Amy Bucci
of NG Staff
Untamed Americas: Sneak Peek
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 5, 2012 A new series Untamed Americas, narrated by Josh Brolin, will be airing on the National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild this June. The series takes on the tremendous task of documenting the highly unpredictable, deadly, and sometimes stinky, animals from the wildest frontiers of North America, Central America, and South America. Although it’s described…
National Geographic explorer Lee Berger needs your help to solve the mystery of the lost Peking Man fossils. From Lee: Until we find the actual Peking man fossils, what happened to them will remain one of the most enduring mysteries of modern science. While there are casts of many of the fossils that were lost,…
‘Tour de Bhutan’ Tackles Climate Change
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on July 4, 2011 While the Tour de France may be in Stage 3 now, the smaller, but no less powerful, Bhutan Ride for Climate has only just begun. Youth from Bhutan and the United States have started their 300 kilometer biking tour of Bhutan, including three Himalayan passes over 10,000 feet, to learn first-hand perspectives on climate change,…
Kenyan Chainsaw Gang Thwarted
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on June 4, 2011 National Geographic Big Cats Initiative grantee Anne Kent Taylor continues her updates from the field in Kenya this weekend. Her adventures this week include a giraffe rescue and an encounter with a chainsaw gang. Taylor has been using funding from the Big Cats Initiative to provide wire fencing to Kenya’s Maasai herders, on the basis…
Bhutan Dragons Meet U.S. Rockets
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 31, 2011 “Before nobody thought rockets will go to the moon. In olden times, Bhutanese always thought that dragons made the sounds of thunder. These are all symbols of power. I wanted to paint symbols of power.” – Phurba Namgay The Asia Society and the Bhutan Foundation in Washington DC recently co-hosted an event for Linda Leaming…
Dr. Jones Meets Dr. Hiebert
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 10, 2011 “Archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it’s truth you’re looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.” – Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade The exhibition, Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology, now at the Montreal Science Centre, examines the facts and fiction behind the legendary Dr.…
DNA Day Celebration at Cornell University
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on April 15, 2011 “Your DNA contains the greatest history book ever written.” —Dr. Spencer Wells Happy DNA Day! 58 years ago today the double helix was discovered. This milestone comes on the heels of a major campus DNA initiative. National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and geneticist Spencer Wells along with members of the Genographic Project are finishing up a week…
Kakenya Center for Excellence Visit
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 30, 2010 Kakenya reads to the girls. Until now, the girls only had textbooks to read. It is important for the girls to become independent, life-long readers. Hopefully each visit to the school will bring a new suitcase filled with books! The school hopes to build in 2011 the village’s first library. Most fathers in rural Kenya…
Vanilla Algae Cone With Sprinkles, Please
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 1, 2010 Laurencia algae—manatee and turtle grass If you like ice cream, well, you probably like algae. Substances called carrageenans extracted from several types of seaweed (a subset of the world’s algae) thicken and stabilize some popular ice creams and give them their gelatinous texture. Who knew? Algal extracts are also mainstay ingredients in toothpastes, in shampoos…
Hey Plastiki! Don’t Be Leaky!
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on March 19, 2010 Illustration by Andrew Rae/Plastiki We are busy here at headquarters singing the new Plastiki song in celebration of her launch tomorrow from Sausalito, California, under San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge. National Geographic Emerging Explorer David de Rothschild and the crew are ready for the adventure that will lead them across the Pacific Ocean to…
The Wildest Dream Debuts at Banff
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on November 9, 2009 The 1924 Everest expedition. Back row, left to right: Andrew Irvine, George Mallory, Edward Norton, Noel Odell, and John Macdonald. Front row: Edward Shebbeare, Geoffrey Bruce, Howard Somervell, and Bentley Beetham. In 1999, Conrad Anker discovered the frozen body of George Mallory on Mount Everest. For years afterward, he wondered about Mallory’s quest for the…
Artist in Candyland
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on November 7, 2009 Photograph by Jeronimo Hagerman National Geographic’s biggest fan here at Banff, Jim Olver, gave us a tour of the Banff Centre yesterday and introduced us to the Leighton Artists’ Colony, which Banff supports in addition to the Mountain Films. Photograph by Amy Bucci Jim Olver, Jill Sawyer and Jeronimo Hagerman look over Jeronimo’s latest photos.…
Snow Leopards Show Their Spots
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on November 7, 2009 You might never guess that the down-to-earth, easygoing Steve Winter has followed and photographed jaguars in Brazil, grizzly bears in Siberia, and tigers in Myanmar. (Though he does show an uncanny sense of direction here on the large Banff Centre campus.) Steve had the Banff festival audience laughing and gasping as he shared gorgeous photographs…
Banff Film Festival Brings It On
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on November 6, 2009 Photograph by Amy Bucci After about nine hours in the air and two more in a van—during which I was the only one who opted for the optional blanket—I have arrived in what I think is the most beautiful place on Earth: Banff, Canada. This town in the Canadian Rockies hosts the adrenaline-pumping, awe-inspiring, I-need-to-learn-to-snowboard-before-I-am-40…
A Life Among the Shamans: Wade Davis
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on November 6, 2009 The Royal Canadian Geographical Society awarded National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis its top honor, the Gold Medal, at its 80th anniversary dinner in Ottawa last night. The anthropologist, ethnobotanist, writer, photographer, and lecturer is an eloquent and passionate voice for the world’s indigenous peoples and cultures. He has been described as the “real-life Indiana Jones.”…
Visiting Lions At Home
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on October 9, 2009 Dereck and Beverly Joubert, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, have spent nearly three decades living alongside Africa’s lions and leopards. Working out of a tent or truck, they spend months at a time observing and learning about these top predators. With a collaborative storytelling style that weaves together Beverly’s photography and sound recordings with Dereck’s film footage…
National Geographic’s Energy Man
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on October 1, 2009 I know, I know, I am not supposed to have favorites, but in the 2009 class of Emerging Explorers, I will say, I am particularly fond of the extremely talkative and fun T.H. Culhane. T.H. and his wife Sybille are passionate about energy and garbage. In fact, they are so committed to investigating new ways…
Happy Birthday Zinjanthropus!
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 28, 2009 An illustration of Zinjanthropus by Peter V. Bianchi It was 50 years ago in Olduvai Gorge that Louis and Mary Leakey found fragments of teeth and a skull that were part of a male hominid they called Zinjanthropus, or Nutcracker Man, because of his huge teeth. This led to field research programs in Ethiopia and…
Know Your Fungi
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 25, 2009 An example of biodegradable packaging from Ecovative. The 2009 Fellows from Pop!Techled by National Geographic Fellow Andrew Zollihave been announced, and this year the group includes the amazing Eben Bayer of Ecovative Design. Eben and fellow RPI graduate Gavin McIntyre were fascinated by mushrooms growing on wood chips and observed how the fungi strongly bonded…
Cow Tongues May Be Damaging the Past
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 18, 2009 It’s 4 a.m. in the Nicaraguan frontier town of El Ayote. The kitchen chimney smoke and exhaust fumes combine with the dangling lights to give the main street an eerie vibe. Rumbling buses packed to the roof start their journey southwest to cross the mountains that mark the Nicaraguan watershed. Archaeologist and National Geographic Society/Waitt…
Mike Fay Hikes 1,800 Miles for the Redwoods
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 16, 2009 National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Mike Fay’s Redwood Transect is featured on the cover of this month’s magazine. The buzz here is all about the redwoods, Mike’s amazing walk and the huge, cool, special foldout image of a redwood tree in the middle of the magazine. Photograph by Lindsey Holm I met with Mike and Lindsey Holm…
Megameteorite Mystery
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 11, 2009 National Geographic staffer Fabio Amador shared some news about one of our National Geographic Society/Waitt grantees, Rogelio Acevedo, a geologist from the Centro Austral de Investiggaciones Cientificas in Argentina. In a remote region of Patagonia, enormous craters measuring up to 500 meters wide and 50 meters in depth could be evidence to a bombardment of…
Don’t Rake This Leaf
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 14, 2009 Lately, National Geographic has helped fund my research on toxic frogs in Madagascar‘s Ranomafana National Park. On a prior trip to that park, I encountered several snazzy reptiles to admire, including the aptly-named leaf tailed gecko, Uroplatus phantasticus, pictured above. No, that brown thing in the foreground isn’t a leaf—that’s really the gecko’s tail! This…
The Nomad and the Bearer of Light
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 13, 2009 I hate war. That’s why I’m drawn to it. I’m waging a war against war. – Reza Self-described nomad, photographer, and National Geographic fellow Reza Deghati was in D.C. to give a National Geographic Live! talk at headquarters. In his new book, War and Peace: A Photographer’s Journey, Reza details his decades-long odyssey since exile…
Crown of the Continent
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 12, 2009 We were checking out the guide for Crown of the Continent, a region spanning the U.S.-Canada border and surrounding Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in southwestern Alberta, southeastern British Columbia, and northwestern Montana. The site’s a compendium of the best parks and wilderness areas, hiking and skiing trails, restaurants, lodges, festivals, and more, with native perspectives…
