by Jeff Corwin
The shark circled within only a few feet of Jeff, who was still bobbing around in the ocean. Great whites, or any other type of shark, rarely attack human beings. Jeff’s crew remained calm and dragged Jeff back into the boat. It wasn’t until after Jeff was safe that the crew informed him that he had gone swimming with a great white shark!
For another episode of Corwin’s Quest, Jeff jumped off one of the world’s highest bridges. That’s right, Jeff jumped off a bridge! But he didn’t do it just the one time. Jeff plunged from a six-hundred-foot bridge in Italy ten times! He was attached to a bungee cord, of course, and had a 16-mm video camera attached to his chest. And he did it all in the name of science.
The goal was to compare the speed of Jeff’s fall against that of a trained falcon. But the bird didn’t cooperate the first time, so Jeff had to keep bungee jumping until he got the shot he needed. For each bungee jump, Jeff stood on the rail of the bridge staring down at the rocks below. That’s right—there were rocks, not water, below him! Whenever the falcon trainer was ready to release the bird, Jeff was told to jump. Jeff said it was very scary to jump off something so high.
After each jump, Jeff hung upside down four hundred feet in the air until he was lifted back up again. He says, “My back was killing me.” It got to the point that Jeff was in too much pain to continue doing more takes. So a member of the crew was chosen to be Jeff’s stunt double for the last few jumps. Normally, Jeff does his own stunts, but this time, he was relieved to have a stand-in!
In another episode, the show was being filmed in Uganda, Africa. Jeff and his crew found themselves in the middle of what is known as a chimp hunt. A chimp hunt is a phenomenon in which a group of about twenty to thirty chimpanzees organizes to attack simultaneously another group of smaller animals. It is a group hunting behavior rarely caught on film.
In this case, Jeff and his crew watched as chimps moved in toward a group of about fifty colobus monkeys in the treetops. Some of the larger chimps climbed into the trees, moving up to the branches where the colobus were. Other chimps stayed on the ground to capture any colobus monkeys that might fall or try to escape by way of the ground.
The colobus leaped from branch to branch, tree to tree, and even over a two-hundred-foot ravine to try to escape. It was a matter of life and death for the medium- to large-size monkeys, so they would do anything to survive the attack. But it was also a matter of life and death for the chimps, too, who needed to eat. Jeff didn’t know which animal to root for! In the end, the chimps captured a few of their prey, and rejoiced in their meal. Jeff felt proud of the chimps for the capture, but also felt awful for the poor colobus victims. Nonetheless, it was marvelous for him to witness.
On another trip to Africa for Corwin’s Quest, Jeff was in the mountains of Uganda searching for gorillas. He had been feeling ill during the entire trip, and had lost a lot of weight. He eventually came to realize that he was very sick with malaria and African tick fever, at the same time! It was a taxing trip for Jeff’s health, certainly. But he pushed through, taking off only one day from filming. And in the end, it paid off! After days of endless trekking, Jeff found himself sitting just a few feet away from an entire troop of gorillas, including the amazing giant silverback gorilla!
It was also for Corwin’s Quest that Jeff had his teeth cleaned by a live shrimp! Jeff wanted to show viewers how cool cleaner shrimp are. Cleaner shrimp are very valuable to the coral reef community. They survive on tiny, parasitic crustaceans and dead skin. These things often build up on fish, so cleaner shrimp remove them. The cleaner shrimp have a meal and the fish can swim free of irritation—everybody wins! Several cleaner shrimp will clean a single fish at a time. They dash around over the fish’s body, munching away the parasites.
To show how this process works, Jeff ate a large meal, and was sure to leave bits of food in his teeth. Then he went scuba diving in the ocean near the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Australia. Jeff found a cleaner shrimp and put it to work. He put the live shrimp in his mouth, and the cleaner shrimp proceeded to eat the food remains from Jeff’s teeth!
For the next several years, Jeff’s career continued to thrive. He was experiencing tremendous success in all areas of his life, and having a great time doing it. But he wanted to do a project that reached a new audience. That’s why he approached the news network CNN with the idea for a new TV series called Planet in Peril.
Jeff’s idea was to show people how environmental conditions are interconnected: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and human population growth. Each of these problems affects the next. In an interview with UMass Magazine Online, Jeff once explained, “Everything is knotted together to make one great living fabric.”
CNN really liked the idea, so they agreed to make the show. Jeff had appeared on CNN many times as an animal expert, so it was rewarding for him to present them with an idea, then see it come to fruition.
In 2007, Planet in Peril aired as a four-hour documentary that examined our changing planet. It also featured correspondents Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. To create the series, Jeff traveled the globe, from the Brazilian rain forest to the arctic tundra. He was greatly affected by what he saw during filming. For example, when Jeff was in Southeast Asia, he walked into silent rain forests. They were silent because every bird, lizard, and mammal was gone, and had likely died.
During his time in Madagascar, an island off the coast of Africa, Jeff found himself feeling bittersweet. He realized that he could potentially discover a new species there. But at the same time, anything he discovered would probably not survive long because its habitat was being completely destroyed by humans.
Jeff also traveled to the North Pole to study polar bears for the series. He had the chance to work side by side with one of the world’s best biologists, tracking and observing the bears. Polar bears are one of nature’s most powerful predators, but Jeff says, “Their future is uncertain due to climate change.”
Jeff recalls staring out onto an abyss of ice, being awestruck by nature’s power, and how cold it was! He says the temperatures were around 60 degrees below freezing, and that every time he had a runny nose from the cold, there was an instant icicle hanging from the tip of his nose!
It was during the filming of Planet in Peril that Jeff had one of his most frightening animal experiences. An Asian elephant attacked him. The incident happened on March 22, 2007, in the country of Cambodia, in Southeast Asia.
Jeff was reporting on Cambodia’s wild elephant population. As little as one hundred years ago, there were thousands of Asian elephants in the rain forests of Southeast Asia. But today, Asian elephants are nearly extinct in the wild. There are only about thirty thousand of them left. This is because humans are tearing down the forests in which they live, and because humans kill elephants for their tusks.
Jeff was at a wildlife rehabilitation center, where he was helping workers handle three of the elephants. Twice a day, every day, the elephants were taken to a lagoon to be washed and exercised. Jeff was talking to Anderson Cooper and turned his back on one of the elephants. Elephants are complicated animals that experience emotions, such as happiness, anger, and jealousy. When Jeff turned away, the pachyderm decided to let Jeff know he didn’t want to be ignored.
Suddenly, the enormous elephant was right over Jeff’s shoulder. Before Jeff could react, the elephant grabbed Jeff’s arm in his mouth and thrashed Jeff back and forth several times. Asian elephants grow to be as much as twenty-one feet long, stand up to ten feet tall, and weigh up to eleven thousand pounds. They are thousands of times stronger than humans. In fact, the trunk of an elephant can lift a seven-hundred-pound tree limb. So in the creature’s mouth, Jeff was nothing more than a rag doll.
When the elephant grabbed Jeff, he instantly crushed many of the muscles, ligaments, and tendons in Jeff’s arm. Jeff screamed, and thought he might black out from the pain. Within seconds, the elephant handlers stepped in. They got the elephant to release Jeff from its jaws. If the han
dlers had not reacted as quickly as they did, Jeff probably would have died.
The entire incident was caught on film, as CNN cameras were rolling at the moment the elephant attacked. And in spite of the pain Jeff was in, he continued reporting the story! In an interview after the incident, Jeff said, “I was there to investigate the conflict between elephants and humans. You don’t get a better example of the story than what had just happened to me.”
In the end, Jeff healed fairly well. He felt lucky to be alive, and was reminded just how powerful animals can be.
Of all the animals in the world, it’s only the human variety that Jeff fears. Jeff believes people are far more unpredictable, dangerous, and destructive than any other animal. He has been in small planes that nearly crashed or had emergency landings. He’s witnessed coups d’état and revolutions, and had his hotel set on fire. And he’d still prefer a cobra that’s a little peeved to any of them.
No matter what kind of journey Jeff is on, or where in the world he is, he always exercises extreme caution. While he does want to create a unique experience for his viewers, he would never do anything to jeopardize the wildlife or himself. Jeff has a family that loves him and needs him to return from his adventures in one piece. Even Jeff’s wife, Natasha, doesn’t worry too much about her husband: “Jeff is a big boy and he’s a smart man. He has the utmost respect for wildlife.”
Jeff is also responsible for keeping his TV crew safe from harm. That’s why he and his staff do a great deal of research on the region and its wildlife before going into the field. And if Jeff senses that something could be dangerous, he simply won’t do it. While Jeff treasures his wild times, safety always comes first.
CHAPTER FIVE
traveling Man
After Jeff completed Planet in Peril, he wanted to turn his focus on his own country—the United States. He approached the Travel Channel with an idea for a new series about travel in the United States. Jeff wanted to use the medium of television to explore his home-land. Jeff is best known for his work with animals, but the new TV series gave Jeff the opportunity to explore another of his passions—adventure travel.
The first program in the series is called Into Alaska with Jeff Corwin. Into Alaska is an eight-part series in which he investigates the amazing natural wonders of Alaska. The show was tremendously successful, thanks to Jeff’s pioneer spirit! He did everything from working on a commercial crab boat to scaling parts of Mount McKinley. Mount McKinley is the coldest mountain on Earth. It is so tall that it creates its own weather! Nonetheless, Jeff decided to climb it. He battled slippery ice, blinding light, and thin air as he ascended. But the amazing view at the top made it well worth it!
While in Alaska, Jeff also explored Ruth Glacier, where it can feel as cold as 148 degrees below zero! Glaciers are essentially enormous mounds of ice that are constantly moving, flowing, and shifting in the ocean. From the snowy surface, they appear solid, but underneath, huge crevasses can form, which present danger. So Jeff and his crew had to be especially careful when hiking the glacier. These crevices can be hundreds of feet deep, and become blue in their deepest parts. To get a better look at one, Jeff was lowered down into a crevice. He was suspended several feet below the surface and just hung there above an icy abyss until being lifted up again.
Into Alaska with Jeff Corwin gave Jeff a chance to get friendly with Alaska’s animals, too. Jeff guided a team of sled dogs across the Goddard Glacier and kayaked with humpback whales. He even had a fishing competition with brown bears! One day, while fishing in the Margot River, Jeff noticed that there was a brown bear fishing just down the river from him. Brown bears are America’s largest land predator. These monstrous creatures can weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds. To get that large, brown bears in Alaska feed on live fish in Alaska’s icy-cold waters. They have to feed heavily during the summer in order to fatten up for winter, when they hibernate for up to eight months.
As Jeff caught fish, he noticed that the bear down the river was also catching fish. Jeff was equipped with a tool—a fishing pole—and could certainly outfish a bear, which just had its mouth and paws to rely on. Or so he thought! So Jeff spent the afternoon trying to catch more fish than the bear. It was a fishing competition! In the end, Jeff’s manmade fishing tool couldn’t beat out the bear’s natural tools, or its hunger-driven determination!
Jeff spent nearly a year filming in Alaska. He says, “I had a rich, complete, fulfilling experience working on that show.” Travel Channel viewers loved Into Alaska with Jeff Corwin so much that it was followed up with a second show called Into America’s West. Jeff explored the length and breadth of the West Coast, from the Canadian Rockies to New Mexico, all the while on the lookout for America’s wildlife, like mountain lions, bobcats, and black bears, to name only a few. For Into America’s West, Jeff did everything from working on a cattle ranch delivering calves to following the trails of Lewis and Clark.
For the show, Jeff investigated the Grand Canyon, Mount Baker, the plains of Montana, and Yellowstone National Park, learning how some of these incredible places were formed, and how they are still changing.
Jeff found the Into series enjoyable to create, not only because of the adventures, but because he feels that Americans forget that there is still an incredible frontier in their own backyards. He wants Americans to feel excited about the rich diversity of their own country. Jeff hopes to do another program for the series, perhaps Into the East.
And Jeff Corwin certainly is not slowing down. Jeff has been working on numerous projects, including a documentary on polar bears in the Arctic. He has also created another documentary called The Vanishing Frog, which aired on Animal Planet in late 2008.
In The Vanishing Frog, Jeff investigates the massive and somewhat sudden extinction of amphibians around the world. Amphibians are becoming extinct at a rate matched only by how quickly the dinosaurs were wiped out. Two hundred species of frogs and other amphibians have become extinct in the last decade. Jeff predicts that in the next three decades, the situation will become even worse: we’ll lose 50 percent more of those that remain.
Amphibians are important to predator-prey relationships, agriculture, and science. But amphibians are also an indicator of environmental quality, water quality, and temperature. When amphibian species are suffering, it is an early warning sign that something is wrong within an ecosystem. It could mean the other wildlife in the ecosystem will suffer as well. That is why Jeff feels it so very important to investigate the problem of our vanishing frogs.
In addition to his upcoming television work, Jeff is also in the process of writing several new books. His second book for adults, 100 Heartbeats, explores a very scary ecological situation—the moment when there are fewer than one hundred life-forms left before extinction. He’s been globetrotting to study the final moments of failure or success for particular species. Jeff is also in the process of creating a series of kids’ books about nature. The series is published by Penguin Young Readers Group and combines nonfiction and fiction books—including this biography, a fascinating book about U.S. ecosystems, and a fun, fictional Junior Explorer series. These books come from Jeff’s heart because he is the father of two daughters. That’s right! In 2008, Jeff and Natasha became the parents of another baby girl, named Marina. When Jeff looks at his children, he is constantly reminded of how important it is for humans to leave behind a planet that is biodiverse and healthy.
Jeff hopes that his books for kids will help children realize they have the power to change the world. Jeff says, “Sometimes I think that young people don’t think they matter. But everyone leaves behind an ecological footprint. (An ecological footprint is a measure of how much of Earth’s resources we each consume.) I think it’s important that people recognize that— realize that every day, you are going to do something that impacts the world. Do you want that impact to be positive or negative?”
Jeff wants kids to begin taking small steps toward saving Earth’s resources. Remember: every step is
a step in the right direction! You can begin doing this by just looking at your daily habits.
For example, think about the plastic water bottles from which we all drink. Drinking a bottle of water provides you with the liquid your body needs to survive. But at the same time, by drinking water out of a plastic bottle, you are using a container that will last for thousands of years. If you drink that water through a straw, you are using even more plastic that will remain on Earth far longer than you.
You can also try the Trash Challenge that Jeff often poses to kids when he gives speeches. Rather than throwing things away, save every single piece of trash you produce in a single day. That’s every water bottle, every scrap of leftover food, every wrapper, every piece of product packaging, every piece of paper . . . you get the idea! Jeff says, “No toilet paper, please! But save everything else.”
At the end of the day, you will probably be shocked at your impact with regard to waste: In any given twenty-four-hour period, the average American creates about five pounds of trash! As Jeff says, “If you think you don’t have an impact, just look at your garbage. Think about how much energy it took to create it, and where it will all end up.” Jeff says that simple examples like these can make kids realize firsthand how much of an effect they have on Earth’s health.
Jeff ’s kids’ books also explore the idea that all of Earth’s creatures play an important role in their own ecosystem. He worries that many people judge animals: they think some are better, more important, or more valuable to the world than others. “I don’t look at animals as one being nice and one being bad—the pretty feathers of a bird as opposed to the fangs of a rattlesnake,” Jeff says. In Jeff’s mind, all animals are created equal! Jeff adds, “It’s important to understand that no one creature is greater than another. All species are significant and have earned a place at the table of life.”