International photographer and Nebraskan Joel Sartore champions importance of all animals

Nebraska's Joel Sartore spoke to a full auditorium Thursday night at Peru State College’s performing arts center, located in the small southeastern town that shares its name with the college, Peru.

The event was put together by the Peru State College Foundation, and was funded in part by Humanities Nebraska, as well as from individual donors.

Sartore is best known for his contributions to National Geographic, as well as for his multi-year project called The Photo Ark. With the Photo Ark, he plans to photograph all living species in the world’s zoos, aquariums and wildlife sanctuaries in an attempt to inspire conservational action through education.

He began the evening by telling attendees about his early years as a photographer for National Geographic.

“In the early days, when I was brought in as the funny guys, kind of a feature guy,” said Sartore. “I didn't shoot a lot of wildlife, I shot a lot of feature stuff, including a story on America's state fairs with Garrison Keillor.”

While he was talking, he was showing off the photos he had taken, ranging from people on amusement park rides at the Minnesota State Fair to hypnotists at the Iowa State Fair.

Sartore eventually began taking photos of animals, which he's best known for. His photos have been featured in the magazine, even gracing the cover.

Showing the crowd a photo of woman with a baby koala on her back, he asked, “why do these moms, human moms have baby koalas?”

He answered his own question.

"Well, because baby koalas need as much attention as a human baby just about or they don't thrive and they die.”

This story, according to Sartore was one of the few where he feels his photography made a quantifiable difference. He showed the audience a photo of a row of dead koalas, all killed due to cars, pets, and other human-centric reasons.

“It's kind of heartbreaking to shoot it," he said. "You know, I had tears in my eyes, of course, but that picture helped get koalas protection in northern Australia. Finally got them some protection. Lots of people have been working on that, but when this picture went viral, that really helped. I know it helped.”

That feeling eventually went on to inspire the Photo Ark.

“We’re a long term public education campaign trying to get people to look at something other than whether it's friend or foe," he said. "It's not political, it is not sports, it is not the price of the pump, it's just all these animals that we share the planet with. Trying to get people to care about nature while there's still time.”

Something Sartore wanted the crowd to take away from the event was the importance of all animals when it comes to keeping the natural areas of our world healthy, even those that are not able to easily adapt to humans.

“We're moving towards what I'd call a planet of the weeds,” Sartore said. “Only species that can really thrive around us, sandhill cranes, they'll do real well. Snow geese, sure, but not a lot of these specialists.”

Sartore said he hopes to make it to 30,000 photos before he either sets the camera down, or hands it off to his son Cole.