National Geographic photojournalist, documentary filmmaker and educator Ami Vitale explored ecological concerns, cultural traditions and questions of belonging Tuesday at the first lecture of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
Vitale’s work has taken her around the globe, from covering the world’s first community-owned Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya to dressing as a panda to document rewilding efforts in China. She also spent nearly a decade covering efforts to save the northern white rhinos, including Sudan, the species’ last male. She runs the non-profit Vital Impacts, a women-led nonprofit that provides grants, scholarships and mentorship to individuals shining light on environmental crises.
Vitale highlighted the urgency and acceleration of ecological crises, and said 73% of the world’s wildlife has been destroyed in the last 50 years.
“Maybe the first step towards healing is not running faster to fix everything,” she said. “Maybe it’s actually slowing down, listening and letting the voices of our planet's other inhabitants back in.”
Vitale worked as a conflict photographer for close to 10 years, covering “the horrors on this planet.” After , she realized the natural world formed the backdrop for all the chaos she was witnessing.
“Everytime there is a breakdown in our environment,” she said, “it leads to more human suffering.”
Her mission became to tell stories that show our planet's interconnectedness and resilience. “If all we show is what's broken, we forget what's worth saving,” Vitale said. “Beauty and hope are not luxuries. They're actually the fuel that keeps us all going.”
A story she told took place in Kenya in 2013. Vitale spoke about a Kenyan community determined to protect elephants from poachers who, in the wake of droughts, created the first indigenous-owned and operated elephant sanctuary in Africa.
“As the droughts get longer and more extreme, those wells get deeper and deeper and really narrow,” she said. “At night, all of the wildlife comes rushing in and sometimes, if there is a young elephant calf, it will accidentally get pushed into the well.”
More often than not, Vitale said, the calf would die after being pulled out due to staff being unsure of how to help the young elephants when they are rescued. But now with cellphones, staff can call these elephant sanctuaries and give calves a second chance to be reunited with their mother.
“Nature is incredibly resilient when we give it a chance,” Vitale said in the lecture. “But we have to give it that chance.”
Vitale’s photojournalism covering northern white rhinos, an extremely endangered species, was the topic of a recent National Geographic documentary, The Last Rhinos: A New Hope.
Vitale said when she imagines a world without the animals she’s spent her career reporting on, she thinks about “the loss of who we are.”
“We're losing a sense of our own wonder, and our own imagination, and all the possibilities,” she said.
In her last story, Vitale detailed a trip to China where she was invited to be a part of a film crew that would take a female panda bear from the sanctuary and release her back to the wild. At the end of the release, she met with the head of the Panda Program, Zhang “Papa Panda” Hemin. After an invitation from him to hold a couple of baby pandas, Vitale had his blessing to do a story on the Panda Program.
She brought the story to National Geographic, who initially denied her pitch. Vitale, determined to tell the story, did some extra research, brought in something new and was eventually given the all-clear to travel back to China and tell the tale from a new perspective.
The purpose of the Panda Project was to prevent the giant panda from going extinct. To counteract this, the group made it their mission to breed a population of 300 pandas in captivity. Eventually, the program was successful, and “Papa Panda” moved into the next phase — releasing the pandas in captivity back into the wild.
Three years later, Vitale looks back on the story fondly. “I learned so much about conservation,” she said. “I think we’re so used to hearing bad environmental stories coming out of China. We can’t possibly imagine anything good is happening.”
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, Vitale said finding her passion in conservation has helped her do good in the world. She urged the audience to find their sparks as well and pursue them.
“What if saving the world begins with listening to it?” Vitale asked. “When we really listen, we start to see differently.”
She urged listeners to see themselves as part of the solution, remembering that “even the smallest kindness can change the world.”
“Hope doesn't mean ignoring reality. It means facing it and choosing to act anyway,” Vitale said.
