Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2022 i National Geographic Magazine

“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…

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…

I COULD FEEL MYSELF SUFFOCATING. Each step down the bedrock passageway brought me closer to what I’d long imagined: the pool of khaki water, the flooded tunnel it hid, and the moment I’d have to enter that darkness. The crumbling grandeur of a pyramid loomed above. Here, at the ancient necropolis of Nuri in Sudan’s northern desert, Kushite royals were laid to rest millennia ago in a series of underground burial chambers beneath mighty pyramids. Now the chambers were flooded with groundwater leaching from the nearby Nile. Archaeologist Pearce Paul Creasman, funded in part by a National Geographic Society grant, was leading a team that would be the first to attempt underwater archaeology below a pyramid. Initially, I’d been calm, even excited, about going along to photograph this ambitious and…

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…

For more stories about how to help the planet, go to natgeo.com. It’s fine to shop at farmers markets and grocery stores for recipe ingredients. But what if you could gather some of them by foraging—and, at the same time, help rid your region of non-native plant species that are harming America’s ecosystems? According to the National Wildlife Federation, about 42 percent of today’s threatened or endangered species are at risk because of invasive species. Be sure to forage only in nonpolluted areas, and verify plant identity with an expert or a smartphone app. Here are four invasives to look for—and ideas for serving them up. 1. HIMALAYAN BLACKBERRY Native to Armenia, the plant has thorny thickets that smother other species, block access through woods, and injure livestock. Its fruit…

Quannah Rose Chasinghorse, a groundbreaking Indigenous model, uses her fame to support her activism, reminding people “whose land you’re living on.” Native sovereignty, she says, is key to “defending my ways of life, trying to protect what’s left.” She is Hän Gwich’in and Sičangu/Oglala Lakota, but was born on Diné (Navajo) land in Arizona. Here, Chasinghorse stands in Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii (Monument Valley), a park administered by the Diné. “We Are Here” appears in the languages of these Indigenous peoples, identified by color: ■ Tla-o-qui-aht ■ Siksikaitsitapi ■ Chahta ■ Karuk ■ Onondaga ■ Mohawk SOVEREIGNTY to Native nations means both the FREEDOM to decide one’s actions and the RESPONSIBILITY to keep THE WORLD IN BALANCE, an idea the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot) express by the word AATSIMOIYIHKAAN. The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating…

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…

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,…

FROM THE SHOWSTOPPER Cymbidiella pardalina, with its operatic scarlet lip (pictured), to the thumbnail-size yellow Angraecum rhynchoglossum, about a thousand species of orchids call Madagascar home. Known for their delicate details, these flowers exhibit remarkable resistance to wildfire and the severe drought now plaguing this biodiverse Indian Ocean island. Orchids with underground tubers act as survival powerhouses, says Jeannie Raharimampionona, a Malagasy botanist, conservationist, and National Geographic Explorer. In her 22 years of award-winning work in defense of island flora, she has helped create a dozen refuges to protect plant species from deforestation and habitat loss. What continues to motivate her is the astonishing rate of flora discovery here. Even just “as a traveler, you could see an orchid that is new for science,” she says. Learn more about the National…