News / Society

Photo Ark sets off to save wildlife from extinction

Saturday, 16 January 2016 12:19 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 16 January 2016 1:29 AM ]

This portrait of a stunning Persian leopard at the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden marks the 5000th species to be photographed in the project Photo Ark.

In addition to conventional means to save wildlife from extinction, there is a digital way through which captive animals can be frozen in time via studio-quality images to raise awareness of a growing menace they are subject to and to save full-length portraits of them for a post-extinction day. This is a significant artistic measure as we might lose half of the animal and plant species by 2100.

The bright idea came to 53-year-old National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore back in 2005 and he embarked to build his Photo Ark to save images of every captive animal in the world. He is almost half way in his mission as the Ark has so far boarded some 5,000 out of 12,000 species he deemed photogenic.

“If you’re trying to make the point that every animal is worth saving, they all have a place, and they all deserve to exist, it’s hard to convey that unless you can have them all the same size. So the black and white backgrounds are a great equalizer. A snail is every bit as important and large as a grizzly bear,” he says, adding that people cannot care about animals if they do not know about them.

*An endangered Indian rhinoceros female with calf*

Sartore has held numerous photo exhibitions to “inspire millions around the world” with the clear message that it is not too late to save some of the Earth’s most endangered species.

In an article published in the journal Science Advances in June 2015, a team of scientists warned that “an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries” has been taking place, “indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.”

In September 2014, World Wildlife Fund had also announced that the number of wild animals on the planet had halved “in the past 40 years”, citing humans as the main culprit. According to the study, exploitation of animals and degradation or changing of their habitat are responsible for nearly 70 percent of the decline, with another 13 percent for habitat loss, and another seven due to climate change.

*Joel Sartore is waiting for the right moment to take a photo from this African Penguin.*

The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions so far, the biggest and the most devastating of all occurred at the end of the Permian period some 252 million years ago, known as the Great Dying, which claimed the lives of up to 96 percent of all species. But the last -- and the most famous of all -- happened some 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, widely believed to be triggered by an asteroid impact, and killed off all non-avian dinosaurs and most of other species.

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