Explorer Blog - National Geographic Channel

Gaming for a good cause…

explorer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:22:24 +0000

Ken Banks

kiwanja.net

Back in 2003, as part of a project called wildlive!, I worked with an international conservation organisation - Fauna & Flora International (FFI) - to help them explore how mobile phones could be used to help raise money and awareness for gorilla conservation and local livelihoods. We ended up with a game called “Silverback”, an eight-level epic taking the player through the life of a mountain gorilla from birth through to adulthood. The game was very well received by the mobile gaming industry, scoring highly in their reviews. Sadly, three years later the service was pulled. The game was dragged down with it and forced into early ‘virtual’ retirement.

After becoming increasingly aware of the escalating conflict last October, it occurred to me that the time was right for “Silverback” to return. Thinking through what would need to be done to bring the game back to life, I realised that I knew enough people to make it happen relatively easily and for little cost. Six months later the game has been updated, re-built to support newer phones and re-launched via a new silverbackers.org website.

Back in 2003 there were more barriers to getting a mobile game to market than you could throw a stick, or mobile, at. Sadly, little has changed. To combat this and to keep costs down, avoid administrative headaches and to give us global coverage, we decided to follow Radiohead’s example and allow people access to the product first for free, and let them decide how much they think it’s worth. They can then choose whether or not they want to donate to the cause, something which we obviously hope they will. In order to leverage the power of social networking, we have also set up a Silverbackers Facebook Group for people to join and show their support.

With no funding this is going to be a purely viral marketing affair. The whole project is highly experimental, too. How we measure success is unclear, but sometimes the best way to find out is to do.

To download “Silverback” on your phone, visit the Silverbackers Download page (and remember to donate!).

Looking back on my work with the Mountain Gorillas

explorer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:11:46 +0000

Lucy H. Spelman

Mountain Gorilla Vet Project Field Manager - MGVP.org

The camera zoomed in on Ndeze as she fell from a tree branch and hit the ground
with a thud. Several people in the auditorium gasped, including me. Here I was,
worrying about Ndeze as if I didn’t know her! On the contrary, I’d been right there
when she was filmed for National Geographic’s “Gorilla Murders.”

I felt as if I’d been moved to another planet and asked to observe my job from the
viewpoint of a total stranger. The movie is so intense that I found myself reacting
emotionally before my rational brain could remind me of the facts. I know full well
that infant mountain gorillas, orphaned or not, love to play the climb-up-high-andlet-
go game, and that this is one of Ndeze’s favorites.

A crowd of invited guests had gathered to watch the screening in downtown
Washington, D.C., and we were nearing the end of the film. The narrator had just
introduced Ndeze and Ndakasi as victims of the rampant illegal charcoal trade in DR
Congo. The film shapes a story from the available facts: their mothers were shot
and killed in the Virunga National Park by corrupt park staff who simply wanted to
assert their own power.

To read the rest of Lucy’s story click here

Face to face with gentle giants

explorer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:28:36 +0000

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

I didn’t think it would be this easy. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t, you know, easy easy. Getting here required repeated negotiations with high-level contacts in rebel General Laurent Nkunda’s army, and then with the general himself.

It required driving an hour and a half outside the city to a UN base in the foothills of the Mikeno volcano, followed by an hour’s steep hike to the rebel base farther up the volcano. And it required another hour-plus hike just after dawn to get to the edge of the national park. All while being hurried along by rebel soldiers with big guns and spears who were terrified we’d miss our chance.

But then the overgrown fields ended abruptly in a shock of thick forest, and here we are. And there they are. An entire family of mountain gorillas. Just hanging out, in the trees, and in the brush beneath them.

They look exactly like gorillas.

It feels completely unreal.

Their black fur contrasts starkly with the bright green foliage, and yet recedes into the dark shadows of the dense forest. Some ignore us, while others gaze at us with intelligent-seeming curiosity. I want to reach my hand out to one of them. Or to grab one of the small, cuddly gorilla children, and enfold it in a giant gorilla-hug. Completely against the rules, of course. Human visitors are strictly required to stay a minimum of seven meters away from any wild gorillas, for the gorilla’s safety as much as anything else.

But it’s not clear the gorillas know the rules. Especially that giant one over there. The one walking along that felled log right there. The one coming over here.

“Look submissive!” someone hisses in my direction. Everyone has crouched down and is studying their feet and the many insects around them.

Gorillas are incredibly gentle, we’ve been told by several experts before coming here. But they are also plain old enormous; mature males typically weigh up to 500 pounds. They are impressive beasts, and seem easily capable of inflicting serious damage should the need arise.

Ideally, you’d go with expert guides.

But about six months ago, General Nkunda’s forces, took control of this strategic territory along the border with Rwanda. Most of the human population fled: the empty villages and un-cultivated fields a haunting testimony to the toll of the war. Most of the park rangers also left, or were forced to leave.

The mountain gorillas, though, are still here. And so are a few former park rangers who have split from Congolese park services.

They, along with a “guard” of rebel soldiers, led us to the gorillas this morning. They still wear their old uniforms and talk of their long histories with the park service. But they fail to tell us of the 7-meter rule, and seem fairly flexible on the other rules, including the number of people allowed to get close, and the amount of time we’re allowed to stay.

So as the behemoth gorilla struts slowly towards us, I suddenly wonder if we’ve walked into a dangerous situation. And more immediately, am I doing “submissive” right?

I sneak a glance up away from my feet. He’s practically going to brush my arm as he passes. Assuming he’s planning to pass.

The gorilla shoots us a long, hard look.

And, thankfully, keeps walking past me, the soldiers, and the rebel rangers. With a rustle of branches, he goes deeper into the forest.

A rough start in Goma

explorer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:13:07 +0000

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

I crowd into the tiny bit of shade on a curb next to Goma’s airport building, already mostly filled with a tripod bag, a camera case, my bag, the producer’s backpack, some empty water bottles, and Brent, the print photographer for the NG magazine story, and Mick, the producer.

Just as I sit down, I look over to where Erin, the cameraman, is setting up the camera and tripod. A man in a uniform is zeroing in.

I jump up to join Erin to try to stave off the confrontation before it starts.

It’s 12:30 pm, and we’re awaiting the arrival of Paulin Ngobobo, the key witness in the prosecution’s case against those accused of illegal charcoal trading and the massacre of six members of a gorilla family known as the Rugendo Group. He’s been reassigned to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital city, all the way across the country, but he’s flying back today to testify in a closed hearing.

We’ve been here for about an hour already, but the plane is going to be an hour late. Or it might have been cancelled. Or else it wasn’t supposed to arrive until two. Ish.

What I’m saying is, Paulin, the arriving witness, has texted a contact here to say he’s on a plane and it’s heading towards Goma. He’ll get here.

In the meantime, we’re trying to hold our ground at the airport.

Our fixer, Ferdinand, the local contact who managed to arrange permission for us to film here at the airport, is busy a few feet away. He and the airport hostess assigned to keep us company are arguing with a couple other guys who claim to be airport staff. Ferdinand is waving around the documents and letters he painstakingly gathered over the last day and a half giving us the right to enter onto the tarmac to film Paulin’s arrival.

Erin’s new adversary arrives, and demands to know what we’re doing.

We’ve had this conversation at least six times already. When we first arrived. When we tried to walk towards the runway (we were turned back). When we tried to aim the camera at the runway (there are Congolese military planes in that direction. We don’t have permission to film in that direction). When we were walking back towards the terminal where we’d been told to wait, carrying the switched off camera (where were we going? What were we trying to film? Where was our permission? Didn’t we know that we had no right to film the terminal?)

Now Erin has turned the camera away from the military planes and away from the terminal, and is looking towards the United Nations planes and helicopters parked at the far end.

I explain to the angry soldier in French our reason for being at the airport, yet again, and that we’re waiting for someone to arrive from Kinshasa. I grab our paperwork from Ferdinand, and the man looks it over with a skeptical eye.

“This only gives you permission to film one man,” he says triumphantly. “Is he on those planes over there? No! So what were you doing filming those UN planes?”

“I’m not even filming!” Erin says, with exasperation. “The camera’s not even on!’

I translate. This was the wrong the thing to say.

“Do you think I’m stupid? I know how you people operate.” We take a different tack and we show him our press pass from the UN. Airport authorities already resigned to our presence come over to argue with us against him. He will not be placated.

If I had to guess, he is looking for a bribe. Corruption here is widespread. It is a country of vast natural wealth, from precious minerals to wildlife to rich, fertile soil, but most people are desperately poor. Even those with salaried jobs often don’t get paid. So many look for alternative sources of income. We’re white (read: rich), foreign (read: rich) with a big camera (read: rich), and we want something (to film at the airport where he has some authority). He’s not wrong; we had to pay a fee for permission to film here. So I suspect this guy wants his cut.

But he doesn’t have enough authority to stop us filming or to make us pay (again). In the end, we put the lens cap on the camera, and walk a safe distance away. If we don’t touch the camera again until Paulin’s plane arrives, maybe we can get away without another fight.

Heading to the Congo…

explorer — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:00:07 +0000

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

I’m not quite sure how to handle Rwanda. We’re not staying. We’ve flown into Kigali, the capital, but we’re on our way to Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Goma is one of the biggest cities in eastern Congo, and it’s just over the border from Rwanda.

We’re going there to film a documentary about wildlife conservation in Virunga National Park, the first national park in Africa, and one of the world’s most diverse and fragile ecosystems.

It’s the home of more than half of the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas, several of whom were massacred last year in what seemed to be a cold-blooded execution. People are telling us these killings are closely linked with the illegal trade in charcoal being conducted within the park.

On the face of it this has nothing to do with Rwanda.

And yet I can’t treat this stopover like any other.

Not hard to figure out why. The Rwandan genocide is old news at this point, sadly superceded by the crisis in Darfur and the war in Iraq and everything else that has happened in the last 14 years. But this is the first time I’ve been here. These are the first impressions, the first images and faces and people I’ve ever seen up close to give context to the genocide that killed nearly one million Rwandans in the space of about three months.

My grandparents are Holocaust survivors. I’ve heard their stories, of course. I’ve spent hours listening and even recording their tales of suffering and survival.

But the Holocaust happened a long time ago. I’m sure that doesn’t make the memories any less painful or real for my grandparents. But for me, their American granddaughter, listening to their stories in their posh southern Florida apartment, spoken in their imperfect, accented English, I find it hard to imagine them ever being anything but my grandparents. What I hear and learn from their stories is unimaginable. I am unable to imagine it.

So I wonder. What will I see in Rwanda?

Not much, I know. I spent two hours at the airport waiting for the producer and cameraman to arrive on a different flight. And we will drive a few hours through the countryside to reach the Congolese border. In about five weeks, I’ll do the reverse.

Nothing but a stopover. But I can’t stop looking for the traces.

I talk to the driver who will take us to the border. We chat, and then I can’t help asking. “Were you here during the war?” He was. “What was it like?”, I said. He says it was very hard, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to talk about it. He changes the subject to all the development that has happened in Rwanda in the last decade. The genocide is in the past.

And, suddenly shy, I can’t ask more. I want to know if his ethnic background is Hutu, or Tutsi. If he lost family members in the war. Or if his family members were on the other side. If they killed. If he did.

As a journalist, we get sort of a free pass to ask prying questions of strangers. But we’re here for a story about gorillas and a national park.

Of course there are connections. The park, and the gorilla habitat, stretches across borders into Uganda and Rwanda. And one of the main threats to the park, and so to the gorillas, is the ongoing conflict that has followed the genocide in Rwanda. Perpetrators of the genocide roam in rebel bands through Congolese forest. Villagers who have fled from these rebel groups and the others that formed to fight them live in camps on the edges of the national park. Goma has grown exponentially in the last decade, in part from people fleeing fighting, and the demand on natural resources has increased as well.

This will be part of our film. We will meet refugees from the ongoing conflicts. We will talk to rebel leaders. We will learn about the how the daily struggle for food and fuel challenges the ecosystem.

But my curiosity, here, now, feels like so much rubbernecking. I don’t need to know this man’s train wreck.

And so I let it lie.

A purrrr-fect place to film

explorer — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:09:03 +0000

Jennifer Kurushima

National Geographic Television

Luxor is a beautiful city, and has a completely different atmosphere than the crowded streets of Cairo. The Nile is full of ferries, small boats, cruise ships, and of course falukas. Tall elegant hotels and restaurants along with the sites of Luxor and Karnack Temple line the East Bank of the Nile while across to the West we can see lush farmland and the Valley of the Kings.

After our success in the Cairo market, our plan of action was to try our hands at catching cats in the marketplace of Luxor. We decided that the team should breakup into smaller groups with the hope that this would reduce the possibility of drawing a crowd, and frightening away the cats. One team was to stay along the main strip of the tourist market, while the other would search the areas surrounding the local’s market.

Photo: Dana Kemp

I was teamed up with Dr. Nashwa Waly from Assiut University and Dr. Susan Little from the Winn Feline Foundation to scour the streets and alleys behind the marketplace. I quickly came to appreciate Dr. Nashwa’s fluency in Egyptian Arabic as we were able to knock on people’s doors and simply ask if they owned any cats. T his was much easier than chasing them through the streets! I am impressed by the hospitality and friendliness of the Egyptian people we met. More than once, after we explained our research, they would invite us in for a cup of tea or a meal. As word spread children came running with their cats held out before them. A quick swab along the inside of the check, a photograph, and a tuna treat, and the cats were returned home, relatively unperturbed. The children seem to be exceptionally amused by our efforts and are eager to help find us cats, however, we did have to refuse the occasional puppy.

Later this evening we will be riding a ferry to the west bank of the Nile to hunt for cats in a slightly more rural setting. We are expecting the cats to be more active in the dusk. I hope our good luck holds!

Searching for felines in Egypt

explorer — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:57:07 +0000

Leslie Lyons

Geneticist

Our arrival into Egypt is uneventful. This is a small miracle as little does the Nat Geo production team know that one of us is afraid to fly, one of us broke down in tears when we learned about all the vaccinations we needed, two of us have never left the western United States, and I am more used to traveling alone than taking care of others on a fairly complicated expedition. I am deathly afraid of someone getting a bad scratch or bite and having to seek medical care.

Photo: Dana Kemp

It is not until the morning that I steal away to the roof of the hotel to see my first glimpses of the pyramids, through the morning hazy and fog. I am really here, a lifelong goal, to see Egypt! Coming from a small south western town in Pennsylvania, Uniontown, I never thought I would have these opportunities, I never knew scientists got to do things like this. And, all over cats!

The first encounter with the cats is on the back streets of Giza, the pyramids are in the background, how totally awesome. Ha, I was a bit worried that we would not find the cats, perhaps we would have to wait until dawn or dusk, but no, they are everywhere! Look any directions and there they are, part of the background, and important part of the ecosystem as well.

We are dressed in black, little scientist ninjas. We start our first approach of the cats. The children of Giza have surrounded us, we have a big camera and a big stick with a big club attached to it (the boom), 2 producers and 4 cat catchers. The cats see us stealthily approaching like a herd of elephants, they hunch-up, hiss, and run, kicking up dirt as they go. The flight instinct of the cats is strong here, we need cats that are used to people. This is not going to work, panic! How are we going to film, but really collect the samples we need for the study? Let’s start easy, let’s go to the tourist market area to start.

Tune in to the premiere of Explorer: Science of Cats on June 10 at 10p to find out exactly what Leslie found while searching in Egypt.

Preview - Explorer: Science of Evil

explorer — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:36:42 +0000

Explorer: Science of Evil airs Tuesday, May 6 at 10p

Heading down Hammerhead-Highway

explorer — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:14:12 +0000

Thomas Lucas

Producer, NGT

The mood is very heavy on board the ship this evening.

The expedition has been going exceptionally well. The scientific team has been having great success locating schools of sharks and diving down to place tracking tags on them. This has buoyed their hopes of capturing a hammerhead and outfitting it with a satellite tracking tag to track its journey around the ocean. But now, those hopes seem to be sinking fast.

From my experience, our anchor spot at Wolf Island is one of the most electrifying dive spots anywhere. Sharks are everywhere. But what these scientists propose to do looks to be extremely difficult. They want to bring a hammerhead on board the boat while keeping it alive to attach the sat tag.

Photo: Thomas Lucas

To practice their technique, the crew sent a team of fishermen out to hook another type of shark… a Galapagos shark… and tow it back to the ship. The idea was to pull the shark onto a sling, then use a crane to lift it onto the deck. Seawater would be pumped across the shark’s gills to keep it breathing.

They hooked the shark, but it fought back every step of the way, thrashing and kicking. Finally, after a long and agonizing struggle, they got the shark onto the deck… then installed the tag and let it go.

Given how difficult this was, the risks in capturing a hammerhead now seem a whole lot higher. For one thing, they are “ram ventilators,” they must always swim forward to keep water moving over their gills. When they are restricted, as when caught on long lines by fishermen, they easily die.

If a hammerhead were to die, word would likely get out. Hammerheads have become a symbol of conservation and tourism in the Galapagos, which explains why a National Park representative on the boat now is very angry about how long it took to tag the Galapagos shark. The purpose here is to find ways to protect sharks from severe fishing pressures, so killing one, even for science, is just not an option.

For now the team has decided to go ahead with the plan, but the lead scientist, Dr. Peter Klimley, is vowing to shut down the experiment the minute he thinks a hammerhead is in danger. And now something else has come up. The fishermen themselves are saying they are not even sure they can get a hammerhead on the line.

The entire team is now really torn between the desire to complete the experiment… and the fear of losing a shark in the process. It could really go either way.

Preview - Explorer: Death of the Iceman

explorer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:44:15 +0000

Explorer: Death of the Iceman premieres Tuesday, April 1at 10p