January 04, 2008

Baby Gorilla, Gabon, 2000
Photograph by Michael Nichols
Lekedi, a baby western lowland gorilla, sits for a close-up at a gorilla orphanage in Gabon. Central Africa's lowland gorilla populations suffer from steady habitat loss, capture and killing by poachers, and the cross fire of civil wars within their range. Conservationists are working to avert the species' extinction by collecting gorilla orphans, nurturing and socializing them, and ultimately releasing them back into the wild.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Central Africa's Orphan Gorillas: Will They Survive in the Wild?" February 2000, National Geographic magazine)

January 05, 2008

Hedgerows near Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales
Photograph by Sam Abell
A wide hedgerow, growing thick with hawkweed, borders a field in south Wales, near Brecon Beacons National Park. Besides serving as a fence between properties and supporting dozens of species of flora and fauna in their densely planted rows, hedgerows knit together disparate fields into a picturesque quilt of undulating fields.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Britain's Hedgerows," September 1993, National Geographic magazine)

January 06, 2008

Volcanic Steam, Mount St. Helens, Washington, 2000
Photograph by Jim Richardson
On Mount St. Helens, a volcanic formation seems to come to life as it exhales a cloud of steam. The volcano in southwestern Washington's Cascade Range is most famous for its May 1980 eruption, one of the largest ever recorded in North America. The catastrophic eruption killed 57 people and triggered an enormous debris avalanche that carved a mile-wide (1.5-kilometer-wide) crater on the mountain.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Mount St. Helens: Nature on Fast Forward," May 2000, National Geographic magazine)

January 07, 2008

Dog and Truck, Colorado, 2001
Photograph by David Alan Harvey
A speckled dog catches a ride in Rico, Colorado, the center of a silver mining boom in the late 1800s. But the heyday is long since over, the mines are closed, and the town population is down to fewer than 200 year-round residents. And for many in this quirky mountain town, that's just fine.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "ZipUSA: Rico, Colorado," March 2001, National Geographic magazine)

January 08, 2008

Beipiaosaurus Fossil, China, 1999
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta
The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Academia Sinica in Beijing, houses the fossilized teeth of the dinosaur Beipiaosaurus. The prehistoric reptile lived in the Cretaceous period, about 125 million years ago.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Feathers for T. Rex," November 1999, National Geographic magazine)

January 09, 2008

Cape Fur Seal and Bull Kelp, South Africa, 2002
Photograph by David Doubilet
The sun silhouettes the sinuous form of a Cape fur seal plunging through a forest of bull kelp fronds off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa. Though clumsy on land, Arctocephalus pusillus, or Cape fur seals, epitomize grace underwater. They patrol the coastal waters of South Africa and southeast Australia, feeding on fish, squid, cuttlefish, and octopus.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Oceans of Plenty: South Africa's Teeming Seas," August 2002, National Geographic magazine)

January 10, 2008

Boreal Forest, Arctic Circle, 2002
Morning fog blankets a tree-lined bog somewhere in the Arctic boreal forest. Boreal forests have more wetlands area than anywhere else in the world, with Russia and Canada each containing an estimated one million to two million lakes and ponds.
(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Boreal: The Great Northern Forest," June 2002, National Geographic magazine)