National Geographic Magazine July 2022

“THE TREES ARE PRECIOUS TO US,” says Priscilla Hunter. “We believe our ancestors’ spirits are there.” Hunter is a member of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians in Northern California. She’s also a founder and chairwoman of the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council (and the person holding the staff in this photo). In 1997 the council acquired 3,844 acres of the Sinkyone wilderness, about 200 miles north of San Francisco along California’s Lost Coast. It’s “lost” because scenic Highway 1 avoids it, cutting inland to dodge the rugged coastal terrain. One could also say it’s lost because less than 2 percent of the original old-growth redwoods there survived logging decades ago. Now the 10 tribes that formed the consortium are working to protect and preserve their sacred land. I asked…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 242 NO. 1 LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE…

ON A MISERABLE DAY in the middle of winter, I push my then 60-year-old mother into the icy waters of the Atlantic. As a nearby great white shark comes to investigate, my mother faces it, then disappears under the water for what feels like an eternity. She returns to the surface, gasping for breath but smiling. I suppose the galvanized steel cage separating her and the shark had something to do with that. For as long as I can remember, I have loved sharks and wanted to share that passion with everyone, including my initially reluctant parents. I saw my first shark when I was 16, off Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A trio of blacktips weaved among barracuda circling above a coral reef. I tried to get closer, finning hard into…

ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 242 NO. 1 GROWING UP, CHELSEA WOOD dreamed of becoming a marine biologist and studying sharks or dolphins—the kind of big, exciting animals that biologists call charismatic megafauna. Instead, during a college internship, she found herself peering through a microscope at the innards of a snail. As a kid, she had often plucked these periwinkles off rocks along the Long Island shores and collected them in buckets, but she had never looked inside one. So she cracked a snail open, and under magnification she saw “thousands of little, white, sausage-shaped things dumping out of the snail’s body.” The sausages were larvae of the flatworm Cryptocotyle lingua, a common fish parasite. Seen through the microscope, they each had two dark…

Finny Icons of Ancient Egypt Two denizens of the Nile—the catfish (right) and the tilapia—were among the animals ancient Egyptians mythologized. Magic, regeneration, and fertility were credited to these fish; amulets depicting them were said to have powers, including protection from drowning. —ELISA CASTEL INVASIVE SPECIES TOO MANY MOUTHS? AFTER OVERPOPULATING AN ADOPTED HOMELAND, THIS TOAD IS CANNIBALIZING ITS OWN SPECIES. Known as the marine toad, giant toad, and cane toad, Rhinella marina feasts on insects in its native South America. So in 1935, 101 toads were brought to Australia in hopes of ridding sugarcane plantations of beetles. The poisonous amphibians did little to curb the beetle population and quickly became pests, multiplying rapidly and taking a toll on native species. Today the more than 200 million cane toads in…

Visiting every nation on Earth made her a proponent of ethical, sustainable travel. Jessica Nabongo never set out to be an advocate. But after visiting all 195 countries and 10 territories, that is exactly what the 38-year-old Detroit native has become. Author of the new National Geographic book The Catch Me If You Can, Nabongo was inspired in part by her well-traveled parents when in 2017 she decided to attempt a daunting feat: being the first Black woman to document having gone to every country around the globe. By 2019, the former United Nations consultant and boutique travel agency owner had completed that mission. But seeing firsthand some of the problems facing the planet, such as discrimination and the way poorer countries have been left to handle the world’s waste,…