Tag archives for Boyd Matson
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When an endangered species begins to thrive in a certain area, that should be the cause of celebration. But in Kings Bay, Florida, the celebration is becoming problematic for the local manatee populations, that use the warm waters to survive the winters. The waters are becoming crowded with tourists who flock to the region to swim and kayak among the slow-moving marine mammals.
Every week, embark with host Boyd Matson on an exploration of the latest discoveries and interviews with some of the most fascinating people on the planet, on National Geographic Weekend. Please check listings near you to find the best way to listen to National Geographic Weekend, or pick your favorite segments and listen now below! Episode: 1309 – Air Date:…
Posted by Part 3 of my video Namibia: The Big Empty has some nice aerials of something called, Fairy Circles,” a rather unique feature of the Namibia landscape that looks as if it were painted by space aliens using the desert as their canvas. We also fly along the skeleton coast and get a good sense of…
Part 2 of my Namibia video features Deadviei and Sossusviei, perhaps the most photographed spot in Namibia. Deadviei is a beautiful but eerie sculpture garden created by mother nature’s extreme mood swings. Here she’s turned a former lake into a dead pan of white clay surrounded by giant red sand dunes. And scattered around the…
Namibia: The Big Empty part 1. This is a look at that Southern African country which is defined in large measure by its dramatic desert landscape. To set the big picture we start with aerials that give a sense of the vastness and variety of the Namib desert, and then move in for close ups…
Every week, embark with host Boyd Matson on an exploration of the latest discoveries and interviews with some of the most fascinating people on the planet, on National Geographic Weekend.
I used to joke, “I have the greatest job in the world, but it does have a dark side.” Then I would explain, “I’ve also been bitten, scratched and pooped on by one of every creature at your local zoo.” I was only half kidding, because there have been a few injuries and accidents along…
Archeologists have long dug thru the trash piles of human history to gain a better understanding of who we once were and how we lived. You can find out a lot about a people from what they throw away. Even today tabloid newspapers have been know to rifle through the trashcans of celebrities looking for…
The term Desert Elephant sounds like an oxymoron. How could an animal that eats and drinks as much as an elephant find enough food and water to live in a desert. Savanna elephants yes, forest elephants yes, but a huge pachyderm surviving in an environment that is primarily sand, rocks, and gravel is not an…
It takes great courage to stand up to centuries of tradition, to your parents and tribal elders and say, “No this is wrong, I won’t do what our women have always done, I want a different life.” The strength to say that and then follow through on your words is almost unfathomable when it’s spoken…
Namibia has more cheetahs than any other country in the world, but even here these speedy creatures are in a race for their lives. I visited Naankuse, a wildlife rescue center in Namibia that is trying to save the cheetah and other iconic African animals. Cheetahs who will let you scratch their back, a caracal…
When you’re on Safari in South Africa, you want and expect to see the big charismatic animals, especially big cats like lions and leopards. After all this is where they live and when you’ve gone to the trouble to travel such a long distance to visit, it would seem as if the least the animals…
Skating on thin ice. That could be the story line for polar bears this past summer in the Norwegian Arctic. When I was up there in the waters around Svalbard, Norway it seemed as if the ice was disappearing faster than in previous years. Without ice the polar bears, don’t have a platform from which…
Do the Walrus. It may just be the next big dance craze. Before you rush to judgment and think I’m just making this up you might want to check out some of their booty-shaking moves. As you might expect when anything as big as a walrus starts rockin’ and rollin’ you can’t take your eyes…
terns: love & war Typically it’s only in an Alfred Hitchcock movie that you have to worry about an all out attack from dive bombing birds, but arctic terns will turn that fiction into reality if you step across some invisible line in the sand they’ve drawn around their territory. Recently on a trip to…
swimming in devil’s pool The first time I visited Africa’s Victoria Falls, I was standing across the gorge from the famous curtain of falling water when I saw a man climbing on the rocks near to edge of the falls. I suspected he was either crazy or suicidal. When he jumped I was certain he…
sylvia earle goes deep Driver training in a 1 person sub. My instructor was ocean scientist Dr. Sylvia Earle. I did this story several years ago but was reminded of the experience when James Cameron and National Geographic teamed up this week to dive the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on the planet. We talk…
Can you speak monkey? Well if you hang out with them long enough you’re bound to pick up a few words. After more than thirty years in the Amazon, Dr. Sara Bennett can talk some monkey, which, with a little encouragement on my part, she demonstrated for me one sweltering morning on Mocagua Island in…
We wanted to get close to black rhinos, we just hadn’t planned on getting this close. I was in Zimbabwe at the Malilangwe Wildlife reserve working on a story about African rhinos for National Geographic when we decided it would add a nice visual element to the piece if we tracked some black rhinos on…
Just how bad is a rhino’s eyesight? Here was the plan, if you can call a crazy off the top of your head idea that no one in their right mind would consider doing a plan, we were going to get out of our vehicle and see how close we could get to a…
Posted by Here’s a hard to believe statistic, by some esitmates there are more tigers in captivity in the state of Texas than there are tigers roaming free in the wild in all of Asia. There’s no debating the fact tigers are endangered. This past year I went to India to see tigers in their natural habitat.…
One of the benefits of being in the water with humpback whales is that it makes me appear svelte by comparison.
Showing off for the girls, pushing and shoving, picking fights, refusing to listen to their mothers, I could be describing teenage boys, but in this case I’m talking teenage male elephants.
Spitting impala poop is really an honest to goodness game in South Africa.
National Geographic Emerging Explorer Kevin Hand is looking for alien life on Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. Listen to his interview with Boyd Matson.
