photographer Nichole Sobecki, you already know it is cause for
turbulence of the heart. So much intention. So much kindness.
Sobecki had been working for months with Rachael Bale, the
magazine’s animals editor, on their September article about an
international animal-smuggling network preying upon Africa’s
threatened cheetah population. Then a Kenyan guide, with
Sobecki along, found an injured adult cheetah amid the brush of
a national reserve. For 48 hours the two of them watched over the
cheetah while waiting for the Kenya Wildlife Service veterinary
team alerted by local rangers.
“One cheetah in one part of the world,” Sobecki said, and
sighed. On a call between Nairobi and Oakland, California, she
and I were trying to figure out how we felt about the push to
revive the wounded female, which the rangers had decided to
name Nichole. Uplifting and futile, both words apply; Nichole
the cheetah did not survive. Her injuries appeared to have been
caused by another animal, not a human hunter or smuggler.
But Nichole the photographer has been documenting vanishing
animal habitats and the climate crisis’s toll on Africa, and she
was having a hard time disentangling one kind of sorrow from
another. “There was a will to try to save that cheetah,” Sobecki
said. “The efforts were ambitious and sweeping. I don’t want to
minimize that.”
If events had transpired differently, though ... if the Wildlife
Service vet had not been off duty the day they found the chee-
tah or the substitute team had arrived more quickly ... if human
behavior hadn’t cost cheetahs more than 90 percent of their his-
toric range ... Yes, you could make the case that this particular
cheetah was perhaps meant to have expired alone, under a bush,
undisturbed by probing hands. But sometimes we fasten on small
stories to help us hold bigger ones in our heads.“Everybody grows up knowing
about cheetahs,” Sobecki said. “What
about the countless other species that
are facing these same issues? If we
can allow one of our most celebrated
animals to reach a place where there
are fewer than 7,000 adults left in the
wild, what about everything else?”E
VERYTHING else.
No easy delineation
separates the images
of this year. In 2021 the
triumph of COVID-
vaccine development
set off its own dis-
cord. (Who knew we
could summon such
rage over injections
to protect us from
death?) Nearly every attempt at con-
servation—of species, of economies,
of spots on Earth—took place against
the existential backdrop of climate
change. It was August 9 when the
United Nations’ Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change released
a 2,000-page compilation of bleak
assessments and predictions. Its sixth
such report in the past two decades,
this one was described by UN Secre-
tary-General António Guterres as a
“code red for humanity.” Less than
a week after the report’s release, the
220,000-acre Caldor wildfire here
in California ignited and spread
through drought-parched foothillsYEAR IN PICTURES
THIS WAS THE YEAR OF TEXAS’
DEEP FREEZE IN FEBRUARY,
CANADA’S HIGHEST TEMPERATURES
IN RECORDED HISTORY IN JUNE,
AND GERMANY AND BELGIUM’S
LETHAL FLASH FLOODING IN JULY.
20 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC