National Geographic 2023 03

03.
2023
R ET U R N I N G T R EA S U R E S T O W H E R E T H EY CA M E F RO M I S N ’ T C LO S I N G M U S E U M S.
I T ’ S O P E N I N G N EW D O O R S.
FURTHER MARCH 2023
C O N T E N T S On the Cover
Bronze heads in Berlin
are among thousands of
objects worldwide looted
by British soldiers during
an 1897 sacking of Benin
City, in modern-day Nigeria.
Museums in Germany and
elsewhere have signed
over or pledged to return
many of the artifacts.
JUERGEN LIEPE (TOP), JENS ZIEHE.
BPK BILDAGENTUR/ETHNOLOGISCHES
MUSEUM, STAATLICHE MUSEEN,
BERLIN/ART RESOURCE, NY (BOTH)
P R O O F E X P L O R E
THE BIG IDEA
Saturn: What Put

the Rings on It?
Space scientists are
still debating one of
our solar system’s great
unsolved mysteries.
BY N A D I A D R A K E
INNOVATOR
David Moinina
Sengeh
24
DECODER
Night Partners
He harnessed high tech Bats are key pollinators
to help fix the problem of agave plants, but
of painful prosthetics. tequila and mescal pro-
BY H I C K S W O GA N
duction risks breaking
up the relationship.
BY D I A N A M A RQ U E S
THROUGH THE LENS
Rediscovering
A Crystalline Domain the Joy
They’re useful, yes, Grief drove a photo-
but beautiful? With a journalist to India,
photomicrography where light and color
technique, common returned to her work.
compounds such as BY S A R A H Y LTO N
vitamin C (above) form
dazzling images. ALSO ALSO
P H OTO G R A P H S BY The Rainbow Connection Timing for Transplants

P E T E R W O I T S C H I KO W S K I Shell-Slinging Octopuses How to Reuse Your Water
PHOTO: ALL CANADA PHOTOS/ALAMY STOCK (BAT)

M A R C H | CONTENTS
F E AT U R E S Troubled Treasures Life Goes On Spider Sense

Museums work to Lebanon struggles to Though they often
return cultural objects emerge from a severe get a bad rap, arach-
to their original homes. economic collapse. nids are surprisingly
B Y A N D R E W C U R RY BY RANIA ABOUZEID diverse and beautiful.
P H OTO G RA P H S BY P H OTO G RA P H S BY BY JASON BITTEL
R I C H A R D B A R N E S . . . . . . P. 34 R E N A E F F E N D I . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 86 P H OTO G RA P H S BY
J AV I E R A Z N A R . . . . . . . . . . . P. 126
Out of Step Return to Wild Waters
Perfectly suited for On Wisconsin’s Apostle A Syrian refugee
A B OV E :
winter, mountain hares Islands, lake-sculpted sells roses on a Beirut
may fare less well as landscapes draw beach. Two million
temperatures warm. intrepid adventurers. refugees from neigh-
B Y C A L F LY N BY STEPHANIE PEARSON boring Syria currently
P H OTO G RA P H S BY P H OTO G RA P H S BY reside in Lebanon, which
A N DY PA R K I N S O N D AV I D G U T T E N F E L D E R has suffered economic
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 72 ..................................... P. 110 crises since 2019.
M A R C H | FROM THE EDITOR
B Y N AT H A N LU M P PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD BARNES
FOR MANY OF US, museums have played peoples, obtained under threat of force. These statues were among
major roles in our lives. When I was a This month’s cover story, “Troubled 26 art pieces that France
repatriated in fall 2021 to
kid, our family visits to places such as Treasures,” examines the debate about the West African nation
the Milwaukee Public Museum and who should possess such objects and of Benin. It was known as
Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural His- looks at the growing pressure for at least the kingdom of Dahomey
in the late 1800s when the
tory were my favorite outings. I’ve been some to be repatriated to the people and French looted treasures
fortunate to visit some of the world’s places from which they came. from royal palaces there.
great museums on my travels and to live The question isn’t a new one: Greece Five years ago French pres-
ident Emmanuel Macron
near institutions with rich collections has sought the return of the so-called
promised a “return of
(my preferred way to end a workweek Elgin Marbles from the British Museum African heritage” from his
in New York was a Friday evening stop for almost 200 years. What’s changing nation’s museums to the
is the answer, as many museums and items’ countries of origin.
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
There’s something about seeing art governments adjust their approach
and artifacts with our own eyes that to holdings. In the process they’re
helps us understand history and cul- redefining who “owns” culture, as
ture in a palpable way. And of course well as the role of the museum. It’s
great curators can draw connections a thought-provoking topic, and one
among objects that let us perceive the where past wrongs may be addressed
world in a whole new light. for the good of all.
Many museums, however, have items I hope you enjoy the issue.
that were acquired using methods now
considered illegal or unethical: looted
after battles, taken from Indigenous
P R O O F
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 3
A CRYSTALLINE
DOMAIN
6 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
On a glass slide illuminated
by polarized light, tiny
crystals of vanillin (artificial
vanilla essence) paint a
psychedelic picture.
LO O K I N G PHOTOGRAPHS BY
AT T H E PETER WOITSCHIKOWSKI
E A RT H
F RO M A camera-equipped microscope
E V E RY and plenty of patience help to
POSSIBLE expose a dazzling side of some
ANGLE common chemicals.
MARCH 2023 7
P R O O F
Melted and then cooled,

sulfur forms a canyon
of microcrystals. Peter
Woitschikowski can spend
weeks searching his slides
for the perfect image.
Woitschikowski works
only when he’s relaxed.
“When you’re stressed,”
he says, “you cannot
see pictures,” such as
this one of ascorbic
acid, or vitamin C.
MARCH 2023 9
P R O O F
Salicylic acid and lactic

acid, compounds used in
skin care products, collide
to create an otherworldly
image in gold and indigo.
MARCH 2023 11
P R O O F
THE BACKSTORY
F RO M O R D I N A RY S U B S TA N C E S , A P H OTO G R A P H E R C R E AT E S
A R E A L M O F E X T R A O R D I N A R Y E N C H A N T M E N T.
W H AT D O YO U S E E in these images? A shapes are formed on glass lab plates by

palm-frond jungle? Bright bird feathers? heating chemicals, such as acetamin-
Taking the Rorschach test that is Peter ophen (above), or mixing them with
Woitschikowski’s photomicrography, water or alcohol. As the substances cool
viewers often compare the shapes with or dry, crystals appear. When illumi-
the natural world. But he asks them to nated by polarized light, some seem
embrace the abstract instead—to see to leap into a ballet of form and color.
something entirely new. “The hope is The process is so delicate that even
to turn the fantasy on,” he says. slight vibrations can ruin it. That’s why
In the 1980s, Woitschikowski, who Woitschikowski uses a remote shutter
lives in Germany, bought a micro- trigger and works late at night when
scope after seeing a magazine spread vehicle traffic outside his studio has
of microcrystal photography. He subsided. “It’s a great experiment,” he
wanted to reveal this wondrous world says. “You don’t know what you’ll see
that’s invisible to the unaided eye. The when you begin.” — N I N A S T R O C H L I C
To capture the microcrystals, Woitschikowski mounts his camera to a

microscope and snaps the shutter with a click of the computer mouse.
IN THIS SECTION
Shell-Slinging Octopuses
E X P L O R E Climate Change Rainbows

Bats and Agaves
Household Water Reuse
I L L U M I N AT I N G T H E M Y S T E R I E S — A N D W O N D E R S — A L L A R O U N D U S E V E R Y D AY
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 3
Saturn: What Put

the Rings on It?
S C I E N T I S T S H AV E L O N G D E B AT E D T H E A G E , O R I G I N , A N D A N G L E O F
T H E B L I N G O N O U R S O L A R S Y S T E M ’ S M O S T D I S T I N C T I V E P L A N E T.
BY NADIA DRAKE
W I T H O U T I T S R I N G S , S AT U R N LO O K S R E A L LY B O R I N G .
Super blah. Erase those bangles—as blogger Jason
Kottke did (left) from a NASA photo—and the planet
is the blandest sphere in our solar system. Sure, a
hexagonal vortex and some cool cyclones appear
at the planet’s poles—but its vanilla face lacks the
pizzazz of Jupiter’s watercolored bands, the spicy
blue of Neptune, the suffocating murk of Venus.
Even rusty Mars looks more interesting.
Thankfully, at some point in the past 4.5 billion
years, the cosmos gave Earth’s neighborhood an
upgrade: It put a big, bright, icy ring system around
Saturn. But scientists don’t agree on when Saturn’s
rings formed—or how the bangles even came to be.
And that’s been true for decades. In a twist, it turns
out that the genesis of one of the solar system’s iconic
features is still an unsolved mystery.
“The planet was formed at a certain point during
the formation of the solar system, and we don’t know
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION (RINGS REMOVED); ORIGINAL CASSINI IMAGE BY NASA/

JPL/CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/CORNELL MARCH 2023 15
E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
F O R T H E M O S T PA RT,
S C I E N T I S T S H AV E A G O O D G R I P
ON THE PROVENANCE OF
OUR SOLAR SYSTEM’S MOST
SPECTACULAR SIGHTS.
BUT SATURN’S RINGS …
if the rings formed at the same time or if they were

formed much later,” says Cornell University astro-
physicist Maryame El Moutamid. “And the reason
why it’s so interesting is not only to know that but to
understand the Saturn system—we have a planet, a
ring system, and a moon system, and we think there
is a connection between the rings and the moons.”
That enigma is uniquely fascinating. For the most Across a human
part, scientists have a good grip on the provenance of lifetime, the night
sky may not seem
our solar system’s most spectacular sights: a chasm
carved into Mars that would dwarf the Grand Can-
yon, Jupiter’s churning Great Red Spot, the moon’s to change much.
enormous southern basin. But Saturn’s rings …
“Saturn’s rings are unique,” says Jeff Cuzzi of Planets move in predictable orbits,
NASA’s Ames Research Center. “They’re the only constellations rise and fall on sched-
big, massive rings, and they’re very, very bright, ule, time’s passage can be marked
which is unusual. So this has been a puzzle.” by the shifting lunar face. This is
Scientists who think about this question tend to comforting because it means that,
cluster into two camps. The first group suggests that adrift on a verdant island in an
Saturn’s rings are primordial—that they formed along infinite cosmic sea, small creatures
with the planet more than four billion years ago—and like us have achieved some degree
that Saturn has never been a boring, blah world. of celestial knowing. We have deci-
The other group suspects the rings are much phered the harmonies of planetary
younger, formed within the past several hundred motion; we can calculate, with preci-
million years. Under that theory, the rings are so sion, the appearance of something
young that if the dinosaurs had had a space program, as magical as a blackened midday
they’d have seen a ringless Saturn through their sun; and we know, to some degree,
telescopes (and maybe avoided obliteration by a how everything came to be (except
wayward asteroid). ourselves). In a bottomless universe,
we cling to what we know.
great arguments, but they
“B O T H S C E N A R I O S H AV E “Your mind just wants things to
also have weaknesses,” El Moutamid says. be stable and permanent,” says
Though separated in time by billions of years, both NASA’s Jeff Cuzzi. “Celestial things
origin stories have one thing in common: violence. are supposed to not be changing
Making the rings required the cataclysmic destruc- in front of our eyes. But that’s one
tion of an icy object—a comet, perhaps, or a moon. thing [the Cassini probe] showed us
Somehow that object wandered too close to Saturn, when we were there at Saturn … We
and the planet’s gravity tore it into countless icy know stuff’s popping out there on
shards. A small fraction of those shards are bigger all timescales. It’s a perspective shift
than houses; others are infinitesimally small. Most that would be good for us.” — N D
are made of bright, pristine water ice, but one band
in the rings is a bit darker. Over time, those busted-up
remnants organized themselves into the ring system
we see today, which stretches some 170,000 miles
across but is only about 30 feet thick.
The “old-rings” crew says that the cataclysm
occurred in Saturn’s early days. (It is scientifically
likelier for a wayward object to enter a planet’s grav-
itational maw during the solar system’s youth.) One
Depictions of Saturn have
come a long way since the
earliest drawings (below,
from top): what Galileo saw
in 1610, then in 1616 with
a better telescope; and a
rendering by astronomer
Giovanni Cassini, published
in 1676. Voyager I took the
first photo of Saturn in 1980
(bottom). When the Cassini
spacecraft took a 2013 image
(left) from above Saturn’s
pole, its rings didn’t inter-
sect the planet. That made
them easy to edit out, for
the ringless view on page 15.
IMAGES: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (GALILEO DRAWINGS); ARCHIVIO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
(CASSINI DRAWING); REGENTS, UC SANTA CRUZ (1980 PHOTO); NASA/JPL/CALTECH/SSI/CORNELL (2013 PHOTO) MARCH 2023 17
E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
version of that story proposes that the giant planets Francisco de Goya depicted in a bloody masterpiece—
were not born where we see them today; rather, they Saturn, in fact, devoured one of its children.
migrated to their current locations and triggered a Theory number one, proposed in 2016, suggests that
cascade of instability among smaller objects that roughly a hundred million years ago, the Saturn sys-
ended up being flung all over the place like celestial tem slid into a position where the sun’s gravity jostled
Ping-Pong balls. its inner moons onto colliding orbits that eventually
During the chaos of the solar system’s infancy, it fastened a ring of debris around the planet. That idea
wouldn’t be tough for an icy body to end up putting a also explains the seemingly young surfaces of several
ring around Saturn. The old-rings theory also predicts Saturnian moons, since the ring-forming event would
that some of Saturn’s moons formed from busted-up have destroyed some and caused them to re-form.
ring stuff that spread far enough from the planet to Theory number two, from late 2022, largely blames
form clumps on its own. And therefore, some of the the rings on Saturn’s megamoon Titan, which is slowly
moons that today hover near the rings’ margins are tiptoeing away from its home world. A couple hundred
made of the same material. million years ago, Titan’s slow-motion exodus put it
“Honestly, and without trying to be too neutral, I in resonance with—that is, exerted a gravitational
think the old age makes more sense to me than the influence on—a hypothetical moon that scientists call
young age,” El Moutamid says. “That’s my belief up Chrysalis. As a result, Chrysalis got chucked toward
to now, but I am happy to be convinced otherwise.” Saturn and ripped into a ring. (This theory would also
The trouble is, the icy rings are too pearly white explain the curious angle at which Saturn is tilted, as
to be billions of years old—or at least that’s an argu- a gravitational interaction with the orbit of Neptune.)
ment the “young-rings” camp focuses on. Called Needless to say, some don’t buy either of those sce-
the pollution argument, the problem hinges on the narios. But in Cuzzi’s view, “Debate is good for science.
rate at which dark dust in the outer solar system It’s not a bad thing that not everyone is convinced.”
collides with and dims rings’ resplendence. Put Young Saturnian rings challenge our comfortable
simply, some four billion years of drab cosmic rain notions of cosmic permanence, even as stars explode
should leave Saturn’s rings looking as dingy and and meteors streak through our sky. That one of the
unimpressive as Jupiter’s—unless the rings are mas- solar system’s most familiar sights—magnificent
sive, or they’re young. In 2017, using NASA’s Cassini ringed Saturn—may not have always looked this way is
spacecraft, scientists measured the mass of Saturn’s startling, just as when the star Betelgeuse dramatically
rings and found there’s not enough material to absorb dimmed and changed the celestial outline of the con-
a solar system’s age of dust and still look so pristine. stellation Orion. As Cuzzi says, objects we know and
Cassini also gathered data about how much dust love in our nighttime sky aren’t supposed to do that.
ends up in the Saturn system, and that result also Yet to me, young Saturnian rings also suggest
supports the idea that the rings are young. that life on Earth got lucky. Serendipitously, evo-
Yet it’s highly unlikely that an object large enough lution produced us—a species capable of crafting
to shatter into rings could have come within reach of telescopes—in an age that intersects with Saturn’s
Saturn—except in the chaos of the early solar system. magnificent cosmic spectacle. j
Science journalist and longtime National Geographic contributor

shredding an interloping
W H AT I F, I N S T E A D O F
Nadia Drake specializes in covering astronomy, astrophysics, and
object, Saturn destroyed one of its own moons? Two planetary science. She serves on a NASA panel that’s studying
recent theories suggest that—just as Spanish painter unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as UFOs.
The varied rings were assigned a letter in the order of their discovery, while gaps and
disk of divisions between them are named for astronomers. Tiny “shepherd” moons like Pan,
rings Atlas, Prometheus, and Pandora orbiting within the bright rings maintain the breaks.
M AIN R I NGS OF SAT URN

D C B A F G E
4,473 186,411 miles wide (very diffuse)

SATURN
DETAILED BELOW Mimas Enceladus Tethys Dione Rhea
Average distance between Earth and the moon

238,855 miles
RING WIDTHS
C B A F
10,865 miles wide 15,903 9,147 488
7,926 miles Cassini Roche
Equatorial diameter of Earth Division Div.
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF

SOURCES: NASA; JPL/CALTECH; SSI
E X P L O R E | BREAKTHROUGHS
Rainbow rich, climate poor

Some cultures consider rainbows
omens of danger. A new study
D I S PAT C H E S says climate change may cause
more rain—and possibly rain-
FROM THE FRONT LINES bows. As major weather patterns
OF SCIENCE morph because of warming, the
A N D I N N OVAT I O N prismatic displays may increase,
especially near the planet’s
poles. — A L E J A N D R A B O R U N D A
MEDICAL SCIENCE
More organ
transplants
may be on
the way
Over 6,000 people
a year die in the
U.S. waiting for an
organ transplant.
But a new research
finding from Yale—
that tissue death
can be stopped
and maybe even
reversed—could
dramatically
enlarge the donor
pool. Researchers
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR
infused pig cadav-
ers with a blue
IT PROPELS SEASHELLS solution of amino

acids, vitamins, and
O C T O P U S E S A R M T H E M S E LV E S I N T H E I R F I R S T other compounds
R E P O R T E D ‘ T H R O W I N G ’ B E H AV I O R . (below) to restore
For its novel way of maintaining boundaries, consider Octopus
function to organs
tetricus, also known as the gloomy octopus and the common hours after cardiac
Sydney octopus. If another creature gets too close, it may respond arrest. Next: trans-
by throwing things, according to a study published recently in planting rescued
the journal PLOS One. The cephalopods, native to seas off New organs into pigs to
Zealand and eastern Australia, were caught on camera throwing assess function.
shells, silt, and algae, which sometimes hit animals that came
—CONNIE CHANG
too near their dens. The recipients included various fish, other
gloomy octopuses—and even the underwater cameras. This
is the first time a throwing behavior has been reported among
octopuses. Though scientists aren’t certain of the motivation, it
may have something to do with “the octopus equivalent of per-
sonal space,” says the study’s lead author, Peter Godfrey-Smith,
a professor at the University of Sydney. To execute their throws,
gloomy octopuses scoop up debris with their arms and propel
it with powerful jets from their siphons, tubular structures that
pump water from their bodies. The technique can shoot materials
up to several body lengths away. —A N N I E R OT H
PHOTOS (FROM TOP): DEANNE FITZMAURICE; PETER GODFREY-SMITH, DAVID SCHEEL, STEPHANIE
CHANCELLOR, STEFAN LINQUIST, AND MATTHEW LAWRENCE; MAX AGUILERA-HELLWEG
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Can we bring a species
back from the brink?
Reintroduction programs
restore species to lands from
which they have disappeared.
For some animals, it’s their last
hope for survival.
Main picture: The Arabian leopard (Panthera

pardus nimr) is smaller and paler than its African
cousins. It once dominated the Arabian Peninsula,
but today it is critically endangered: fewer than
200 remain in the wild. Credit: Aline Coquelle
Left: Ancient artists carved images of the

Arabian leopard into the rocks around AlUla.
They are a haunting reminder of the importance
of this majestic animal and its enduring
connection to Arabia’s landscape.
Credit: Royal Commission of AlUla
PAID CONTENT FOR ROYAL COMMISSION FOR ALULA
Thousands of years ago, an artist and even rivers flowed differently.

painstakingly carved the silhouette The problem contributing to the
of a big cat into a rockface near park’s imbalance was the eradication
AlUla, Saudi Arabia. The feline of wolves decades earlier. Effectively
form, with its flat facial profile, hunted out of the park by the 1930s,
long tail, and lithe figure, is clearly wolves no longer posed a threat,
an Arabian leopard. The majestic and elk flourished and overgrazed
animal was once a common predator the park’s saplings so that new trees
in the region, and the ancient artist struggled to grow.
captured the creature at its most
animated—poised to pounce on With fewer trees, beaver numbers
some unseen prey. The artist is long dropped, causing the course and
gone, and fears are growing that the even the water temperature of
Arabian leopard may soon be gone Yellowstone’s rivers to change. The
too—none have been observed in careful reintroduction of wolves to
AlUla for over a decade. Every year, recovery sites in Yellowstone has
hundreds of species become extinct seen beaver and tree populations
with even more creeping toward that restored to balance.
fate being classified as vulnerable,
endangered, or, like the Arabian
leopard, critically endangered.
Around the world, conservationists
are working to save some of the
most threatened species through
reintroduction programs that restore
animals to places from which they
have disappeared—efforts that
could bring species like the Arabian
leopard back from the brink.
Restoring lost species to their

natural habitats is more than
a gesture, it can be vital to
maintaining the biodiversity that
underpins a healthy ecosystem: Take
away even one species and the ripple
effects can be extensive. Before the The first step is to establish the need
reintroduction of wolves into the for reintroduction by monitoring
park in 1995, stands of willow and a species’ numbers and range, and
aspen trees in Yellowstone National understanding the rate, causes, and
Park in the U.S. were in decline, impacts of its decline. Even using
beaver populations were shrinking, technology such as drones and
This is paid content. This content does not necessarily reflect the views
of National Geographic or its editorial staff.
PAID CONTENT FOR ROYAL COMMISSION FOR ALULA
breeding pairs are carefully selected based on

their genetics to avoid inbreeding. Even the
temperament of an animal may be taken into
account. Still, the mating game can be a slow
and frustrating process.
In addition to breeding genetically appropriate

animals, the recovery site itself needs to be
ready to receive them. Although the species
may have historically thrived in a particular
location, its suitability isn’t always a given.
The species’ decline is likely linked to ongoing
environmental factors, including climate
change, invasive species, and diminishing
food supply, as well as human factors such as
Above: The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) pollution, land development, or persecution.
is smaller and paler than its African cousins. It once Solving these underlying problems is
dominated the Arabian Peninsula, but today it is critically
endangered: fewer than 200 remain in the wild.
fundamental to a reintroduction’s success, but
Credit: Aline Coquelle takes research, time, and effort.
camera traps, precise numbers are still hard Beyond this, the recovery site may need to
to obtain. However, any species classified as be adapted. Temporary fencing can help to
“critically endangered” on the IUCN Red List maintain control, reducing risks from invasive
are at “extremely high risk of extinction” and species and minimizing human impact while
likely to need human intervention to survive. the reintroduction becomes established. The
This often starts with detailed scientific area may also benefit from re-wilding, boosting
studies of the animal, its behaviors, and even other native plants and animals to create a
its genetics to determine what’s needed for a habitat that best meets the species’ essential
successful reintroduction. needs, including shade, shelter, and food.
The goal is to minimize human intervention
Reintroductions usually demand a sizeable and build a self-sustaining colony as part of a
and healthy animal stock, presenting healthy ecosystem. Whether this succeeds or
conservationists with the conundrum that fails, ongoing monitoring of a reintroduced
species scarcity or sickness is usually the population provides crucial lessons for future
catalyst for action. Sometimes animals from programs, increasing their chance of success.
other wild populations can be translocated,
but great care must be taken not to harm those This could be good news for the Arabian
source populations. Often new stock needs to be leopard. With less than 200 left in the wild and
propagated using captive breeding programs, no documented sightings of a leopard in Saudi
and these are much more scientific than Arabia since 2014, a crucial reintroduction
just putting males and females together and program has been commissioned to bring
letting nature take its course. Genetic diversity the big cat back from the brink. It began with
is essential to a successful captive breeding efforts to establish their numbers in Saudi
program—and a species’ survival—so detailed Arabia, but while camera traps captured images
records of each animal’s ancestry are kept, and of thousands of animals at 13 sites over two
years, not a single leopard was observed. It’s a of potential competitors, such as wolves.
disappointment that has reinforced fears for the Analyses of these crucial factors will determine
species, and resulted in an even greater sense of each site’s final suitability and dictate any
urgency to this big cat’s conservation. modifications, from restoring native vegetation
to reinforcing prey numbers of gazelle and ibex
The plan is constantly evolving, following to ensure they can sustain the reintroduction.
the science as data is meticulously gathered.
It currently centers on reintroducing at least From a sandy, rock-strewn floor, an Arabian
five captive-bred leopards to three priority leopard cub launches itself onto the branch
sites by 2030, including Harrat Uwayrid and of a tree. She slips, recovers, and gets back up
Harrat AlZabin. again—it’s all part of learning to be a leopard.
This is Amal and great things are expected of
her; even her name means “hope.” Born in the
captive breeding program at Taif, she is now
These near-neighboring one of 19 Arabian leopards cared for in captivity
that are the vital link to the future of the species.
locations provide the extensive
They will continue to breed, growing in numbers
mountain terrain Arabian until finally cubs can be released into the wild
leopards need—rock ledges and where they will roam, watched over by specially
caves for hunting and shelter. trained rangers tasked with anti-poaching
efforts, scientific monitoring, and community
education efforts. It’s a truly ambitious project—
and one with high hopes. For now, the poised
These habitats are being scientifically figure of Amal forms a fragile but breathtaking
scrutinized to establish the extent of vegetation, link to the past as the legacy of the Arabian
the numbers of potential prey, and the activities leopard echoes through the ages.
Above: The birth of an Arabian leopard cub, especially a female, brings fresh hope for the survival of the species. With care
and time, it’s possible that their offspring may one day be released to live in the wild in AlUla. Credit: Royal commission of AlUla
E X P L O R E
INNOVATOR
DAVID MOININA
SENGEH
BY HICKS WOGAN PHOTO GRAPH BY JAI LENNARD
This Sierra Leonean ÌÌÌÌÌ

harnessed high tech to
solve a painful problem.
Growing up in Sierra Leone during the
country’s civil war (1991-2002), David
Moinina Sengeh often encountered
civilians whose arms or legs had been
severed by rebel fighters. Yet many of
the wounded didn’t wear the prosthetic
limbs that aid programs had given
them. Later, as a Ph.D. student at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Sengeh set out to understand why.
The National Geographic Explorer
learned that prosthetics often fit poorly,
causing blisters, pressure sores, and
pain. So he began working with U.S.
military veterans, survivors of the
Y ou need a new watch…the one you are wearing w
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amputees to develop a system that uses company can sponsor another yacht race? It’s tim
3D printing to make a prosthetic socket an end to such madness It’s absolutely possible to
modeled from MRI scans and other
data of a patient’s residual limb. The
process is quick and cheap—and it
creates a more comfortable fit. “It’s
so soft,” Sengeh recalls one veteran
saying of his personalized socket, “it’s
like walking on pillows.”
Today Sengeh serves as Sierra
Leone’s minister of basic and senior
secondary education and its first chief
innovation officer. Although other
researchers now carry his prosthetics
work forward, he continues to advocate
for his fellow citizens, with the aim of
boosting their prospects and those
of their nation. j
The National Geographic Society is

committed to recognizing the work of
Explorers such as David Moinina Sengeh.
Learn more at natgeo.com/impact.
E X P L O R E | DECODER
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A DARK
ATTRACTION
BY DIANA MARQUES
For at least 9,000 years agaves

have been an integral part of
Mesoamerican culture, identity,
and tradition, supporting rural
communities and healthy
ecosystems. In Mexico today,
intensive farming to fuel
a booming tequila and
mescal market is risking
the plants’ viability
and disrupting the
primal connection
with their nocturnal
pollinators:
bats.
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A lesser long-
nosed bat takes
flight after feed-
ing on an agave,
carrying pollen
dusted on its head
to the next plant.
24 PHOTO: BRUCE D. TAUBERT

E X P L O R E | DECODER
Night partners
Agave flowers on stalks up to 50 feet tall lure bats
Agave plant with nectar and release pollen at night, when the fly- SHOWN
(maguey) ACTUAL
ing mammals are active. After producing seed-bearing SIZE
fruits, the agave is drained of energy and dies. Inten-
Inflorescence sive harvesting for spirits before the plants flower
raises their risk of disease and deprives bats of food.
1. Pollen
transfer
2. Fruits from
cross-pollinated
flowers
Frag
3. Germination of
Their
wind-dispersed
seeds bats t
Stalk (quiote) the e
It’s used as trend
construction bats,
material and for degra
livestock feed. Genes from
two plants
Leaves (pencas)
arranged in rosettes
Succulent, edible,
Anther
and fibrous, leaves with pollen
are turned into
brushes, ropes, and
also feed for animals.
Of the species that have been

agave flowers have six to 60 ti
nectar than other night-pollina
plants. The bats’ elongated mu
Pressure to produce Tongue
help them nose deep into the t
flowers to reach their reward.
Good for business, bad for bats

A natural but nonflowering alternative to seed
propagation is clonal propagation, a method Hairlike
exploited by farmers to speed production and papillae
maximize the concentration of sugars for distilling. trap nectar
Nectaries
1. Offset 3. Separation
Plant core (piña)
The sugary center
is used for spirits
and sweeteners.
Genes from
2. Roots one plant
MAP: MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: KRISTEN LEAR, BAT CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL; LUIS E. EGUIARTE, ROBERTO TREJO, AND RODRIGO
MEDELLÍN, NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO; NATHAN MUCHHALA, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI–ST. LOUIS; CONABIO; TEQUILA REGULATORY COUNCIL
An ambrosial alliance Agave-feeding bats
Range of There are more than 200 agave Probability of occurrence
Sonoran agave species species, thriving in higher elevations;
Desert 75 percent of them are found in Mex- lower higher
Mexican long-tongued bat U N I T E D S T A T E S ico. Their ranges overlap with those of
200 mi
Choeronycteris mexicana the bats, suggesting they co-evolved
200 km
Colony 10-15 individuals and depend on each other.
Lesser long-nosed bat

BA
Leptonycteris yerbabuenae
M
Le
JA
Colony > 10,000 individuals
ex
ss
ic
CA
an
er
SI
SIE
lo
lo
LI
Mexican long-nosed bat

ER
ng
ng
FO
Leptonycteris nivalis MEXICO
RR
-n
-n
RA
RN
os
os
Colony > 1,000 individuals
ed
A M
IA
ed
M
A
ba
bat
D
tm
AD
E
mig
ig
O
ra
RE
on C
ti
ratio
ID
EN
OR
n
TA Yucatan
IE
L Richest Peninsula
N
agave region
A
T
Mexico (> 20 species)
City L
Isthmus of BELIZE
Tehuantepec GUATEMALA
ile balance
r massive colonies make lesser long-nosed HONDURAS
the easiest to study; they were taken off
endangered species list in 2018. Population
CENTRAL
ds aren’t known for all agave nectar–feeding
but some are declining because of habitat
adation and roost disturbance. EL SALVADOR AMERICA
nd fema
les a les
Ma NICARAGUA
Ge stat
ing in
at
g
D J F
M
Mi orth
grating
Migrating
N M
south
O A Nectar corridor
S M Every spring, pregnant bats migrate
ng
A J J north along cactus- and agave-rich

Ra
si
hi
ng rt areas when the plants bloom. In the

i
pups Bi fall, the females and their young return

to central and southern Mexico as soon
Fe m a l e s as agaves start blooming again.
studied,
mes more
ated
uzzles
tubular
Demand drives production Efforts to conserve

In 2022 two billion tons of plants were harvested State governments and tequila-certifying
to make more than 140 million gallons of tequila, programs, such as Bat Friendly, encourage pro-
double the 2010 output. Two-thirds of it was for ducers to allow 2 to 5 percent of their agaves
export, primarily to the United States. to bloom. Many ejidos, parcels farmed by local
communities, are sustainably restoring agaves.
Blue agave
plantation
Agave tequilana
1,000-2,000 agaves,
up to 2,000 gallons
5 feet of tequila per acre
MIGRATION OF THE MEXICAN LONG-TONGUED BAT IS NOT WELL STUDIED AND NOT REPRESENTED ON THE MAP.
E X P L O R E
The water used by your
RINSE AND REPEAT household can then do

double duty on a lawn
or garden. Welcome to
gray water recycling.
BY DA N I E L STO N E
Water’s not black and

white: There’s a gray zone.
What goes down the drain
after showers, toothbrush-
ing, or laundry is called gray
water (in contrast to black
water, which goes down the
toilet). You wouldn’t drink
it—but your plants can.
California-based Greywater
Action runs workshops on
reusing rainwater and drain
water. Not all locations allow
it, but in those that do, it’s
relatively simple to set up.
Here are some basics.
The easy solution

Projects that reuse gray
water range from the pro-
fessional (right) to the DIY:
a laundry-to-landscape sys-
tem that can be made over
a weekend with a few hun-
dred dollars in parts. Install
a diverter valve on the dis-
charge hose of your washing
machine; after a cycle, guide
used water out through a
PVC pipe to plantings.
A yard to match
Use a gray water project
to rethink your landscape,
suggests Greywater Action
co-founder Laura Allen.
Start with reducing typi-
cally thirsty lawns; then add
climate-appropriate trees,
bushes, and ground cover.
Storage and use

Gray water smells if it’s
not used promptly; Allen
advises flushing storage
tanks daily. Use biodegrad-
able detergents low in salt
and boron, which can harm
flora if they build up in soil.
Work the laws

If your city or state regu-
lations ban the use of gray
water, ask to have them
reviewed; diverting gray
water can help conventional
septic systems last longer
and reduce peak flow into Newly installed
sewers. Also, it isn’t “gray” by contractors at
until it goes down a drain— Greywater Action,
so catch water that falls as this system chan-
the shower warms in a five- nels gray water
gallon bucket, then use it in into irrigation.
your toilet tank or garden.
PHOTO: STUART PALLEY

E X P L O R E | THROUGH THE LENS
Rediscovering
the Joy
B Y S A R A H Y LTO N
the first decade of my career.

G R I E F RA N T H RO U G H
I photographed stories about devastating topics:
sexual violence, migration, religious conflict, war.
On the cover of my notebook in 2019, I wrote a quote
from the Bhagavad Gita: “The soul is neither born,
and nor does it die.” It was intended to remind me
to play more and take myself less seriously.
Sometimes I’d get the rare assignment where
I could breathe—for example, photographing an
article on teas for an airline magazine. I was in the
Darjeeling area of north India, at the foothills of
the Himalaya, a region known for producing the
“Champagne of teas.” I took the job hoping to make
playful, almost cinematic images, but at the end of
the day, I found I’d made nothing of the sort. Packing
up my camera, I felt like a failure.
On the drive back to the hotel, I noticed heavy
steam rising from a building up ahead. Arriving at
the scene, I opened the car door—and realized I was
at the Ghum station for the Darjeeling Himalayan
Railway, better known as the Toy Train, a tourist
attraction traditionally pulled by steam locomotive.
Then, out of nowhere, a figure ran toward me. I
picked up my camera and quickly made three frames.
One was out of focus. One was poorly composed. But
FROM THE SUFFERING HER one worked; it’s the photo you see here.
CAMERA CAPTURED TO THE When I submitted my images to the editor for the
tea article, this one wasn’t chosen to be published,
U N E X P E C T E D D E AT H O F H E R
but I knew it meant something to me. I had been
FAT H E R , G R I E F C L O U D E D
looking for serendipity in my own life. This photo-
HER LIFE. BUT AS TIME graph symbolized exactly that.
PA S S E D, T H E L I G H T A N D I was 27 when I first traveled to India after the
T H E C O L O R S R E T U R N E D. sudden passing of my father. Unable to comprehend
the meaning of death within a Western framework,
I yearned to grieve somewhere that saw the cycle of
life with less finality. Over many months, with my aimlessly, with no goal but to observe, and each
best friend, I traversed India with no phone, with moment became a dance—serendipity waiting to
limited internet, and with healing as my compass. be revealed.
I sobbed on the steps of sacred temples, practiced I landed in Mumbai more than 12 years ago, and
yoga and meditation at an ashram near where the recently I left it for good. I feel sad that I’ll no longer
Beatles’ White Album was born, had a spiritual cer- be able to visit the tea stall down the street from my
emony with an intoxicated Tibetan shaman, fell in home or weave through traffic to reach my favorite
love, and had my heart broken. I climbed moun- south Indian restaurant, or simply hear the rice
tains, swam in the sea, and unraveled entirely. India cooker every morning from the apartment above me.
became my home, and for a while I continued to But if India and this journey taught me anything,
make images that reflected my own grief. After all, it’s that what comes next will bring its own magic.
isn’t each image a self-portrait? New colors, more light, waiting to be revealed. j
But as I learned to navigate some of the world’s
Photographer and National Geographic Explorer Sara Hylton
most populous cities, I began to see life with more won a 2018 National Magazine Award for her work on missing
color, light, magic. I permitted myself to walk and murdered Indigenous women in her native Canada.
MARCH 2023 31
P ROT E C T YO U R L E GAC Y
P R E S E RV E O U R P L A N E T
When you leave a gift to the National Geographic Society in your will or trust, or
by beneficiary designation, you can help protect the wonder of our world.
Need a will? We believe all people deserve access to estate planning tools. That’s
why we are offering this free resource to our supporters. Get started today!
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P H OTO G R A P H BY J O H N S TA N M E Y E R
EXPLORE YOUR LEGACY

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C MARCH 2023
Heritage Repatriation. . P. 34
Mountain Hares . . . . . . . . . . . P. 72
Lebanon’s Turmoil . . . . . . P. 86
Apostle Islands . . . . . . . . . . P. 110
Spectacular Spiders . . . P. 126
F EAT U R E S
72
IN THE
SCOTTISH
HIGHLANDS
THE MOUNTAIN
HARE’S PALE
WINTER COAT
HELPS PROTECT
IT FROM PRED -
ATORS. BUT
AS THE PLANET
WA R M S , T H I S
BLESSING
MAY ALS O BE
A CURSE.
PHOTO: ANDY PARKINSON

v
BY ANDREW CURRY PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD BARNES
34
RETURNING STOLEN LOOT ISN’T CLOSING MUSEUMS. IT’S OPENING NEW DOORS.
Sultan Nabil Njoya of
Cameroon’s Bamum
people sits on a throne
commissioned by
his great-grandfather
(pictured behind).
It’s a replica of one
obtained by German
colonial authorities
in 1908 under circum-
stances that are now
contested. Known as
the Mandu Yenu, the
original is on display in
a Berlin museum.
PREVIOUS PHOTO
Around 1900, colonial

officials and traders—
like the Austrian mer-
chant sitting next to
Bamum ruler Ibrahim
Njoya—scoured the
world for art and
ceremonial objects
to bring back to
museums in Europe.
HELENE OLDENBURG,
BASEL MISSION ARCHIVES
borne by winds
I N F E B R U A RY, F I N E R E D D U S T
from the far-off Sahara coats everything in
Foumban, a town of about 100,000 in Cameroon.
In a month the spring rains will start, but for now
every day feels the same—hazy sun, dry heat,
and on the main road through town, a cacoph-
ony of honking horns and buzzing motorcycles.
For a few decades this part of Africa was a
colony of Germany, whose brief but brutal rule
lasted from 1884 until 1916. Like other colonial
powers, Germany established ethnological col-
lections to conserve, study, and display cultural
artifacts from its new colonies. Though collect-
ing is an impulse with deep roots in human
history, museums as we know them are mostly
a 19th-century invention, designed to share the
A new museum in
Foumban, Cameroon,
is modeled on the
emblem of the Bamum
kingdom: a double-
headed snake topped
by a spider. Sacred
objects can be bor-
rowed for use in
traditional ceremonies
and then returned.
Mandu Yenu throne

Elaborately beaded and decorated with
valuable cowrie shells, the Mandu Yenu throne
was a symbol of authority in the Bamum
kingdom before Germany claimed part of
modern-day Cameroon as a colony in 1884.
And while the Bamum ruler at the time was
a German ally, receiving military assistance
and trade goods from German authorities,
his descendants say he was pressured to
give his throne to the German emperor as a
birthday present in 1908. After more than
a century, they want it back. “The throne is
not just an object,” Njoya’s great-grandson
Nabil says. “It is an object through which the
king connects with his ancestors.”
fruits of European exploration and conquest. elaborately beaded throne. An inheritance from
Colonialism turned collecting into something the king’s father, the throne was known as the
of a mania. Just as colonial powers didn’t send Mandu Yenu, after the pair of protective figures
explorers to map new corners of the globe for that adorned its back.
pure love of knowledge, objects didn’t simply fall Njoya had turned down many German offers
into museums. Anthropologists, missionaries, to buy or trade for the throne, but in this case he
merchants, and military officers worked with agreed. If he wrote down why, those records are
museums to bring wonders and wealth back to lost. Maybe it was a gesture of gratitude to thank
Europe. Curators even sent wish lists along with colonial officials for sending troops to help him
armed colonial expeditions. fight and defeat his neighbors. Or maybe Njoya
In 1907, German officials gave a message was worried what would happen to his kingdom
to Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, ruler of Cameroon’s if he refused. One thing is certain: He asked his
Bamum people. Perhaps, they suggested, a carvers and beadworkers to make a copy of the
gift to Kaiser Wilhelm II for his upcoming 50th Mandu Yenu. But when it became clear that
birthday would be a welcome gesture—specif- the copy wouldn’t be ready in time for Wilhelm’s
ically a precise replica of Njoya’s remarkable, birthday, Njoya was persuaded to hand over the
TROUBLED TREASURES 39
original instead. It has been in the collection of by activists and political leaders—have been dig-
Berlin’s Ethnological Museum ever since. ging deeper into how objects in their museums
Njoya’s great-grandson, Nabil Njoya, became came to be there. Increasingly, they’re going a
ruler of the Bamum in 2021, following the death step further. In a process known as repatriation
of his father. When I meet him in front of the or restitution, they are pulling art, ritual objects,
royal palace in Foumban, the 28-year-old king and human remains out of display cases and
pulls out his mobile phone and shows me photos storage rooms and giving them back to the com-
of a college kid in a New Jersey Nets hat—selfies munities where they originated.
he took during the five years he attended college Last year alone, Germany transferred owner-
in Queens, New York. ship of hundreds of objects to Nigeria’s national
In modern Cameroon, Nabil’s kingship is a museum commission, France handed 26 artifacts
traditional title with limited legal authority, back to Benin, and the Metropolitan Museum of
but it carries respect and symbolic power. And Art in New York cut a deal to transfer ownership
according to Bamum custom, the power of each of dozens of sculptures to Greece.
king is passed via the thrones they build for their “Around 1900 you had competition between
successors. As long as the Mandu Yenu remains European nations to have the biggest ethnologi-
in Berlin, “there’s a break in the chain.” cal collections,” says Bénédicte Savoy, a professor
Seated on the throne his father had built of art history at the Technical University of Berlin.
for him, Nabil says he doesn’t blame Germans for “Now I think we have a competition to be the first
things their ancestors did more than a century to give the things back.”
ago. He just wants his great-grandfather’s throne Many curators hope the shift will be the begin-
back. “None of us here were present at that ning of a new era of cooperation between muse-
time—none of us,” he says in a French accent ums and the communities and countries their
with a bit of Queens thrown in. “But I think that collections originally came from. Critics, mean-
we are obliged to solve the problem.” while, worry that the returns may spark a chain
To house the Mandu Yenu throne and reaction that will dismantle “universal” muse-
other Bamum artifacts, Nabil’s father built an ums whose international collections offer unique
eye-catching museum on the palace grounds. insights into how the world is interconnected.
Shaped like a double-headed snake, it’s topped
with a realistic, hairy-legged spider—traditional
represent
I
symbols of power, vigilance, and hard work. F T H E PA S T F I V E Y E A R S
Nabil hopes bringing the Mandu Yenu home a revolution in how museums
will be part of his legacy. “I have a picture in my view their collections, perhaps
mind,” he says. “I see me and that throne. I see it’s appropriate that the spark was
a lot of Bamum people all around me. And I’m struck in France, where so many
seeing, standing next to me, the director of the revolutions have begun. In November 2017,
Berlin museum shaking hands with me, and French president Emmanuel Macron traveled
both of us saying, ‘We did it! We did it—not for to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, a
us, but for our children.’ ” former French colony in West Africa. In front of
an auditorium filled with students, he acknowl-
edged the “crimes” of France’s colonial period.
in Germany Then the speech took an unexpected turn.
N
OT M A N Y P E O P L E
have heard of the Mandu Yenu “I cannot accept that a large share of several
throne. Even fewer could locate African countries’ cultural heritage be kept in
Foumban on a map. But while France,” Macron told the audience. “There are
objects from other places— historical explanations for it, but there is no
Benin, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria—have dominated valid, lasting, and unconditional justification.”
headlines in recent years, the finely beaded Within five years, he said, “I want the conditions
wooden throne captures the messy, confusing, to exist for temporary or permanent returns of
uncertain, and ultimately hopeful future of an African heritage to Africa.”
unprecedented global moment. Watching the speech at her gallery in Benin,
Over the past few decades, a new generation of another former French colony, Marie-Cécile
museum curators and directors—often prodded Zinsou, who runs a foundation focused on
parthenon sculptures
Perched on a hill high above Athens, the
Parthenon was the ancient city’s most important
temple, decorated with marble statues and a
sculpted frieze depicting a festival in honor of the
goddess Athena and featuring heroes and gods
in procession. Greece was under Ottoman control
in the early 1800s when British ambassador and
Earl of Elgin Thomas Bruce was granted permission
to remove “some pieces of stone with old
inscriptions, and figures.” Lord Elgin took about
half the surviving sculptures and much of the
frieze and shipped them to London. Greece has
long demanded their return, arguing that Elgin’s
deal with an occupying power was illegitimate.
The Elgin Marbles,

as they came to be
known, were pur-
chased by the British
Parliament and given
to the growing British
Museum, where visi-
tors first flocked to see
the artifacts in 1817.
They came to symbol-
ize the stalemate over
repatriation claims. But
recently the museum
has called for a new
“Parthenon Partner-
ship” and stated its
willingness to talk with
the Greek government
about “how to take
that forward.”
“TEMPORARY ELGIN ROOM IN 1819,”
BY ARCHIBALD ARCHER, THE
TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Opened in 2009 within
sight of the Parthenon,
the hypermodern
Acropolis Museum
answered British claims
that Greece lacked
a museum fit for the
famed Elgin Marbles.
Statue fragments in this
gallery await the return
of missing pieces held
by the British Museum.
contemporary African art, was stunned. “No return of artifacts acquired on “scientific” expe-
one knew it was coming,” she says. “It was like ditions sent to Africa in the early part of the
a thunderstorm.” Just a year before, a request 20th century to collect items, often at gunpoint,
from the president of Benin for objects taken for French museums.
by French soldiers in the 1890s had been dis- From Ghana to Greece, former colonies had
missed outright. “France had always said no,” been asking for their artifacts to be returned,
adds Zinsou. some for half a century or more. Finally, govern-
Soon afterward, Macron asked Savoy and ments, museums, and the media were starting
Senegalese scholar Felwine Sarr to prepare a to listen.
report on France’s colonial collections. In an On a sweltering Monday in July, I went to
89-page document published by France’s cul- meet the man whose museum is perhaps most
ture ministry, the two researchers called for affected by Macron’s promise. The Quai Branly
France to return objects taken by its military Museum, a short walk from the Eiffel Tower in
during the colonial era, along with pieces taken Paris, houses France’s largest ethnological col-
by the armies of other countries and held in lection. Dating back 500 years, to the time of
French museums. They also pushed for the cabinets of curiosities, the collection includes
A group of artists and
researchers is creating
exact replicas of Par-
thenon sculptures to
encourage the British
Museum to return the
originals to Greece.
Here, Federico Agosti-
nelli monitors work
on a horse head at a
facility in Carrara, Italy.
From Ghana to Greece,

former colonies had
been asking for their
artifacts for half a
century or more. Finally,
governments, museums,
and the media were
starting to listen.
everything from Polynesian wood carvings to centerpiece of the Quai Branly’s collections since
decorated human skulls from the highlands of its opening in 2006.
Papua New Guinea. In charge of it all is Emman- Not long after Macron’s speech, Benin’s presi-
uel Kasarhérou. His appointment in 2020 was a dent, Patrice Talon, requested the objects again.
strong signal that things in the museum world French legislators passed a narrow law authoriz-
were shifting. A native of New Caledonia, an ing the return of those specific items in 2020. In
archipelago in the Pacific Ocean 10,500 miles February 2022, the objects were unveiled at the
from Paris, he’s a member of the Kanak people presidential palace in Cotonou. “The patrimony
and one of the few Indigenous museum directors of Benin has returned,” Talon told a crowd of
in all of France. reporters at the opening.
In 2021 Kasarhérou presided over the return of For hours, Benin’s elite mingled among the
artworks taken by French soldiers in 1892 after returned artifacts and an exhibit of work by con-
the sack of Dahomey, a West African kingdom in temporary Beninese artists. The high-ceilinged
what is now the country of Benin. The items— halls were crowded with foreign ambassadors,
including two thrones, the doors of the palace, barefoot vodou priestesses, and army officers
and other symbols of royal power—had been a in black-and-gold dress (Continued on page 56)
Oxford University’s
encyclopedic Pitt Riv-
ers Museum houses
more than half a million
items from around the
world. It has returned
the remains of Aus-
tralian Aboriginals,
among others, and is
discussing repatriation
with groups in Africa,
Asia, and elsewhere.
“That’s when the rela-
tionship really begins,”
says director Laura
Van Broekhoven.
In 1912 German exca-
vators discovered the
limestone and plaster
bust of Queen Nefertiti
among the ruins of
an ancient sculptor’s
studio in Amarna,
Egypt. Carved around
1340 B.C., the almond-
eyed beauty left
archaeologists awe-
struck. “Description
is useless,” wrote
one in a diary entry.
“Must be seen.” The
archaeologists took
the bust to Germany,
where it has remained
ever since, despite
repeated demands for
its return to Egypt.
BPK BILDAGENTUR/VORDER-
ASIATISCHES MUSEUM, STAATLICHE
MUSEEN, BERLIN/ART RESOURCE, NY
bust of nefertiti
Displayed in a bulletproof case in Berlin’s Neues Museum,
Nefertiti’s regal bust is both an icon of ancient Egypt and one of
the German capital’s most famous museum pieces, drawing
hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. It was first displayed in
Berlin in 1924. During World War II it was hidden in a cellar, then
a bunker, then a salt mine, where it was found by the Allied forces’
“monuments men.” Some claim the bust was taken unethically,
arguing that the expedition leader misrepresented the find’s
value. Germany insists it acquired Nefertiti legally and says scans
show the sculpture is too delicate to travel back to Cairo.
48
Hawaii
(U.S.)
COLONIAL
Landmark legislation
Native American activism in the
1970s led to U.S. laws requiring C huk
c h i Pe n.
the repatriation of human Alaska
remains and sacred items to (U.S.)
COLLECTING tribes. The tribal claims process,

however, is slow and complex.
During the age of empires and colonization, when a few,

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Berlin Paris Paris New York London
SOUTH
AFRICA
The Rhode Island School
of Design acquired this
bronze sculpture of
an oba, or ruler, of the
Edo people in 1939.
Pressure from area
students and faculty
prompted the school’s
museum to return
it to Nigeria last year.
benin bronzes
In 1897 British soldiers—in retaliation for the
ambush of an earlier British expedition—sacked
Benin City, in modern-day Nigeria, making off
with a “regular harvest of loot,” one official later
enthused. Spoils included carved ivory tusks and
cast-brass plaques misnamed “Benin Bronzes.”
Auctioned off or presented as gifts by triumphant
troops, more than 5,000 objects ended up in
museums and private collections around the world.
Over the past two years, museums in Germany,
the U.K., the U.S., and elsewhere have returned or
pledged to return the looted artifacts to Nigeria.
ROBERT ALLMAN, THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
AB OVE
offerings. “As
The oba of Benin, we neared the city,”
Ovonramwen, was wrote one, “sacrificed
sent into exile after his human beings were
defeat. The British jus- lying in the path and
tified their “punitive bush—even in the
expedition” in part by king’s compound the
citing grisly evidence sight and stench
that Benin’s rulers of them was awful.”
had sacrificed many JONATHAN A. GREEN, THE
slaves, perhaps as war TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
uniforms. Dahomey royalty in red-coral neck-
laces walked slowly past ancestral treasures in
glass cases.
As night fell, the dignitaries trickled out and
the staff wandered in. Security guards and chefs
in tall hats reverently posed for selfies with the
Each object’s
historic objects. When I finally slipped out a side biography
door into the warm, humid night, they were
still there. Over the next four months, nearly is a collision of
200,000 people visited the exhibitions, some-
times waiting in line for hours for a chance to cultures and
see the returned artifacts. The great majority of
visitors were from Benin—a rebuke to the idea influences,
that Africans aren’t interested in their own his-
tory or in museums.
a minicourse in
Savoy, too, was in Cotonou for the ceremony,
her eyes twinkling as she surveyed the crowded
world history.
galleries. Macron’s 2017 promise was on track,
and museums were playing a new role—as
places to talk about the future, not just capture
the past. “Before all these restitutions began, you
had a lot of people saying, If you give one thing 1802 after the British defeated the French. Just
back, our museums will be empty,” she says. “I beyond it are Assyrian reliefs sculpted almost
don’t think that’s going to happen.” 3,000 years ago, then a Roman copy of a Greek
statue of Aphrodite purchased by the British
king from an Italian duke in the 1620s. Each
see it that object’s biography is a collision of cultures and
N
OT ALL MUSEUMS
way. The British Museum in influences, a minicourse in world history.
London has become a global A few steps farther is a gallery with marble
symbol for its refusal to return reliefs marching the length of the cathedral-like
objects. In the past, museum space. These exquisite sculptures, carved 2,500
officials have argued that the world needs years ago, once adorned the Parthenon in Ath-
universal or encyclopedic museums that cut ens. Six million people visit the British Museum
across the artificial divides of modern borders each year, and it’s a safe bet most of them have
and bring together art and artifacts from differ- at least heard of demands that the marbles go
ent cultures, time periods, and places. It’s an back to Greece—a debate that has raged on and
idea that originated in the Enlightenment, the off since the sculptures were brought to London
flourishing of science and philosophy that swept more than 200 years ago. In December, rumors
Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. “Where that Osborne was in secret talks with Greece over
else on our planet can we bring together under the stones made headlines, even as museum offi-
one roof the fruits of two million years of human cials stayed silent.
endeavor?” the head of the museum’s board of Hoping to better understand the museum’s
trustees, George Osborne, said in a speech last position on the Parthenon marbles and other
year. “We want this to be the museum of our controversial artifacts, I pull out my phone and
common humanity.” download a digital tour titled “Collecting and
It’s easy to warm to the idea, if you’re lucky Empire Trail.” It’s a letdown. The tour points me
enough to be in London with an afternoon to to a Chinese soup plate, a betel nut cutter from
spend at the British Museum. A few months Sri Lanka, and other objects acquired during the
before Osborne’s speech, I strolled through the glory days of the British Empire. But the sub-
museum’s vast main hall and past the Rosetta jects of recent heated claims—including the
stone. Carved in 196 B.C., the famed stela was Rosetta stone, the Parthenon sculptures, the
discovered near Alexandria, Egypt, by Napo- Benin Bronzes, and the “Hoa Hakananai‘a,” a
leon’s troops in 1799 and brought to London in towering stone moai spirited away from Easter
Estimated to be about
400 years old, a Benin
Bronze at the MARKK
museum in Hamburg,
Germany, depicts
a warrior pulling an
enemy from his horse.
Many of the bronzes
record significant
events in Benin history.
Bronze casters in Benin
City, Nigeria, belong
to a hereditary guild
dating back centuries.
They once worked for
the royal palace. Today
Etinosa Aigbe and
other guild artisans craft
sculptures for sale—
like the life-size repre-
sentation of a Portu-
guese soldier (at center).
Island by British sailors in 1868—are conspicu-
ously absent.
Before visiting London last summer, I tried
for months to get the museum to agree to an
on-the-record interview, to no avail. As muse-
ums elsewhere have grappled with the restitu-
‘Maybe it’s the
tion question, the British Museum seems to have end of the
gone into hiding.
Even the museum’s longtime defenders 19th-century
seem flummoxed. After wandering the muse-
um’s sprawling galleries, I meet author Tiffany museum and the
Jenkins for tea. In 2016 Jenkins wrote a defense
of the British Museum entitled Keeping Their beginning of
Marbles, arguing that modern museums should
focus on telling the stories of ancient objects and
something else.’
the people who made them, and steer clear of Bénédicte Savoy,
political posturing. Technical University of Berlin
To my surprise, Jenkins admits that in the
years since her book was published, the debate
has shifted dramatically—and left the British
Museum behind. Museum staff, she points out,
rarely make the case for encyclopedic museums made headlines for pushing back against repa-
anymore. Instead, they’ve retreated to technical- triation requests from Egypt, Turkey, and for-
ities, like agreements signed in the 1800s with mer German colonies in Africa. But in a sign of
the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled how quickly the debate has shifted, the SPK has
Athens, to remove marbles from the Acropolis. moved to return numerous objects since 2018,
Or the fact that many objects were taken from including a goddess figurine to Cameroon, ritual
Africa and Asia before Britain signed a treaty and cultural objects to Namibia, the remains of
that banned looting, making their acquisition Maori people to New Zealand, and the remains
legal, if not ethical. Or a 1963 act of Parliament and funerary items of Indigenous Hawaiians and
that prevents the museum from removing items Alaska Natives to the United States.
from its collection, cited by the British prime Last year, the SPK was part of a blockbuster
minister in December in an effort to quash return of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. (The
rumors that the secret talks between Osborne “bronzes” include items of ivory, wood, and brass,
and Greek officials over the Parthenon marbles but the name took.) In 1897, a heavily armed Brit-
signaled an imminent return. “Just pointing to ish expedition invaded the Edo empire, over-
the paperwork isn’t an answer,” Jenkins says. “If threw its hereditary king, or oba, and plundered
that’s their argument, they’ll lose.” his palace in Benin City, the heart of the Kingdom
of Benin. Grainy photographs of the aftermath
show British soldiers, their faces and uniforms
ERHAPS THERE’S a middle smudged and dirty, grinning amid stacks of ivory
P
ground. Hermann Parzinger is and metal statuary. Officers captioned some of
president of the Prussian Cul- the photos “LOOT.” Curators from German eth-
tural Heritage Foundation, or nological museums bought hundreds of bronzes
SPK, an umbrella organization at auctions staged to cover the costs of the raid.
that oversees more than a dozen Berlin muse- Today more than 5,000 objects taken in the
ums. They include two museums in the con- 1897 raid are held in museums around the world
troversial Humboldt Forum, a new complex in rather than at the National Museum in Benin
the middle of town. Its Ethnological Museum City. “What the British took was a treasure trove
houses hundreds of thousands of artifacts, most of objects that had been in the palace for centu-
of which were accumulated during Germany’s ries,” says Theophilus Umogbai, the museum’s
colonial heyday in the late 19th century. former director. “They created a vacuum in our
For decades, Parzinger and his predecessors history, a gap in our library.”
The Benin raid’s well-documented circum- What about Ibrahim Njoya’s throne? I ask. No
stances, along with decades of persistent pres- Bamum ruler has ever made a formal request for
sure from Edo royalty and Nigerian officials, the throne’s return, nor has the government of
made the bronzes a prominent test case for Cameroon. But what if they did?
repatriation. The combination of a strong moral Parzinger frowns. Njoya, he points out,
argument and public and political pressure benefited from his alliance with German colo-
seems to be shifting the debate. nizers. The Bamum king grew rich from trade
“We do not want looted objects in our collec- with German merchants and defeated local
tions,” Parzinger tells me firmly. Even a handful rivals with the help of German weapons and
of museums in the United Kingdom have moved military assistance. Seen from Parzinger’s per-
to return pieces, and donations from the U.K., spective, the idea that the throne was a gift to
Germany, and elsewhere are helping fund a new thank Germany for its help isn’t so far-fetched.
museum in Benin City designed by Ghanaian “When you see how well they played together,
British architect David Adjaye. to see Njoya now completely as a victim? That,
In July, German government representatives for me, is a little bit difficult,” he says. He pauses,
issued a bilateral declaration that legal owner- considering. “I’m sure solutions can be found.
ship of Benin Bronzes in museums across the Before the throne left Bamum, they produced a
country—more than 1,000 objects, including 500 copy. Maybe there can be an exchange?”
from the SPK—should be transferred to Nigeria. To call all this a huge shift is an understate-
At a signing ceremony, Nigeria’s culture minister ment. Just 20 years ago, Parzinger’s predeces-
called it “the largest known repatriation of arti- sor dismissed the idea of even lending some of
facts anywhere in the world.” the museum’s Benin collection to Nigeria. Today
The moment was powerfully symbolic—and, museum curators are meeting their counterparts
Parzinger says, a win-win. Many of the objects in former colonies for eye-to-eye discussions,
will stay in Germany on long-term loan for sometimes for the first time. “Maybe it’s the
the next 10 years, and others will remain until end of the 19th-century museum,” Savoy says,
Nigeria builds new museums with German help. sounding entirely unbothered by the prospect,
After that, Nigerian officials will lend artifacts to “and the beginning of something else.”
Germany on a rotating basis.
“I want to show the art of Benin in my
museum,” Parzinger says. “But whether these that might
O R A S E N S E O F W H AT
F
objects are loans or property of my museum is look like, I head to Suitland,
in the end not that important.” Maryland, a Washington, D.C.,
In August the SPK became the first German suburb where the Smithsonian
institution to officially sign over its bronzes. Institution keeps most of its
So what hope is there for more complex cases, 157 million artifacts in a multi-acre storage and
such as the world-famous bust of the ancient research complex. The collection includes mil-
Egyptian queen Nefertiti? The exquisite sculp- lions of items gathered from Native American
ture was excavated by German researchers in tribes over the past 200 years. The National
1912 and sent to Berlin, where it has remained Museum of Natural History (NMNH) support
ever since. German officials argue that it was center consists of five pods, each the size of a
legally acquired at the time and that repatriation football field and three stories tall. In one sec-
requests haven’t come through proper channels. tion, airtight cabinets house objects from hun-
Parzinger says each request must be evaluated dreds of U.S. tribes.
on its own merits, with input from local commu- The Smithsonian has long welcomed scholars
nities and national governments and research who come to use its collections for research, but
into the circumstances of individual acquisi- over the past 30 years the NMNH support center
tions. “There’s been museum bashing and harsh has created spaces for other visitors. Nowadays
dialogue that painted a picture that everything tribal representatives regularly come to the facil-
is stolen and illegal, but one has to look at the ity to see items made by their ancestors and to
gray zones,” Parzinger says. “A museum is not work with curators. A conference room doubles
a space where you just go in and take what you as a ceremonial space, complete with a cabinet
want off the shelves.” stocked with dried sage and tobacco for tribe
zuni ahayu:da
To the people of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico,
wooden statues called ahayu:da represent super-
natural twin brothers and protectors. During
the 19th and 20th centuries, many were stolen
and sold to collectors and museums. Zuni leaders
in the 1970s began pressing for their return,
making an ethical case that became a model for
successful repatriation claims. Secret shrines house
ahayu:da on Dowa Yalanne, or Old Mountain
(below), a plateau overlooking the Zuni Pueblo.
members to burn in purification ceremonies In the 1970s and ’80s, Native American activ-
before or after handling sacred objects. ists successfully lobbied for laws that would
Thirty years ago such scenes would have been require museums to hand over the bones of
hard to imagine. For centuries archaeologists, their ancestors, along with sacred objects. Many
ethnographers, and museum curators enthusi- museums pushed back, hard. The concerns
astically collected Native American artifacts and raised back then sound familiar to anyone fol-
human remains. Burials were excavated without lowing the debate in Europe today.
the consent of descendants. Anthropologists and archaeologists worried
“When these items were acquired, collec- that relinquishing collections of human remains
tors weren’t thinking of Indigenous peoples as would be an irrecoverable loss to science, mak-
human beings,” says Jacquetta Swift, the repa- ing it impossible to study the country’s prehis-
triation manager for the National Museum of the toric past. Others charged that tribes would be
American Indian. “People were resources, and unable to properly care for artifacts or would
human remains were to be preserved alongside damage them in traditional ceremonies. And
pots,” adds Swift, who’s from the Comanche and others suggested tribes would use the law to
Fort Sill Apache tribes. empty out museums for profit.
Ahayu:da placed at
outdoor shrines, such as
this one in a photo pub-
lished in 1904, gradu-
ally break down as part
of their spiritual role.
JOHN WESLEY POWELL, ALAMY
STOCK PHOTO
“There was a considerable amount of hostil- has returned more than 224,000 items to 200
ity between museums and communities,” says different tribes, along with the remains of 6,492
Kevin Gover, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary people. The process has been repeated at smaller
for museums and culture and a citizen of the museums around the nation.
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. “There was a lot of While thousands of objects have been
resistance to the idea of repatriation in general.” returned, some have stayed. Eric Hollinger, the
In 1989 Congress passed the National Museum tribal liaison in NMNH’s repatriation office,
of the American Indian Act, followed in 1990 stops halfway down one of 46 rows of cabinets
by the Native American Graves Protection and and swings open a door, releasing the pungent
Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA. The laws smell of wood and old leather. Inside there are
made the Smithsonian and other U.S. museums blankets, beaded cradle covers, and buffalo
responsible for developing a collaborative repa- calf robes—offerings left for a Cheyenne child
triation process with tribes, recognizing rights who died in 1868. Not long after, U.S. Army sol-
that previously didn’t exist. diers tracking the tribe found their abandoned
The National Museum of Natural History set encampment and the burial. They boxed up the
up a repatriation office in 1991. Since then it offerings and the child’s body and sent everything
Zuni elder Octavius
Seowtewa visits
Tularosa Cave, a sacred
site on the tribe’s tra-
ditional land in New
Mexico. The Zuni were
key players in Native
efforts to reclaim tribal
artifacts, including
backing national
repatriation legisla-
tion, which became
law in 1990.
to the Army Medical Museum. The Smithsonian
eventually acquired the collection, but at some
point the child’s remains were lost.
In 1996 representatives of the Cheyenne and
Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma worked out an
agreement to allow the objects to remain at the
‘People think
NMNH “for research and education to be con-
ducted by scholars and the Cheyenne people.”
it’s about removing
Photographing or displaying them requires writ- the objects, but
ten permission from the tribe. It’s an example of
shared stewardship that gives both sides respon- really repatriation
sibilities for an object’s future.
“Although these items were not repatriated, is about transfer
the tribe agreed to share their care, and they
never left the museum,” Hollinger says. “People of control.’
think it’s about removing the objects, but really Eric Hollinger,
repatriation is about transfer of control.” National Museum of Natural History
Some cabinets have ventilation holes because
tribes see the objects inside as living spirits that
need to breathe. In others, objects are oriented in
a certain direction in keeping with tribal beliefs.
The museum still regularly gets return inqui- The National Museum of the American
ries. Before agreeing, researchers talk to tribal Indian encourages curators to add contempo-
representatives and comb through journals rary pieces made by Native artists to its col-
and diaries to discover all they can about how lections. In its exhibits on the National Mall
the object was acquired. Whether or not tribes in downtown Washington, D.C., the museum
ultimately make a claim, both sides usually find displays 19th-century buffalo robes, wampum
out something new about the object along the belts, and Lakota eagle-feather headdresses.
way. The consequences of NAGPRA were not But it also displays a hard hat painted by a
dire, Gover says. “We learned a lot about those Mohawk construction worker, as well as Chris-
cultures we didn’t know.” tian Louboutin stiletto heels covered in tra-
That’s not to say the U.S. experience has been ditional glass beadwork by Jamie Okuma, a
entirely successful. The bones of more than Native artist from California.
100,000 individuals still languish in boxes and “The ethnographic museum of the past
locked storerooms across the country, often is making its way to the exit,” Gover says. “It
because tribes haven’t been able to prove a tried to freeze these cultures in time, and no
direct relationship based on records provided culture stops. We want to make the point that
by museums—or because curators have dragged these communities are here; they’re present
their feet. “We need to do better,” Gover says. and alive and vibrant.”
“This needs to be a priority for museums that
hold Native American remains.”
While ethnographic museums were once static clearer
OW H E R E I S T H AT S H I F T
N
storehouses, today’s museums are increasingly for me than in Benin City,
trying to create exhibits with the participation of Nigeria, in an outdoor studio
communities, asking them how they want to be littered with broken clay molds
represented and what objects are significant to and gleaming brass sculp-
them. Using laser scanners, Hollinger and a team tures. Under the shade of a corrugated metal
of specialists worked with the Tlingit people of roof, unfinished plaques await polishing with
Alaska to create 3D replicas of a damaged cere- an angle grinder. The smell of honey mingles
monial sculpin hat. One replica was kept for the with the tang of smoke and sweat as beeswax
museum to exhibit alongside the original, while models soften in the 95-degree heat.
the other was consecrated by the Tlingit as a living Presiding over it all is Phil Omodamwen, a
ceremonial object for the community to use. sixth-generation bronze caster. His forefathers
Tall wooden posts
called vigango, like
these two with curator
Brooke Morgan at the
Illinois State Museum,
are carved by Kenya’s
Mijikenda people to
embody the spirits of
headmen. The museum
returned 37 vigango
to Kenya last year, and
the Denver Museum
of Nature and Science
returned 30 in 2019.
Many were stolen, so
“museums don’t have
the right to own them,”
says Denver curator
Stephen Nash.
were part of a guild that created bronze plaques of his sons is an accountant, the other a cyber-
and sculptures for the Edo oba. As a pair of assis- security consultant. “I don’t think they will con-
tants stoke a white-hot bonfire, Omodamwen tinue after me,” Omodamwen says, with a mix of
explains that the techniques he uses today build pride and sadness. “I’m worried that in the next
on those used for the past 500 years. He recycles 20 years, bronze art will go into extinction.”
scrap metal to cast elaborate bronze and brass In a derelict office building not far from Igun
sculptures. Repurposed refrigerator and air con- Street, I catch a glimpse of a different future as
ditioner compressors serve as crucibles for the 28-year-old Kelly Omodamwen—Phil’s cousin—
bubbling, green-gold, molten metal. tells me he grew up watching his father and
When I visited last February, the rumored uncles cast bronze. He’s a hereditary member
return of bronzes from Germany dominated the of the bronze casters’ guild too. But even though
talk on Igun Street, where bronze casters sell their Kelly grew up learning traditional casting, his lat-
work. Many hoped repatriation represented a est work is something new. After watching the
future for an ancient tradition. In the shade of a men in his family melt down plumbing fixtures
thick-trunked palm tree, Omodamwen tells me he and cymbals, Kelly started scouring local garages
may be the last bronze caster in his family. One for used spark plugs. During the pandemic he
Vigango are still
coveted by art collec-
tors. Once returned
to Mijikenda commu-
nities, they must be
guarded from thieves.
In Chalani, a village
in eastern Kenya,
Festus Thinga built
an iron cage to
protect the statues
of his ancestors.
‘Not everyone has

access to the
British Museum.
For people like me,
it will change
what’s possible.’
Kelly Omodamwen,
Nigerian bronze caster
began shaping life-size sculptures using a weld- its collection. He proudly points out the gleam-
ing torch. “The essence is upcycling—using the ing plaque hanging on a wall behind a display
same objects for a different purpose,” he says. of historic bronze heads taken in the 1897 raid.
Kelly’s work has been displayed in New York, Just days before, he says, his long-held dream
London, and Lagos. But he’s never left Nigeria, came true. Curators invited him to handle
never had the opportunity to see the ancient bronzes he had only seen in dog-eared catalogs.
bronzes up close. For him, their return represents He was able to see the backs of plaques and chat
an inspiration to create art that mixes old and new. with the museum’s restorer about his technique
“We only see them online, on Google. Not every- and how it compared with that of his forefathers.
one has access to the British Museum,” he says. “When I saw those works, I was so happy,” he
“For people like me, it will change what’s possible.” says, sighing. “Now I have a message of hope to
A few months later, at a gallery tour of the take back to our people.” j
Humboldt Forum in Berlin, I’m surprised to see
a familiar face sitting one row in front of me. It’s Longtime contributor Andrew Curry enjoys a view
of the Humboldt Forum from his Berlin apartment.
Phil Omodamwen. The Ethnological Museum, Richard Barnes has been photographing in and
he tells me, acquired one of his latest works for around museum collections for many years.
After France’s Quai
Branly Museum repa-
triated pieces to Benin
last year, they were
put on display in Coto-
nou. “Objects are a
wonderful excuse to
create human connec-
tions,” says Quai Branly
director Emmanuel
Kasarhérou. “When
they go back, they cre-
ate new relationships.”
M O U N TA I N H A R E S T H R I V E I N C O L D W E AT H E R .
A W A R M I N G W O R L D M AY C H A N G E T H A T.
B Y C A L F LY N P H OTO G R A P H S B Y ANDY PARKINSON
73
Three adult mountain
hares wait out a snow-
storm on an upland
ice field. Hares seek
naturally occurring
shelter wherever they
can; here, the ridge
offers protection from
the wind. They also rest
in small hollows in the
ground or vegetation.
PREVIOUS PHOTO
A hare blends into

a snowbank in Scot-
land’s Monadhliath
Mountains. The United
Kingdom’s only native
lagomorph trades its
mouse brown summer
coat for a pale winter
pelage each year.
scoured by ice and rock over millions of years.
Mountains lift their rounded backs. Bowl-shaped
hollows known as corries nestle within curving
ridgelines. The land has two faces.
In late summer the terrain is shrouded in A mountain hare
heather, threaded with the royal purple of its tiny grooms itself. The
blooms, along with delicate leaves of creeping wil- timing of an individual’s
molt will vary, but gen-
low and bog myrtle, soft beads of blaeberries, and erally Scottish hares
red-glowing lingonberries. But within a few short living at higher alti-
weeks these same uplands might be swathed in tudes will turn white
or gray earlier in the
snow: drifts banked high, gales whipping through winter than those in
the wind-carved ice at a hundred miles an hour. low-lying areas. They’ll
This is the domain of the mountain hare. These also revert to their
darker coats later in the
little mammals are also found in tundra, alpine, and spring. However, sci-
boreal regions across Eurasia. An estimated 99 per- entists have found no
cent of mountain hares in the United Kingdom live evidence that moun-
tain hares are adapting
in Scotland, their heartland the rugged Grampian to shorter periods of
Mountains of the northeast. snow cover.
A female (beneath)
rebuffs a male’s
amorous advances as
part of the species’
vigorous courtship
ritual. Females will test
males’ determination
and endurance,
boxing them away
before leading them
on a long chase
through the heather.
This spirited episode
ended in copulation.
HARDIEST OF HARES
Concentrated in Scotland’s Highlands
and Southern Uplands, mountain hares
have evolved to live in cold climates.
In other parts of their range, outside Scot-
land, the resilient mammals can be found
at elevations of more than 12,100 feet.
N. AMER.
Full range of the ASIA
mountain hare
SCOTLAND
EUROPE
A
AFRIC
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
Orkney Is.
No rth
S e a
ds
Lewis
lan
S
igh
E
st H
D
Inverness
hwe
I
H I GH LAND S
Nort
Cairngorm Mts.
R
Monadhliath
Mts.
B
t s.
4,413 ft pi an M
ram
E
G
Mull
H
SCOTLAND
Edinburgh
Glasgow
s
d
l an
Up U NIT E D
e rn KI NGDO M
u th
So
ENGLAND
40 mi
40 km
Predicted abundance of
the mountain hare
Lepus timidus
low high
KATIE ARMSTRONG AND SOREN WALLJASPER, NGM STAFF

SOURCES: DARIO MASSIMINO AND OTHERS, BIOLOGICAL
CONSERVATION, 2018; IUCN
Last winter I hiked in the Cairngorm Moun- is its seasonal change, when the smooth sum-
tains. Staggering through deep snow, I set off mer coat of mousy brown gives way to a thicker,
a clatter of wings as a ptarmigan, a bird with better-insulated pelt of brilliant white or dove
downy bloomers, materialized, grunting at being gray. Each year a combination of waning sun-
disturbed from its bed. Sensing my footsteps on light and falling temperatures triggers the hares’
the high ground, white-coated hares flushed into winter molting process—the dense, pale new
the corrie below—fleet of foot, tumbling over growth spreading upward from their feet, along
the sides like the very first crumbs of an ava- their thighs and across their shoulders, mottling
lanche—before turning and gliding effortlessly their bodies.
up and over the ridge. These creatures have evolved to fit their sur-
The mountain hares will seek out shelter roundings. But as climate change ushers in vary-
within nests—“forms”—in dense vegetation or ing weather, mountain hares are increasingly
in shallow depressions—“scrapes”—on the hill- out of step with the place they call home.
side, where they wait out snowstorms: hunched
low inside their fur coats, black-tipped ears flat-
tened to their necks. They might rest for days at
a time, breaking only every hour or so to stretch
or perhaps to briefly graze on hardy heather WHEN CAMOUFLAGE BACKFIRES
before returning to their refuge. among a group of just 21
M O U N TA I N H A R E S A R E
This behavior is one of many adaptations that bird and mammal species with turncoat capa-
allow this animal—the only hare or rabbit spe- bilities, almost all of which live in cold, snowy
cies native to the U.K.—to eke out an existence regions, says Marketa Zimova, assistant profes-
in such harsh conditions. Perhaps most striking sor of biology at Appalachian State University in
North Carolina. In Scotland the only other spe- Mating Moves
cies that change color in this way are the stoat, A series of photo-
also known as the short-tailed weasel—a slender, graphs captures the
moments leading to
skilled hunter—and the ptarmigan. a rare tender display
For mountain hares, this luxuriant winter coat as a courting pair of
also offers valuable camouflage, keeping them mountain hares touch
noses. Females usu-
safer from predators such as red foxes, stoats, ally outweigh males.
and golden eagles that soar overhead. But in Larger females tend to
conditions as changeable as these, it may be a produce more young
(known as leverets) in
curse as well as a blessing. several litters over the
In the Scottish hills it’s not unusual for tem- course of a year.
peratures to rise and fall dramatically on a daily
basis. On the mildest days, when the peatland is
black, sodden, and marbled with ice, the hares
find themselves limelighted: gleaming figures
against a stage of dark heather.
This has always been a danger, but recent
research led by Zimova found that Scottish
mountain hares have been out of sync with
local conditions as climate change has brought
a steep decline in days of snow cover—the first
autumn snow blanketing the ground, on aver-
age, four days later in the 2010s than it did in
OUT OF STEP 81
A mountain hare
and its tiny carnivore
predator, the short-
tailed weasel, or stoat,
stand out against the
dark moorland in their
white coats. In this
instance, the hare
was lucky: The stoat
did not notice its prey
was close at hand.
the 1960s. Average temperatures in the region
have risen by more than 0.1 degree Celsius per
decade, leading to longer periods without snow
cover. In all, the records reveal the hares spend
an additional 35 days a year mismatched with
the landscape.
The consequences of this discrepancy are not
entirely clear, says Scott Newey, a population
biologist who studies mountain hares at Scot-
land’s Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. They
are a “very challenging” species to monitor, he
says. For instance, mountain hares experience
population cycles, in which a scientist might
find only a few hares in a square kilometer one
year and more than a hundred in that same area
several years later, or vice versa. These cycles,
possibly linked to food availability and the prev-
alence of certain parasites, vary so much that
untangling the impact of factors such as climate
change can be extremely difficult.
However, analyses of snowshoe hare popula-
tions in North America offer some insight into
possible long-term trends. It’s known “exactly
how costly” such camouflage mismatch is for
that species, says Zimova: The probability that
a snowshoe hare will be hunted and killed by a
predator in any given week increases by between
7 and 14 percent when the hare is wearing its
white winter coat on a snowless background. “It’s
something that doesn’t sound like a lot,” she says,
but when you extrapolate it across the entire year,
“it can have really profound consequences.”
As with so many of the issues facing wildlife on
this warming planet, the challenge seems to be:
Adapt or die. And for the mountain hares of Scot-
land, there’s no evidence they’re adapting at all.
IN THE CROSSHAIRS the hares as much as the game birds.

Mountain hares have long been killed purely
it may well be that the increased
O D D LY E N O U G H , for sport, but around the turn of the century
risk of predation by foxes, birds of prey, and some private estate managers began targeting
stoats has been far less worrisome, at least until the hares in large numbers on the basis that it
recently, than the impact of humans. would prevent the spread of a tick-borne disease
For many decades, landowners had man- to the grouse—something that scientists have
aged large swaths of mountain regions for disputed. (More than 33,500 hares were killed
the recreational shooting of wild red grouse. in total over the 2016-17 season.) The debate
Controlled burning renders the hills a mosaic around hare culls, which were always contro-
of different conditions—some patches black- versial, took on a new tenor when a 2018 analy-
ened and scorched, some budding with fresh sis by Adam Watson, an independent ecologist
new shoots, some swaddled in thick vegeta- and mountaineer, argued that mountain hare
tion—a mix of ecosystems that likely benefits populations on grouse-hunting grounds in the
A hare rolls around,
likely to dust icy shards
off its fur after getting
covered by windblown
snow in the Monadhli-
ath Mountains.
hilly northeast had dwindled to less than one might easily pass right by one, concealed in
percent of the levels seen in the mid-1950s. The the heather. During a summer hike a few years
Scottish mountain hare population is estimated ago, I witnessed a lithe hare jumping from the
at 135,000, although scientists stress the uncer- thicket, lifting onto its haunches before loping
tainty baked into any such calculations; the off with long, deliberate strides: a tawny silhou-
true figure might fall anywhere between 81,000 ette against a tawny landscape. The hare paused,
and 526,000. then dissolved away once more, merging into
Fearing the animal’s decline, the Scottish Par- the brush a short distance away. One minute it
liament banned unlicensed killing of mountain was there; the next, gone again. It was as if it had
hares in March 2021. It’s still too early to know never been there at all. j
the impact of this rule, says Newey, who’s been
working for 20 years to identify the best way of Cal Flyn, from the Highlands, wrote Islands of Aban-
donment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human
monitoring numbers of this enigmatic animal. Landscape. Andy Parkinson has been photograph-
That’s not surprising, considering a hiker ing mountain hares in Scotland for over 20 years.
OUT OF STEP 85
Economic collapse.
A catastrophic
explosion.
Failed politics.
A refugee crisis.
Lebanon’s seemingly
insurmountable
challenges are
testing its people’s
indomitable spirit.
LIFE
GOES ON
BY RANIA ABOUZEID
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
RENA EFFENDI
A group of women
explores a fort known
as the Sea Castle, built
in the 13th century
by the Crusaders, on
the coastline of Sidon,
Lebanon’s third largest
city. This area has
been inhabited since
the early Bronze Age
and was an impor-
tant Phoenician port.
Archaeological sites
are found all along the
ancient land’s shore.
87
The Bay of Jounie
is a highlight of the
sweeping vista from
Our Lady of Lebanon
in Harissa, a Christian
pilgrimage site in the
hills about a half hour’s
drive north of Beirut.
T H E JA N UA RY B R E E Z E WA S A S S H A R P A S M Y G R I E F.
A muted winter sun shimmered off the snow-
draped mountains cradling my mother’s home-
town in northern Lebanon as the cemetery gates
creaked open, and I placed my mum’s portrait
with her ancestors. She was home, at least sym-
bolically. She had passed away unexpectedly
in November on a random Thursday morning in
Australia, where she had lived for many years.
My mother’s end was bookmarked at her
beginning, in a motherland she never truly left.
There are parts of this country we carry with us,
even if, like me, we were not born here. We carry
them in our names, in our food, in our stories,
and in our family bonds that transcend time,
distance, and generations, drawing us back.
There is a song by Fairouz, our beloved
national icon and one of the most celebrated
Arab singers of all time, that was part of the
soundtrack of my childhood in New Zealand
LIFE GOES ON 89
LEFT AB OVE
Demonstrators take Hamze Eskandar’s sis-
a break in March ters display his portrait
2021 from protesting and wear medallions
Lebanon’s economic with his image. Eskan-
collapse. Behind them, dar, a soldier, was killed
burning tires block a in the 2020 Beirut port
highway leading to the explosion. “Hamze was
impoverished north- my mother’s greatest
ern city of Tripoli. The happiness,” his oldest
World Bank has called sister, Salam (center),
the nation’s crisis one says. “His death broke
of the world’s worst her. She died two
since the mid-1850s. months after him.”
LIFE GOES ON 91
and Australia during Lebanon’s civil war, which the night sky (they were fireworks, my uncles
wracked the country from 1975 to 1990. I under- told me). The realization that my grandparents’
stood the power of the words that would bring three-story home was the third incarnation.
my parents to tears before I knew their meaning. The first two had been bombed and destroyed
In “Nassam Alayna al Hawa,” Fairouz implores in the war, and that was why my mother didn’t
the breeze to carry her home before she grows have any photos of her childhood to show me.
so old in a foreign place that her homeland can My parents returned to Lebanon in the mid-
no longer recognize her. ’90s after the war ended, but they couldn’t adjust
My mother hadn’t changed since her last to the new postwar state. It wasn’t Fairouz’s
trip to Lebanon in the summer of 2019, but the Lebanon (if it had ever existed), their idealism
motherland was almost unrecognizable now. colliding with the reality of a country where
It was a broken place. Bleak, depressed, des- warlords took seats in parliament and granted
perate, its much celebrated indomitable spirit themselves immunity for war crimes. Those
wounded by an economic collapse so ruinous leaders or their sons or designated political heirs
that the World Bank called it one of the world’s have called the shots since the end of the war
worst since the 1850s. on everything from ministerial appointments
The Lebanon of bountiful, leisurely Sunday to senior judicial nominations in the name of a
lunches and gridlocked summer traffic as peo- consensual democracy that distributes power
ple escaped the heat of Beirut for the cool green according to religious affiliation. This was sup-
mountains or the Mediterranean Sea had become posed to foster coexistence, but it has worsened
a Lebanon of rising child malnutrition and food the fragmentation of society by reinforcing a
insecurity. Fuel, when it could be found, was sectarian, rather than national, identity. And
now prohibitively expensive for many, making so, after a few years in Beirut, my parents, non-
it hard to go to work or school, let alone weekend sectarian and apolitical, went back to Australia.
getaways. A way of life had faded, sapped of the The Lebanon that I first made my home was
vitality that some two decades ago drew me back booming, although politically and militarily
as a journalist to the land of my heritage. dominated by Syria, its much larger neighbor,
I “returned” to live in a country that I knew until 2005. Beirut was in a rebuilding frenzy,
largely from my mother’s and father’s rose- its restaurants crowded, its legendary night-
colored recollections, but also from my life extravagant. It was once again the Middle
childhood trips to a Lebanon tearing itself East’s playground, its intellectual and literary
apart. My parents are from different parts of pressure valve. (But for locals, the redlines were
Lebanon and left together just before the civil clear: Don’t criticize senior religious or sectarian
war between Christians and Muslims. The Leb- political leaders or Lebanon’s Syrian overlords,
anon they carried with them was the Lebanon to name a few.) The country had its problems,
of Fairouz: part real, part imagined. It lived in but its people radiated an infectious, intoxicat-
the diva’s serenades about Lebanese national- ing joie de vivre, where less was never seen as
ism and pan-Arabism, in songs about a gentler, more and more was never enough.
simpler village life, about love, loss and exile, There were bursts of violent instability: a string
and the return of the diaspora. of assassinations, a crushing war with neighbor-
My parents would take their young family to ing Israel, shootouts in the streets over a political
war-torn Lebanon for months-long vacations as dispute. It was unpredictable, like living near a
often as they could, such was the insanity of the volcano, but there was dynamism in that vola-
yearning to return. My memories of those visits tility. It was infuriating and vibrantly chaotic,
are a jumble of sensations: The softness of my a place where rules like traffic lights were often
maternal grandmother’s enveloping embrace. considered suggestions and sweet-talking or
Stomachaches from long afternoons in my bribing a civil servant was common currency.
grandfather’s orchards with my cousins, sam- An untamed, unhealthy freedom flourished in
pling too many of the fruits from his grapevines that bedlam. Despite the country’s many flaws,
and his pomegranate, citrus, and fig trees. The I couldn’t help falling in love with it anyway. It
heat wave dissipated by a car bomb. The suffocat- was hard not to, its magnetism rooted in the viva-
ing fear of approaching militia checkpoints. The ciousness of a people who determinedly clung to
tracer bullets that arced red and elegant across hope in a place that routinely broke their hearts.
Today many Lebanese pine for what they
recall as those good old days, but the truth is
that for many, they weren’t really good. Selective
memory and nostalgia are soothing balms in a
country where yesterday is usually better than
today and tomorrow can elicit as much dread
as it does hope. The fact is, the rot was always The country
just below the glittery surface of a society that in had its
some quarters boasted it could party under the
bombs. Those roads taken to escape the summer
problems,
heat were often crumbling, stretches of the Medi- but its people
terranean were polluted, and too many Lebanese radiated an
were living hand to mouth. The kleptocrats who
bankrupted the state haven’t provided citizens infectious,
with 24-hour electricity for decades, forcing us intoxicating
to rely on expensive neighborhood generators if
we can afford them or go without electricity
joie de vivre,
if we can’t. Most Lebanese have to buy water where less was
from private companies, because in this land of
abundant natural springs and rivers, mismanage-
never seen
ment has left their taps dry. Life in Lebanon has as more and
long meant paying two bills for the same basic more was
amenity, a feature normalized by a people who
are perhaps too good at adapting to hardship. never enough.
Imtamsahna is a colloquialism Lebanese often
use to explain how they are surviving: It means
they’ve developed skin as thick as a crocodile’s.
EBANON IS AN ANCIENT
land wedged between
Israel, Syria, and the
Mediterranean, a patch-
work of 18 officially rec-
ognized sects riven by
its many isms—sectar-
ianism, classism, fac-
tionalism, nepotism,
racism. Its population is said to be more than
six million, though nobody knows for sure;
there hasn’t been a census since 1932, to skirt the
thorny issue of sectarian demographics. Leba-
non also hosts more than two million Syrian and
Palestinian refugees, one of the highest number The National
of refugees per capita in the world. Geographic Society,
To me, more than anything, Lebanon is a committed to illuminat-
ing and protecting the
country of thwarted potential and underutilized wonder of our world,
riches, including an educated trilingual popula- has funded Explorer
tion, majestic archaeological ruins, fertile plains Rena Effendi’s social
documentary photog-
that the Roman army used as its breadbasket, raphy since 2021.
exquisite cuisine to rival any other, and natural ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY
LIFE GOES ON 93
AB OVE RIGHT
Fatme Ghandour, 16, Grain silos at the Port
and her family risked of Beirut absorbed the
crossing the sea in impact of the blast,
August 2020 to reach shielding the western
Cyprus, about a hun- half of the capital from
dred miles away. widespread damage.
They were promptly The Lebanese hope,
deported. “I have no but don’t expect, an
future,” she says. “I was investigation will bring
very happy when we left those responsible to
on the boat, and when justice. Many want an
we returned, our worries independent inter-
returned with us.” national probe.
LIFE GOES ON 95
A NATION ON EDGE
After decades of mismanagement and corruption,
Tartus Ad Duraykish
Lebanon fell into a severe economic crisis in S Y R I A

2019. Banks closed, locking people out of their
savings, which then quickly lost value. Facing
rising violence, decaying infrastructure, and Qattinah
Tallkalakh Reservoir
unreliable public services, many have fled their
homeland even as refugees have flooded in. K a bir
Qbaiyat
Violence affecting civilians Halba
Over 30 The number of riots and attacks by armed Tikrit
groups, including Hezbollah and the
Islamic State, rose in the three years after El Mina
on si
)
21-30 the economy collapsed in October 2019
tes
A
Tripoli
compared with the three years before. El Hermel r
11-20 (O
Chekka
1-10 increase in attacks (by district) 10,131 ft
Y
Amioun
5 mi Bcharre
N
Batroun
5 km
E
I
Laboue
LEBANON
A
L
T
L
Jbail Qartaba
E
Beirut blast (Byblos) G
N
A
On August 4, 2020, a stockpile Ibrahim A
R
U
of ammonium nitrate in a port V

ni
N
warehouse exploded with a
Baalbek
Lita
O
O
force equivalent to two million Jounie
A
N
pounds of dynamite, devas-
A
M
B
tating a swath of a city already
E
grappling with rising violence. Zahle -L
A
I
TI
Rayak
K
Beirut
AN
O
Baabda
N
C
Mediterranean
B
our
A
Dam
Sea S Y R I A
B
I
E
L
Aouali
Sidon L. Qaraaoun
N
Jezzine
Rachaiya el Foukhar Damascus
h
Sarafand ni a yk Refugee haven
ba )
as S h mon
E
H h r Syria’s civil war has driven some

a s He two million people into Leba-
Nabatiye et Tahta t non since 2011, joining more
(M b a l
n
ou
than 200,000 long-displaced

Ja
O
Palestinians. Lebanon has one

Litani
Tyre of the highest numbers of refu-
gees per capita in the world.
Boundary
claimed
H
Hula V
by Syria
Syrian refugee concentration
Tibnine
400 or more One
Jordan
Naqoura 300-399 square

GOLAN 200-299
alley
1-199 mile
Rmaysh
HEIGHTS
P
Palestinian camp
I S R A E L MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI
SOURCES: ARMED CONFLICT LOCATION & EVENT DATA PROJECT; UN HIGH
COMMISSION ON REFUGEES; UN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION
FOR WESTERN ASIA; WORLD BANK; © OPENSTREETMAP; MERIT DEM
beauty framed by the Mediterranean that, like
TÜRKIYE
(TURKEY) TURKM. a loyal companion, extends the length of the
Cyprus SYRIA country along spectacularly verdant mountains.
LEBANON A
ISRAEL IRAQ I AFG. There is a heaviness, an exhaustion, a humili-
S IRAN
JORDAN ation to what passes for everyday life in Lebanon
A KUWAIT
EGYPT BAHRAIN these days. The Lebanese have endured two
Homs QATAR catastrophes in recent years that were so pro-
Re
SAUDI
dS
SUDAN ARABIA U.A.E. found that they cleaved the country into a before
a
ea
OMAN
and after. Ironically, the time leading up to the
Se
500 mi
n
first disaster, the economic collapse, had been
ia
500 km YEMEN
ab
A F R I C A Ar
a moment of great hope for genuine change.
In October 2019 tens of thousands of people
across the country took to the streets to protest
the incompetence and corruption of a political
FALLING FORTUNES
class that rules in its own interest.
The people called their movement a revolution.
Lebanon’s crisis is one of the world’s worst The government resigned. The banks closed, and
since the mid-19th century. With a government when they reopened, they’d locked depositors
in paralysis, the economy and financial sector
have steadily deteriorated. out of their accounts, severely restricting with-
drawals for all but the politically connected elite.
Output craters The currency, the Lebanese pound, nosedived.
Lebanon’s production of goods and services has (It has lost more than 90 percent of its value and
fallen by 67 percent. A contraction that brutal,
is still falling.) Like most people with money in
usually triggered only by armed conflict, causes
a colossal loss of wealth among the population. a Lebanese bank, I lost my life savings. Salaries
have melted in value. More than 80 percent of
U.S. Dollars
8,000
$8,004 the population is mired in a cruel, sudden pov-
Gross erty. Crippling shortages of everything from flour
6,000 domestic to medications have ensued in a country that
product
per capita imports most of what it consumes. The leaderless
4,000
revolution fizzled after the state responded with
$2,670
2,000 force, and financial precariousness—exacerbated
2015 2017 2019 2021 by triple-digit hyperinflation—left people preoc-
cupied with securing the basics.
Currency weakens The streets of a capital that never slept are now
Confidence has waned in the Lebanese pound.
Excessive debt racked up by the government
dark in the absence of state electricity, which
has driven intensifying inflation, leading to sky- might come for an hour or so a day. Private gen-
rocketing costs for basics such as food and fuel. erators can’t keep up. In my neighborhood in
150% Beirut, the generators run intermittently for 13
Annual %
120 Rate of
hours a day. People hurry to get ready before
inflation the power cuts for an hour at 8 a.m. and rush to
90 by year
be home before midnight to avoid navigating
62%
60 stairwells in the dark. Some supermarkets no
30 longer price goods on the shelves because they
4% can’t keep up with currency fluctuations and
0
2015 2017 2019 2021 hyperinflation. Unemployment is soaring, petty
crime is rising, and hundreds of thousands of
Deprivation rises
Reduced access to health care, education, people are fleeing, or trying to.
housing, electricity, and other measures of And then there was the blast at the Port of
well-being means more and more Lebanese are Beirut on August 4, 2020, one of the largest non-
living in deeply impoverished circumstances.
nuclear explosions in history. It killed at least 218
44% 76% people, injured thousands, and damaged more
Poverty rate
12.8 U.S. DOLLARS 2019 2021 than 85,000 properties in and around the capital,
PER DAY IN 2011 PPP*
including my apartment. It happened because
* PURCHASING POWER PARITY (PPP) IS A METRIC USED TO

EQUALIZE THE PURCHASING POWER OF CURRENCIES. LIFE GOES ON 97
Lebanon offers
so few basic
amenities to
its citizens that it
could serve
as a setting for
the television
series Survivor.
It is so broken
that towns
and villages
must fend for
themselves,
becoming
something like
mini-republics.
Abdel Rahman Zakaria

(center) relaxes with
his family in Tikrit, in
northern Lebanon, a
few days after he was
released from jail. The
activist, known for his
exploits to aid people
in need, was detained
after he helped a
friend hold up a bank
to retrieve her own
savings. “I am doing
what I can, what I
consider a duty, for my
village, my family,
my people,” he says. “I
still have hope. It won’t
be extinguished.”
thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate were from mine. My place, like all of those around
recklessly stored for years in a port warehouse me, was extensively damaged. My sister, who
within walking distance of residential neigh- was helping me, went down to the main street
borhoods. A handful of senior political, judicial, to see if somebody might help us with clearing
military, and security officials knew about the the heavier debris and all of the shattered glass.
dangerous material but did nothing to remove it. She asked for a volunteer. Twenty-three young
There was no state recovery operation or people followed her into my home.
organized emergency response, so citizens I have witnessed that community spirit and
from across the country flocked to Beirut, armed the individual determination not to break or suc-
with shovels and brooms. Volunteers and local cumb to hardships so many times. I reported
NGOs set up stalls offering free food and water. in southern Lebanon in 2006 under ferocious
One man on my street distributed water bottles Israeli bombardment. The landscape was dom-
from the trunk of his car. A couple went house inated by the gray rubble of destroyed homes
to house donating detergents, apologizing that and infrastructure. Few people were braving the
they couldn’t afford to offer more than that. air strike–cratered roads, where anything that
I met a mother, Juliana Abou Nader, as she moved was a potential target. One day, out of
pushed a stroller past the rubble of what had nowhere, a new-model white Mercedes convert-
been stores. She invited me to her parents’ ible festooned with white ribbons and a JUST
apartment. She’d moved in with them about a MARRIED sign drove past me, a typically stub-
year earlier with her four children and husband, born gesture, a reminder that life goes on. The
after she’d lost her job as an accountant. The tiny alternative is simply not Lebanese.
apartment was also home to her two adult sis-
ters. Today her husband’s monthly salary (he’s
an electrician at the public utility) isn’t enough
to buy dinner at an average restaurant.
“Crisis after crisis, where will it end?” Abou EBANON OFFERS SO
Nader asked me. “It’s so hard to see the bakery few basic amenities
where you get your bread, the old man who used to its citizens that it
to sit in front of his store, the supermarket my could serve as a set-
kids walk to, our pharmacist who is our friend, to ting for the television
see their homes destroyed.” Her parents’ home series Survivor. It is
had also sustained damage. She fretted about so broken that, like
the psychological impact of the blast on her chil- Beirut’s many neigh-
dren, how she was going to raise them in a state borhoods, towns and
that didn’t protect its people, and what kind of a villages must fend for themselves, becoming
future they could aspire to when educated pro- something like mini-republics. Beirut’s tribula-
fessionals couldn’t find work or get paid a living tions are widely known, but I wanted to see how
wage. “We love our country. The hardest thing one of the most neglected parts of the country
for me to think about is leaving the country, but was faring, so I went to Akkar, an impoverished
now I’m thinking about it,” Abou Nader said. “If rural governorate in northern Lebanon. There
I could leave, I’d leave.” I met people like Abdel Rahman Zakaria, who
“Every time I close my eyes, I remember have stepped up to help run their towns.
that moment,” Abou Nader’s younger sister, For a month before Zakaria was arrested for
Giovanna Helou, told me. What moment? I his role in a bank raid, he and his friends spent
asked. “The sound. Being thrown across the their days collecting trash in their hometown
room. Dust. We couldn’t see each other. In sec- of Tikrit after the municipal council, which is
onds, everything changed.” She continued: “I responsible for such services, resigned. It was
protested in the revolution. They humiliated us. Zakaria who negotiated the fee to dispose of the
They beat us up. On the day of the explosion, refuse. (The dump’s operators gave him a dis-
before it happened, my dad and I were at the count when they realized it was a citizen effort.)
electric utility trying to see why we hadn’t had And it was Zakaria who went around his town
power for two weeks. Is that a way to live?” of about 11,000 people, collecting donations to
The family’s apartment was walking distance cover the $700 monthly fee.
The 30-year-old man isn’t a bank thief; he’s
more of a modern-day Robin Hood. On Sep- TURBULENT
tember 14, 2022, Zakaria, who is unemployed,
and a friend from Tikrit borrowed money for
TIMES
Lebanon was created under French
gas to drive to Beirut. There they accompanied
control after World War I, follow-
another friend, Sali Hafiz, as she stormed her ing centuries of Ottoman rule.
own bank and, wielding her nephew’s toy pis- Independent since 1943, it strug-
tol, demanded and received about $13,000 of gles with internal sectarian strife.
her own money. Hafiz needed it to pay for her A power-sharing deal between
Christians and Muslims has led to a
younger sister’s cancer treatment. She eluded
government that barely functions.
capture (although she later turned herself in),
but Zakaria and his friend were detained. Nine
days later, the men were home. “I would do it
again,” Zakaria told me the day after his release, 1956 Rise of the banking sector
The Lebanese Parliament enacts
a secrecy law that makes the country a
saying he’s always ready to help anyone. “I’ll go force in global banking. Financial insti-
tutions fuel Lebanese prosperity.
to them immediately, whoever they might be.”
This is what Lebanon has become: a place
1975
where more than a dozen people have held up Civil war erupts
banks to withdraw their own savings and citizens Sectarian fighting ignites, sev-
ering Beirut into Christian and Muslim
must organize basic public services. I’ve often sections. Syria enters the next year
heard Lebanese, especially those in the diaspora, under the pretext of mitigating the war.
criticize what they consider the apathy of those

in the motherland. Why aren’t they protesting?
How can they put up with such indignities? 1982 Israel invades
Border fighting leads to an
invasion by Israel. After three years,
Zakaria tried protesting. He became a prominent
Israel withdraws to south of the Litani
activist. The metal pellets are still in his body. River. Hezbollah emerges in resistance.
“Nobody listened. Nothing changed,” he said.
And besides, now he’s too busy helping people.
His exploits, which he documents on social
media, are renowned. There was the time
1990 Civil war ends
The nearly 15-year conflict ends
a year after members of parliament sign
the Taif Agreement, a power-sharing
when, during a fuel shortage, he and his friends accord between Christians and Muslims.
blocked tankers from smuggling fuel into Syria,
redirecting them to his hometown, where he
distributed it for free. Or when he barged into a
power station to ask why Joumeh wasn’t receiv-
1992-97 Development and debt
Lebanon sees a building
boom, with large-scale projects around
ing any state electricity. After seeing that the line Beirut, but soon becomes heavily
indebted to international investors.
to Joumeh was turned off, he told me, “I flicked
the switch myself to light our area.” There were
2005
also the many occasions when he’d gathered Syrian troops withdraw
friends and rushed to a hospital after getting Former prime minister Rafiq
Hariri is assassinated, sparking anti-
word that it refused to admit a patient without Syrian rallies. Syria pulls out its forces;
a hefty deposit. “All of a sudden the hospitals say the militant group Hezbollah joins the
Lebanese government.
they’ve waived their fees, that the person will
be fully treated for free,” Zakaria said, “because
they fear me blowing up the issue and making
it a big deal on social media.” 2015 State services falter
Authorities close the main land-
fill near Beirut, prompting protests
But there’s only so much one man and his as garbage fills the streets—a visible
friends can do. The trash in Tikrit was piling up display of government breakdown.
again. “I’m tired, it’s exhausting, and there’s no

funding,” Zakaria said. He didn’t want to ask
for more donations from the town’s residents, 2019- Deepening disorder
Banks block access to cash,
currency devaluation accelerates, and
who were already struggling. He had appealed the Beirut port explosion leads to
to Akkar’s governor, who brushed him off, telling rioting and government resignations.
CHLOE KATTAR, DARWIN COLLEGE,

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
So many
Lebanese
are now
grappling
with the same
question:
Should they
stay, or should
they go?
Since 2019,
requests for
passports
have increased
tenfold.
Lebanese relax in sea-

water pools at a beach
resort in Chekka on the
northern coast in Sep-
tember 2019. A month
later, the nation’s econ-
omy crumbled, leaving
most of the population
in poverty. Lebanon’s
fall was rapid, painful,
and steep—and there’s
no recovery in sight.
LEFT AB OVE
The Temple of Bacchus In Batroun, modern
stands in the sprawling restaurants and clubs
Roman ruins at Baalbek exist alongside ancient
in Lebanon’s Bekaa Val- ruins and historic
ley. Baalbek is a World churches. The northern
Heritage site. The Lebanese city, a major
country is rich in ruins tourist destination, is
documenting the many known for its vibrant
civilizations that have nightlife and its first-
claimed it, including century B.C. seawall,
the Persians, Byzan- erected as a bulwark
tines, Umayyads, as against raging waters
well as the Crusaders. and invaders.
LIFE GOES ON 105

him to “pull the thorn out of your own hand,” helped a later wave of relatives who fled during
according to Zakaria. But he was adamant that the Lebanese civil war. “We have 7,000 people
he would not surrender to despair. “I’m not in the diaspora, and the majority are in Mexico,”
married and don’t have a job. What do I have to Chahine Chahine, the head of the municipal
lose?” he said. “My wife is the village, my chil- council, told me. There are so many in Mexico
dren are the village, everything I have is the vil- from Beit Mellat that there is a town near
lage, and I will sacrifice everything for it.” Mexico City called Beit Mellat.
In the adjacent town of Beit Mellat and far- In 2021 the diaspora helped raise more than
ther uphill in Memnaa, conditions are better $150,000 to install solar panels on the homes
only because, unlike Tikrit, both have a siz- of every one of the 96 families that live year-
able diaspora they’ve turned to for help. It’s round in Lebanon’s Beit Mellat. Chahine said
traditional for Lebanese who migrate to assist he received donations from some people who
family who remain, but since 2019, Lebanese no longer even had family in Lebanon. “They’ve
outside the country have organized a slew of never been here, they don’t speak Arabic, they
initiatives to help pay for medical treatments, don’t know Beit Mellat,” he told me. “But they
food, and other assistance to family, friends, know that their ancestors are buried here, and
and strangers, sometimes by crowdsourcing they want to help the village.”
on social media. On a warm day, I had coffee with Toufic Geai-
In Memnaa I visited Hanna Ibrahim, the tani on the balcony of his palatial villa in Beit
66-year-old village mukhtar (a position roughly Mellat. The 79-year-old fabric merchant left
equivalent to a mayor) at his home. Three of his Lebanon in 1968 and is one of the many Leb-
four children live abroad, including his eldest anese Mexicans who help the town. He spends
son, Charbel. The 43-year-old entrepreneur was several months a year in Lebanon. His view
born in a bomb shelter in Beirut and left Lebanon looks out on a beautifully terraced orchard
in 2001 for Sydney to join family that had set- with fruit and olive trees. A single pine soars
tled there earlier. In 2019 Charbel started Steps of above the other vegetation. “It was planted by
Hope, an Australian NGO that operates through- my late grandmother in 1880 or 1890,” Geaitani
out Lebanon via partnerships, bankrolling soup told me. I asked him a question that I have dif-
kitchens, food distribution, medications, and ficulty answering for myself: Why was he still
small solar kits to help students do homework connected to Lebanon? What compelled him
after dark. Its first big project was to repair 580 to return?
homes after the Beirut blast with about a million “This secret pull,” he said. “It either needs a
dollars the charity quickly raised. Charbel and psychologist, or I don’t know what, to explain it!”
around 20 of the 400 or so Lebanese Australians He paused for a long time. “Our blood draws us
who trace their heritage to Memnaa also donate back here,” he said. “Despite all the things that I
about $100,000 a year to their village. see that are wrong here, all the things that don’t
“If it wasn’t for our children abroad,” Joseph work, I can’t help it. I can’t help but return.”
Youssef, the head of Memnaa’s municipal coun-
cil, told me, “our village would have suffered a lot
and been humiliated.” The Australians helped
buy a diesel generator to keep the lights on, and
they pay for the fuel. They raised money for a T I S D I F F I C U LT TO LOV E
pump to ensure homes have water. And they a country in turmoil
provide monthly stipends for the 24 families that excels at export-
that don’t have relatives abroad. The aid is han- ing its children. Leb-
dled by the council, because, as Charbel says, anon has long been
“we don’t want to impugn people’s dignity by a place people leave:
directly knocking on doors and saying, ‘This is a to flee war, political
hundred dollars from Australia.’ We want to help instability, poverty,
everyone without hurting their pride.” and famine; to pursue
Beit Mellat relies on an even older diaspora: knowledge and learning; to reunite with family
Mexicans of Lebanese heritage, whose ancestors in the diaspora; and simply to forge a better life.
first left in the 1800s. Those early immigrants Members of my family first left in the late 1800s.
So many Lebanese are now grappling with
the same question: Should they stay, or should
they go? Since 2019, requests for passports have
increased tenfold, creating a backlog that means
waiting well over a year for an initial appoint-
ment just to submit the paperwork. Those who
can’t wait, or can’t afford passports, are turning Most days
to a sea that since antiquity has held the promise I vacillate
of new lands and new lives. Dozens have died on
treacherous crossings to Europe. between
Many parents I know have left with their fam- exasperated
ilies. One of my friends who is staying is fond
of repeating a common phrase: “The country is love and
not a hotel to check out of.” Perhaps. But unlike simmering
the Lebanese state, hotels provide basic ser-
vices. Most days I vacillate between exasperated rage. I mourn the
love and simmering rage. I mourn the pain that pain that the
the economic crash has caused and the unac-
countability of a selfish political class that won’t economic crash
help its people. has caused
I am a daughter of the diaspora, and I am part
of the motherland. As my mother did through- and the
out her life, I navigate between two worlds. Like unaccountability
many Lebanese, I leave the country for extended
periods, but I cannot ever forsake it. of a selfish
When I entered my blast-ravaged apartment political class
in August 2020, the memory of my late grand-
mother walked in with me. I remembered her that won’t help
telling me how she couldn’t even retrieve a fork its people.
from the wreckage of her home, and I consid-
ered myself lucky. In a kitchen drawer, I still
had cutlery. I repaired my apartment, vowing
that I wasn’t fixing it only to abandon it. That
would feel like a betrayal, a surrender. When a
place is home, it takes a lot to sever the bonds
of custom and affection, although I know that I
am privileged. Unlike so many, courtesy of my
Australian passport and dollars in my pocket, I
have a guaranteed exit and the choice to take it.
In the explosion, every pane of glass in my
apartment was shattered, except an antique
trifora window that I had customized into an
installation and mounted on a wall. In cur-
sive Arabic calligraphy, the artwork spells out
a desire, one that my parents held before me:
Fairouz’s lyrics scroll across the three arched
windows in bold black script, conveying the
hope that should I find myself elsewhere, the
breeze will carry me home. j
Rania Abouzeid is a journalist who lives in Beirut

and has written two books on the war in Syria.
Based in Istanbul, Rena Effendi has spent four
years chronicling developments in Lebanon.
LIFE GOES ON 107

I navigate
between
two worlds.
Like many
Lebanese,
I leave the
country for
extended
periods, but
I cannot ever
forsake it.
Since the days of antiq-

uity, the coast of Jbail,
also known as Byblos,
has served as an
embarkation point for
voyages to new lands.
Byblos was a significant
Phoenician trading
port, a city kingdom
where the first alpha-
bet is said to have orig-
inated. It’s one of the
oldest continuously
inhabited cities.
BY STEPHANIE PEARSON
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y D AV I D G U T T E N F E L D E R
R ET U R N TO
110
W I L D WAT E R S
On Lake Superior’s Apostle
Islands National Lakeshore,
nature has the power to create,
destroy—and regenerate.
Photographer David
Guttenfelder’s kayak
noses into the often
rough waters of Lake
Superior from a sea
cave in Apostle Islands
National Lakeshore,
in Wisconsin. With
some 225,000 visitors
annually, the park is
a sublime yet danger-
ous playground for
kayakers, sailors,
and powerboaters
to explore.
A boardwalk leads to
the lighthouse on Sand
Island. Each of the
21 islands that make
up Apostle Islands
National Lakeshore
is unique, but most
have at least one
developed campsite
and many have estab-
lished hiking trails.
“This is no place for amateurs,” says Dave
On a lake that’s Cooper. He’s piloting the Ardea, a 25-foot alu-
notoriously harsh minum landing craft typically built for the

Pacific Ocean, through Lake Superior’s choppy
to humans, the waters on the way back from Devils Island,
14 miles offshore. Today the wind is blowing from
Apostle Islands are a the northeast at 20 to 25 knots and the waves
relatively sheltered are five feet high. Cooper, the Apostle Islands
National Lakeshore’s cultural resource manager,
place. But that doesn’t is running the troughs and surfing the crests.
“It’s like riding a horse,” he says. “I’m just
mean they’re safe. trying to make it a smooth ride.”
Park ranger Fred Over the course of three decades working as
Schlichting wears a an archaeologist on Lake Superior, Cooper has
period uniform and
assumes the role of Lee participated in dozens of harrowing search and
Ellsworth Benton, head rescue missions. The Apostles are “a chain of
lighthouse keeper islands that attracts people to paddle long dis-
on Raspberry Island
between 1914 and 1924. tances,” says Cooper. “In theory it offers more
The lighthouse is one protection, but it also offers enticement to get
of six on the Apostle people in over their heads.”
Islands listed in the
National Register of Other threats loom. With climate change, the
Historic Places. lake is warming at an alarming rate of at least
one degree Fahrenheit every decade. Storms are
becoming increasingly fierce, battering infra-
structure such as docks, causing shoreline ero-
sion, and increasing the amount of sediment in
the lake, which can lead to algal blooms.
But the Apostles have their devotees,
such as Tom Irvine, executive director of the
National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation.
His great-grandfather and great-great-grand-
father worked together as lighthouse keepers
on Outer Island.
“The Apostles get in you and hold you,” says
Irvine. “That’s what it’s done for my family. It’s
part of our collective soul.”
In the summer of 2020, Irvine introduced
National Geographic Explorer and photographer
David Guttenfelder to the islands. Guttenfelder,
an experienced kayaker, decided to test the
waters on an ambitious 18-day trip, during which
he planned to paddle to as many of the archipel-
ago’s 22 islands as possible. “The lake has such
incredible power,” he says. “I got hooked.”
And so in August 2021, I joined Guttenfelder
for a segment of his kayaking journey and
explored other islands on my own. Along the
way I met with conservationists, scientists, and
community members, many of whom have lived
and worked here for decades. Their backgrounds
were diverse, but everyone shared the same deep
veneration for the Apostles.
surrounded
“ I T ’S E A SY T O B E R EV E R E N T I A L
by this,” says Neil Howk, a retired interpretive
ranger who has worked in the park for 35 years.
We’re in an old-growth forest on Outer Island
The National
Geographic Society where the towering hemlock, white pine, yellow
is committed to illumi- birch, and cedar are so thick that sun stream-
nating and protecting ing through the sparse understory appears like
the wonders of our
world. It has funded shafts of light in a cathedral.
Explorer David Gut- A few hundred yards away, the waves of Lake
tenfelder’s storytelling Superior are crashing against the shore. The
about the human con-
dition since 2014. forest dampens the roar, and we’re enveloped
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY in near silence.
R E T U R N TO W I L D WAT E R S 115
Earlier that afternoon our group had landed community of life are untrammeled by man.”
our kayaks at the northern tip of 7,999-acre The reality in the Apostles, though, is that
Outer, which sits 28 miles into Lake Superior humans have nurtured, utilized, and domesti-
and is one of the least visited of the Apostles. cated these islands for centuries. The result is a
Despite its remoteness, Outer was heavily postmodern wilderness, one of the rare places
logged starting around 1883. Between 1942 and that, with time and proper management, have
1963, lumberjacks flew in via light aircraft to cut reclaimed much of their original splendor.
yellow birch and sugar maple to manufacture But if we view the Apostles only as a now
baby cribs. When they were finished, the logging pristine wilderness in which to recreate, we
camp was left to rot. miss pondering how the Ojibwe thrived in this
The towering trees surrounding us right now, rugged terrain for centuries; how European set-
however, were spared. “This is probably the tlers tried, oftentimes unsuccessfully, to tame
same as it looked 400 years ago,” says Howk. it, and later, how they extracted resources that
built great cities.
the 1964 Wilder-
W I L D E R N E S S , A S D E F I N E D BY The layers of human history here started
ness Act, is “an area where the earth and its with nomadic hunter-gatherers who followed
caribou around the Lake Superior Basin 11,000
years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence
of seasonal camps within the Apostle Islands
is 5,000 years old. More than 400 years ago,
following a prophecy, the Ojibwe moved west
from the St. Lawrence River Valley and settled
on Mooningwanekaaning-minis, or “Home of
the yellow-breasted woodpecker,” which is now
Madeline Island.
“Madeline Island is our homeland,” says
Christopher D. Boyd, chairman of the Red Cliff
Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (the anglicized
word for Ojibwe), whose 14,541-acre reservation
sits adjacent to the park’s mainland shoreline.
“That’s the hub of our nation, but all of the
islands are our home.”
The largest island in the archipelago, 15,359-
acre Madeline is the only Apostle not included in
the national lakeshore. In the late 1600s, French
A table is set at Man- fur traders established a trading post on Made-
itou Island Fish Camp line, which grew to become an important com-
as it would have been mercial hub on Lake Superior.
in the 1930s when
Hjalmer “Governor” It’s also where the Ojibwe leader Kechewaishke
Olson and his brother (Chief Buffalo) was born around 1759. In 1852,
Ted purchased it from when he was in his 90s, he set off in a birchbark
an old logging com-
pany to use as a base canoe for Washington, D.C., where he met with
for winter fishing. President Millard Fillmore to protest the removal
Now managed by the of the Ojibwe to reservations farther west by the
National Park Service,
the cabin contains U.S. government. At that time, the journey was
items belonging to deemed a “success”: Fillmore allowed the Ojibwe
Hjalmer, including the to remain on Lake Superior.
knife on the table
and a pair of darned In 1855, a wave of European immigrants began
socks on the floor. arriving in the Apostles when the Soo Locks
opened the Great Lakes to shipping and westward
expansion. To guide the ships through the treach-
erous Superior waters, the U.S. Lighthouse Ser-
vice built nine lighthouses in the Apostles region
over the course of six decades. All had intricate
Fresnel lenses; the only one still in its tower is on
display at the Devils Island lighthouse.
After the heaviest By the late 19th century, the fertile waters
logging ceased, surrounding the islands had become one of the
largest commercial-fishery sources for lake her-
around 1930, a ring and whitefish on the western end of Lake
surprising thing Superior, while the islands’ interiors were being
slashed by timber companies, quarried for Lake
happened. When left Superior sandstone, and farmed.
alone by humans, the With the arrival of railways, northwestern Wis-
consin had also become a popular tourist desti-
isolated forests started nation. In the 1920s, President Calvin Coolidge
to regenerate. set up his summer White House on the Brule
River near the Apostles.
Despite their appeal as a haven from the big
L A K E
cities, the Apostles did not meet the exacting
standards of the National Park Service. Crags and crevices
In 1930, landscape architect Harlan Kelsey The harsh winds and waves of Lake
Superior—the largest freshwater
arrived to evaluate the archipelago for potential lake in the world by surface area—
protection. During his visit, fires raged on some carved the Apostle Islands from
sandstone. Some have lofty caves
islands, and he predicted the whole area would held up by delicate arches.
soon become “a smoldering, desolate waste.” His
report declared that “the hand of man has mer-
cilessly and in a measure irrevocably destroyed
Sand Island
[the islands’] virgin beauty.” Light Sevona
After the heaviest logging ceased, around Lighthouse Sand I. YORK I.
Bay
1930, a surprising thing happened. When left sea caves
alone by humans, the isolated forests started to SAND East Bay

regenerate. It would take three more decades ISLAND
West
of regrowth and tireless advocacy by Wisconsin Bay Little
senator Gaylord Nelson to convince Congress Shaw Point Sand
Bay
that these islands were worthy of protection. In Sand Point
START
EAGLE I. Sand
1970, President Richard Nixon finally signed the Bay
legislation that declared the Apostle Islands a Eagle I. RED CLIFF RES.
national lakeshore. Shoals
es
cav
Today the archipelago is a thriving habitat se
a
nd rry
for more than 800 plant species, including be
a
Mainl
sp
Ra
bird’s-eye primrose, elegant groundsel, and the Mawikwe
Apostle Islands
National Lakeshore
forest-loving coralroot orchid. Many of the Bay W
I-1
islands’ forests have a soft, lush understory of
3
Canada yew, a green shrub with tubular red
Meyers nd B AYF I EL D
Beach
Sa
cones nicknamed “deer candy” that has all but

P ENI N SU L A
disappeared on the adjacent mainland.
Sisk
The islands’ deer population has been kept in

iwit
close check by the National Park Service, and the

resulting abundance of Canada yew contributes
to an ideal habitat for the American marten, a
state-endangered mammal that had all but dis- SCULPTED Pikes C
BY SUPERIOR
ree
appeared from the islands before making a slow k
recovery; it’s now found on 11 islands. Given

their complex biogeography, the islands also Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands and
support a diverse population of other predators, the chilly waters that surround
such as black bear, bobcat, coyote, and gray wolf. them are a mix of protected parks,
O nion
Avian life thrives as well. The islands are Indigenous lands, tourist areas,
home to around 140 species of breeding birds and shipping lanes. In August 2021,
photographer David Guttenfelder
and 200 species of migratory birds. In the sum- set out on an 18-day expedition to x
S i ou
mer of 2021, the gravelly sandspits of Long and capture the unique landscapes and
Outer Islands were nesting sites for five of the cultures thriving in these southern
74 known nesting pairs of the vulnerable but reaches of Lake Superior.
growing Great Lakes population of piping plo- Photographer’s
Marina route
ver. They’re an important bioindicator of Great
Shipwreck
Lakes sandscapes, not to mention an important Photographer’s camp
part of the region’s natural heritage. Apostle Islands National Washburn
Lakeshore boundary
The national lakeshore islands even serve
as a refuge for a finite group of humans. There Indian reservation
are five remaining estates, two on Sand Island 2 mi
and three on Rocky Island, whose families 2 km
Ashland
have negotiated lifetime use and occupancy SOREN WALLJASPER, NGM STAFF
Breakwater
Lighthouse
SOURCES: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; WISCONSIN
DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES; NOAA;
I-1
3
GUYAUSHK JAMES E. PETE

W
Pretoria
Devils Outer I.
Island S U P E R I O R Shoal
Light
Devils I. sea caves Devils I.
Shoal Outer Austad
Three days waiting out NORTH
Island Bay
rough weather DEVILS Light
ISLAND TWIN I.
Lullabye
logging camp
A P
OUTER
O ROCKY ISLAND
S ISLAND SOUTH TWIN I.
T
L CAT
BE AR I. E ISLAND
OTTER I. IRONWOOD I. I
Raspberry I.
Lighthouse S Sand Point
Lightning
storm leads
L
RASPBERRY I.
to diversion
TO
U
I. A
N
I
AN
Stockton I.
M
Marina sea caves

Shoal
ISL
AND Balancing Rock D
OAK Historic N
pb
Ras er ISLAND
fishing
camp K TO S
OC
ry
ST
Pt.
Julian Bay Gull

Island Light
le q u e
y
Ba
Frog
Is res
Bay Presque Isle Point

P
Quarry GULL I.
Frog Bay Bay
Quarry
Tribal N.P. Point
Red Cliff I.
RED Point G AN
HERMIT I. HI
IC
M
CLIFF oa
amb t Poi
l
ne
e n
St
RES.
t
Michigan
an
. Island Light
Ch
BAD RIVER RES.

D
Red
OO
Cliff
SW
END Amnicon Pt.

D
BAS
N
l
We s t
A
e
n L is)
n S -min
a I ng
h i
C
h E kaan Ancient isles
t N e Big Bay Town Park Madeline Island, the largest of the Apostle
or I an
Islands, was exposed by the last retreating
N L gw Bi g Bay
Bayfield iin ice age glacier some 15,000 years ago. The
oo E
n
Big Bay Big Bay islands have been inhabited for thousands
D
Ferr
(M
State Park Point of years. Madeline plays an important part

A
M
y
in the Ojibwe migration story, and remains a

Ch spiritual and cultural hub for the tribe today.
La Pointe ebo
mnic
on Bay
Grants Pt. Lake

Superior
South Channel
O N TA R I O NORTH
La Pointe Light AMERICA
Great
LONG Lakes
Thunder Bay
I.
Chequamegon
Point Light
ke Superior
MINNESOTA
La CA
NA
U.S DA
.
Duluth
Chequamegon MAP
AREA
Bay WISCONSIN MICHIGAN
The surface of Lake Superior—the headwaters of the

MIC ONSIN
AN
Bad R. Great Lakes—lies an average 600 feet above sea

H IG
level, and vital shipping routes connect the lake to

B A D R I V E R
C
WIS
the ocean. Waves on the lake can reach 30 feet.

R E S E R V A T I O N
Sand Island’s shore-
line is pocked with sea
caves carved by ice,
wind, and the waves of
Lake Superior. The lake
has “higher water
quality, lower water-
shed stress, and [lower]
shoreline develop-
ment stress than the
other Great Lakes,”
says Brenda Lafrancois,
an ecologist for the
National Park Service.
agreements with the National Park Service. from Red Cliff on their five-day camping trip to
Their fishing shacks, cabins, compounds, and 2,949-acre Sand Island.
docks are owned by the Park Service, but each Four miles from the mainland, Sand is one of
family works hard to maintain them in accor- the closest and most popular islands to visit, with
dance with the rules of historic preservation. In its 1881 lighthouse and sea caves. Between the
exchange, they have exclusive use until the last 1890s and 1944, a vibrant community of Norwe-
person named on the agreement dies. gian fishermen, farmers, and their families lived
Phebe Jensch, one of the last remaining here, the national lakeshore’s only year-round
Islanders, as they’re called, describes her residents. On the island’s south end is the still
family’s connection to Sand Island this way: “It’s inhabited settlement of Shaw Point.
our church, our home, and our spiritual center.” When we arrive at the campsite, nestled in
a grove of hardwoods above a sandy beach on the
IN JUNE 2021, JIM PETE, a tribal elder from the island’s eastern shoreline, we find the campers
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose engrossed in a game of capture the flag, a can of
Ojibwe name is Guyaushk, or Seagull, invited mosquito repellent standing in for the flag. Scott
us to join a group of nine 13- to 18-year-old boys Babineau, a tribal leader and the camp director,
is frying fish with three other staff members
while corn on the cob cooks in the embers of
the fire.
The Ojibwe campers are here, Babineau
explains, to discern “a life’s purpose.” With
traditional activities such as wigwam and fire
building, fishing, and plant identification, as
well as discussing challenging topics like inter-
generational trauma, the goal is to help the kids
“start thinking ahead,” says Babineau. “I want
to help the kids understand that their actions
have consequences.”
The Apostle Islands are at the center of the
Ojibwe migration story, the spot from which
“the Ojibwe tribe first grew, and, like a tree, has
spread its branches in every direction,” accord-
ing to the writings of famed 19th-century Ojibwe
scholar William Warren. Despite the islands’
importance, however, many of the kids had
Jim Pete, a tribal
elder also known never had the opportunity to set foot on any of
by his Ojibwe name them until this trip.
Guyaushk, teaches “I’d say 90 percent of our tribal members have
a group of teen boys
from the Red Cliff never been to the islands,” Chairman Boyd later
Band of Lake Superior told me. “It’s a haven for tourists, but you have
Chippewa during a to have access to a boat, and that isn’t easy to
camping trip to Sand
Island. Guyaushk wears get ahold of.”
ceremonial attire that He adds that the band hasn’t always felt wel-
includes a bear claw comed by the National Park Service. But things
necklace and a beaded
stole, as he shares are changing. In June 2021, for the first time in
the seven traditional the park’s history, a ceremony was held during
Ojibwe teachings on which the Red Cliff Band’s flag was hoisted at
wisdom, love, respect,
courage, honesty, the Little Sand Bay Visitor Center.
humility, and truth. After dinner around the campfire, Babineau
announces that the trip must end prematurely
the next morning because the winds are forecast
to pick up the next afternoon, making it too dan-
gerous for the long paddle back to the mainland.
The teens groan in response. When I ask them
what their favorite part of the experience has
been, I get a volley of answers, from “surfing
The Apostle Islands waves” and “swimming” to “being free from
are at the center video games and electricity.”
Camper Cody Engels says, “It’s a better ver-
of the Ojibwe migration sion of school, and the food is really good.”
story, the spot from Then he adds, “Plus I learned how to survive out
in nature.”
which the tribe first “This is wisdom gathered from the elders,”
grew and has spread Guyaushk tells me. “It’s important that we talk
about how we are supposed to be.” j
its branches in
every direction. Stephanie Pearson is the author of the National
Geographic book 100 Great American Parks.
Photojournalist David Guttenfelder focuses on
conservation, culture, and geopolitical conflict.
The sun sets over York
and Sand Islands, seen
from the grounds of
Raspberry Island light-
house. “I’m so grateful
for the Apostle Islands,”
says Guttenfelder, who
is based in Minnesota.
“Knowing that most
people don’t have
such easy access to
nature, I don’t take
it for granted.”
SPIDER
SENSE
BY JASON BITTEL
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JAV I E R A Z N A R
Perched on a banana
flower, this bromeliad
spider (Cupiennius sp.)
in La Maná, Ecuador,
waits patiently for an
unlucky pollinator to
drop by. These arach-
nids are often con-
fused with wandering
spiders (Phoneutria
spp.), which have some
of the most potent
venom on Earth.
I N T I M AT E P O RT R A I T S O F S P I D E R S S H O W H O W U N I Q U E ,
BEAUTIFUL, AND EVEN CHARMING THEY ARE.
127
There are
P I D E R S A R E R E M A R K A B LY D I V E R S E :
more than 50,000 known species, including
diving bell spiders that live mostly underwa-
ter, arctic wolf spiders that can thrive north of
the Arctic Circle, and giant spiny trapdoor spiders that can
reach the ripe old age of 43. But many people never give
arachnids a chance.
“When people think about spiders, they think of something
creepy,” says Javier Aznar, a Madrid-based biologist and pho-
tographer who has built up an impressive kaleidoscope of
spider images, particularly from the rainforests of Ecuador,
where he lived for three years. “But when you look closer, you
will see an amazing world.”
Take the bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax), the char-
ismatic arachnid staring you down from the opposite page.
Aznar says these spiders, which can be found throughout
North America, seemed “friendly,” and were not fearful of
him. (Only about a dozen spider species are known to be A bold jumping spider
(Phidippus audax)
harmful to people.) A few jumping spider species also have rests atop a finger in
excellent color vision, so when they turn that puppy-dog gaze Dallas, Texas. These
your way, they’re actually seeing you. spiders have iridescent
colorations on their
Then there are the fascinating ant-mimicking crab spiders jaws and an inquisitive
in the genus Aphantochilus, native to South America. Their nature. They don’t spin
broad, horned faces are strikingly similar to those of the ants webs but rather seize
prey by ambush.
they prey on, allowing them to sneak up on their meals with-
out being noticed. As masters of disguise, the predators can
be difficult to find, let alone photograph. In fact, Aznar has
only seen them in Ecuador three or four times.
Navigating such quirks of spider biology makes his work
both challenging and fun, says Aznar, who often spends long
nights in the jungle trying to catch spiders in action.
Photographing ogre-faced spiders in Ecuador, for
instance, took him several years. Rather than weaving tra-
ditional webs, these big-eyed, long-legged arachnids create
square nets of silk that they hold with their legs and swat at
passing insects. However, the animals are skittish and will
tuck their snares away and hide if suddenly approached.
To capture the behavior in all its glory, the photographer
had to become a sit-and-wait predator himself, spending
long periods silent and unmoving. Then, one night as an
ogre-faced spider readied its attack, with a click and a flash,
Aznar finally got his shot. j
Jason Bittel is a science journalist and National Geographic

Explorer. He is currently writing a book for National Geographic
about North American wildlife.
RIGHT
A rarely seen crab
spider (Onocolus sp.)
blends into the foliage
in the Jama-Coaque
Ecological Reserve
in Ecuador.
FA R R I G H T
Suspended by a thread
of silk, a thorned heart
orb weaver spider
(Micrathena clypeata)
builds her egg case in
the Amazon rainforest
near Tena, Ecuador.
Ecuador has a wide array of spider species. Left to right, from top: spiny-backed orb weaver
spider (Gasteracantha cancriformis), jumping spider (Psecas viridipurpureus), jumping spider
(Freya decorata), turtle ant–mimicking spider (Aphantochilus rogersi), orb weaver spider
(Micrathena sp.), jumping spider (Breda lubomirskii), jumping spider (Sidusa sp.), spiny-backed
orb weaver spider (Gasteracantha cancriformis).
You’re looking at the
last thing a turtle ant
(Cephalotes atratus)
ever sees—the face of
a turtle ant–mimicking
spider (Aphantochilus
rogersi). These imper-
sonators can move
undetected among
the insects and pick
them off.
INSTAGRAM
MICHAEL YAMASHITA
FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS
WHO
Sulfur has conspicuous qualities: a rotten-egg
A United States–based
odor, a bright yellow color. Less known perhaps are
Asia specialist who’s also its many uses—for cosmetics, explosives, batteries,
a volunteer firefighter fertilizers—and how it’s obtained. While on assign-
WHERE
ment in Indonesia, Yamashita visited the Ijen volcano,
East Java, Indonesia where molten sulfur seeps from pipes embedded
WHAT
in the vents and then hardens. Amid the fumes,
Canon EOS with a
workers sort sulfur blocks and carry backbreaking
70-200mm lens and
Kodachrome film loads up the sides of the crater. “This has to be one
of the world’s toughest jobs,” he says.
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03.

THE BIG IDEA

Saturn: What Put

THROUGH THE LENS

P H OTO G R A P H S BY The Rainbow Connection Timing for Transplants

PHOTO: ALL CANADA PHOTOS/ALAMY STOCK (BAT)

F E AT U R E S Troubled Treasures Life Goes On Spider Sense

B Y N AT H A N LU M P PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD BARNES

Melted and then cooled,

Salicylic acid and lactic

W H AT D O YO U S E E in these images? A shapes are formed on glass lab plates by

To capture the microcrystals, Woitschikowski mounts his camera to a

E X P L O R E Climate Change Rainbows

Saturn: What Put

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION (RINGS REMOVED); ORIGINAL CASSINI IMAGE BY NASA/

if the rings formed at the same time or if they were

Science journalist and longtime National Geographic contributor

M AIN R I NGS OF SAT URN

4,473 186,411 miles wide (very diffuse)

Average distance between Earth and the moon

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF

Rainbow rich, climate poor

IT PROPELS SEASHELLS solution of amino

200,000,000 25,000 3,000,000

Get started with ƐƏѷo@ ouCuv|lom|_-|

Main picture: The Arabian leopard (Panthera

Left: Ancient artists carved images of the

Thousands of years ago, an artist and even rivers ﬂowed diﬀerently.

Restoring lost species to their

breeding pairs are carefully selected based on

In addition to breeding genetically appropriate

This Sierra Leonean ÌÌÌÌÌ

The National Geographic Society is

For at least 9,000 years agaves

, now only $29

24 PHOTO: BRUCE D. TAUBERT

Of the species that have been

Good for business, bad for bats

Lesser long-nosed bat

Colony > 10,000 individuals

Mexican long-nosed bat

Leptonycteris nivalis MEXICO

A J J north along cactus- and agave-rich

ng rt areas when the plants bloom. In the

pups Bi fall, the females and their young return

Demand drives production Efforts to conserve

The water used by your

RINSE AND REPEAT household can then do

Water’s not black and

The easy solution

Storage and use

Work the laws

PHOTO: STUART PALLEY

the ﬁrst decade of my career.

EXPLORE YOUR LEGACY

PHOTO: ANDY PARKINSON