeepot to boil. Shadows cast by the fire rose and fell on the enormous tree trunks, like images on a drive-in movie screen. Joe, an Apache guide who like his ancestors had ridden this country and knew its secrets, was telling the story of a wolf. It had been killed not far from here. He spoke in a slow, deliberate cadence that gave each of his words a certain weight, like the river stones we’d carried to build the fire ring. And then, a wolf…

BENEATH A RAINBOW of colorful shade umbrellas, Poto Poto Market clamors with merchants selling goods: smoked fish, papayas, eggplants, dresses, children’s school supplies, flip-flops. It’s a Saturday morning in Brazzaville, the pulsing capital of the Republic of the Congo, and Honor Toudissa, strolling the aisles, pauses to examine two large catfish thrashing in a shallow bin of water. He offers a woman wearing a pink T-shirt and yellow headscarf seven dollars for the pair. Pleased, she places the fish on her wooden butcher block and chops their heads off with her machete: Whack! HONOR TOUDISSA’S MISSION IS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT IT’S POSSIBLE TO COOK CONGOLESE-STYLE FOOD WITHOUT USING WILD GAME. Toudissa, who has appeared on Congolese television and in international cooking competitions, is buying fresh catfish to make a traditional dish…

IF YOU RECOGNIZE THE NAME Noiva do Cordeiro, you may know it as the village where everything is dominated by women, the women are all young and beautiful, they regularly send their men into exile, and then the young, beautiful women invite eligible men to… To a wildly fictionalized version of a real place. Not one claim in that first paragraph is true about the actual Noiva do Cordeiro, a secluded rural community in southeast Brazil. But the titillating reports have circulated for a decade or more, ever since a few provocative articles were published, replicated by media worldwide, and permanently inscribed on the internet. For the record: About as many men as women live in Noiva, population roughly 350. Most of the men are away weekly, working in a…