The video profiles renowned wildlife photographer Tom Mangleson, who has dedicated nearly 50 years to capturing animals in their natural habitats. Traveling to remote areas worldwide, Mangleson's work highlights endangered and elusive species, often requiring immense patience and challenging conditions, whether it be a Bengal tiger in India or polar bears in the Arctic. His photography is celebrated for authenticity, refusing digital manipulation, which has earned his work acclaim, such as the famous 'Catch of the Day' photograph, taken before Photoshop existed.

Mangleson's passion transcends photography, involving active conservation efforts alongside figures like Jane Goodall. Through his lens, he reveals the stories of species like grizzlies and cougars, advocating for their preservation against human encroachment. His relationship with Grizzly Bear 399, documenting her life and family, is particularly notable. engagement in wildlife preservation becomes a unifying theme, promoting understanding of animals' habitats and behaviors.

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. elusive [ɪˈluːsɪv] - (adjective) - Difficult to find, catch, or achieve. - Synonyms: (evasive, slippery, shifty)

Tonight, we're going to take you into the wild with a remarkable photographer who spent his life on the trail of elusive and endangered animals.

2. inhospitable [ɪnˌhɒspɪˈtəbl] - (adjective) - Harsh and difficult to live in. - Synonyms: (Unwelcoming, unfriendly, desolate)

At 72, he still travels to remote and inhospitable places.

3. documented [ˈdɒkjʊˌmɛntɪd] - (verb) - Recorded in detail. - Synonyms: (recorded, chronicled, logged)

His images have documented species like mountain gorillas, black rhinos and jaguars.

4. manipulation [məˌnɪpjʊˈleɪʃən] - (noun) - The action of manipulating something or someone. - Synonyms: (alteration, adjustment, modification)

Mengelson shuns the use of digital manipulation.

5. chronicle [ˈkrɒnɪkl] - (verb) - To describe or record in detail. - Synonyms: (record, document, register)

For more than a decade, Mangleson has chronicled every facet of 390 nine's life.

6. conservation [ˌkɒnsəˈveɪʃən] - (noun) - Preservation, protection, or restoration of the natural environment. - Synonyms: (Protection, preservation, safeguarding)

Today, Goodall and Manglesen team up to raise money and awareness for the protection of cranes, as well as chimpanzees and cougars.

7. enroachment [ɪnˈkrəʊtʃmənt] - (noun) - Intrusion on a person's territory, rights, etc. - Synonyms: (infringement, invasion, intrusion)

It helped launch a movement to protect the cats against human encroachment.

8. fragility [frəˈdʒɪlɪti] - (noun) - The quality of being easily broken or damaged. - Synonyms: (delicacy, frailty, weakness)

Tom Mangelson is determined to show us the beauty and fragility of what still survives.

9. persistence [pɜːˈsɪstəns] - (noun) - Firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. - Synonyms: (perseverance, tenacity, endurance)

Mangleson's dedication highlights the role of patience and persistence in capturing breathtaking images.

10. engagement [ɪnˈɡeɪdʒmənt] - (noun) - The action of being involved with something. - Synonyms: (involvement, participation, commitment)

engagement in wildlife preservation becomes a unifying theme, promoting understanding of animals' habitats and behaviors.

Earth Day - Photographer capturing the beauty and fragility of nature - 60 Minutes Archive

Tonight, we're going to take you into the wild with a remarkable photographer who spent his life on the trail of elusive and endangered animals. His name is Tom Mangleson, and at 72, he still travels to remote and inhospitable places. What he brings back are some of the most spectacular pictures of wild animals you'll ever see on most mornings. For nearly 50 years, this is what Tom Mangleson has done. He's ventured into the wilderness, camera in hand.

Last September, in Grand Teton National park in Wyoming, he waited in an early autumn snowfall for his subject to appear. As is often the case, it took quite a while. Over the course of your lifetime, the amount of time you've spent waiting is incalculable, I'm sure. Stupid. Stupid, yeah. Have you learned anything with all that waiting? You wait long enough. It does pay off. For Mengelson, it usually does. Whether it's a male grizzly bear with battle scars, a cheetah chasing down its prey in Tanzania, or butterflies sipping on the tears of a giant caiman in Brazil, each of Mangelson's photographs tells a story.

His images have documented species like mountain gorillas, black rhinos and jaguars. Once dominant, now in danger on every continent in every season, no matter the conditions, Manglesen has painstakingly built a reputation not on personality, but on patience. Do you have patience with people the same way you have patients with animals? No. No, I don't. I wish I did. I don't know. I don't. Do you like animals more than people? Yes. Really? Well, not you. Okay.

He especially likes the dangerous kind. In a jungle in India, where it would be deadly to be on foot, Mangleson climbed onto an elephant's back for this shot of a Bengal tiger, paws red, fresh from a kill. In the Arctic, where temperatures can be 30 degrees below zero, he spent years documenting the behavior of polar bears. He nicknamed this group the bad boys of the Arctic. He's captured adult male bears play fighting, a mama bear slyly keeping watch as her cubs roughhouse nearby and a group of bears trying to survive as their world melts away.

People often mistake Mangleson's photographs for paintings, and since the 1970s, he's sold them out of galleries like this one in Jackson, Wyoming. His photo, catch of the day is often called the most famous wildlife photograph in the world. It's such an extraordinary image in this day and age. People would think that this is photoshopped, that you've got a photo of a fish somewhere. And, I mean, it's so perfect. It was taken in 1988, before Photoshop even existed. People think it's faked. But you don't believe in that. I mean, as a photographer? No, man, this is the magic. This is the moment.

This is the decisive moment. And this little tiny space right here, I think, is so important. Yeah. Quarter of an inch. It's in its mouth, but it hasn't actually made contact yet with its mouth. 1 ns later, Mengelson shuns the use of digital manipulation. What he sees through his lens is what you get. And at a time when many photographers build their portfolios by going to game farms like this one to photograph captive animals, Mangleson insists on only documenting them in their natural habitat.

As we saw when we joined him before dawn outside Jackson Hole, you always get up this early? There's only one way to do it. Is like, do it every day or be really lucky. He's taking us to a bend he knows on the snake river. Do you hear the elk? It's a sharp whistle. That's. That's the sound of the wild here. He's been here hundreds of times trying to get the perfect shot of elk crossing the water. Say I was just awaiting. Yep. Not waiting in waiting. Yeah.

What's the longest you've ever spent in any spot and not here, but anywhere? Um, 42 days. I was at cougars 42 days. I went home at night and slept, and then we'd go back at daybreak. But you would spend all day there. Yeah. So 12 hours a day. Twelve, 1412. Or 14 hours a day for 42 days. Yeah. Did you get the shot? Finally. This was the shot worth waiting for. The elusive cougar coming out of her den at dusk. Taken in 1999, it's among the first photographs to document the life of a wild female cougar. It helped launch a movement to protect the cats against human encroachment.

Back at the river, after a three hour wait. Right between the trees, sir. There she comes. Oh, that was. That was cool. Pretty cool. It was worth the wait. Yeah. Just kind of extraordinary. We headed back to his office in Jackson to take a look at an amateur's attempt. I think it's beautiful. I think it's gorgeous. Me too, actually. There's nothing wrong with that one at all. It's great. Is she out of focus? Maybe slightly. Let's see. Yeah. Not quite sure. I'm sorry. Mangleson's shot was, of course, in perfect focus.

And look at what else he's captured at that same river in fall, summer and winter. Manglesson credits his father with his love of the wild. He grew up on the bank of the Platte river in Nebraska, where he was schooled in hunting and fishing. As a teenager in the 1960s, Mangalson earned the title world champion goose caller, no small feat, considering this is bird country, home to 400 species, as well as one of the great migrations on earth. Every spring, half a million sandhill cranes stop on this stretch of the Platte river. They're fattening up on grain before migrating north as far as Siberia.

It is an awesome and ancient ritual. Fossils show cranes have come here for nearly 10 million years. It's a spectacle of sight and sound. Manglesson has shared for 17 years with his friend and ally Jane Goodall, whose life work with chimpanzees has revolutionized our understanding of primates. Today, Goodall and Manglesen team up to raise money and awareness for the protection of cranes, as well as chimpanzees and cougars. He's taught me so much about the Platte river and what goes on here and what it was like when he was a boy and how he started off as a hunter, because that's what one did. And then how gradually he realized he loved these creatures much too much.

He couldn't go on being a hunter. And so he hunts with his camera. Here they come, lots and lots and lots. Look at the light on those up there. What's amazing is this ancient migration still carries on. I think it's completely amazing. I agree. It gives me hope that nature will manage in spite of us. Oh, look at this. Beautiful, huh? Next year, do you think you could invest in a silent camera? One of the qualities that I love about Tom is his passion. And it's when you have that kind of passion and that kind of commitment that you are more likely to get other people involved, because we can never win an argument by appealing to people's heads.

It's got to be in the heart. And I use the power of storytelling and writing, and Tom uses the power of images. The story will continue after this. If all artists have a muse, Tom Mangelson's is this 22 year old female grizzly bear. She doesn't have a proper name name, but is known by the research number 399, a creature from America's wild past. When 50,000 grizzlies roamed the lower 48. Less than 2000 grizzlies remain today. For more than a decade, Mangalson has chronicled every facet of 390 nine's life emerging from a long winter's nap, swatting magpies away from a meal. He's watched and worried as she's given birth to three sets of triplets and a set of twins.

She's nursed, protected, and taught more than a dozen bear cubs. Mangelson's photographs, including this one he dubbed an icon of motherhood, have made 399 the most famous grizzly in the world. What do you think it is about grizzly bears that so captures people's imagination? I think it's the wildness and the rarity. And, you see, intelligent they are. 6399 will go to the road, and she'll look both ways. She'll tell the kids to stay on one side of the road. She'll go across, and then she'll talk to them. Okay, you can come across now. And that's smart. There's also something about grizzly bears that there's a grace to it, but ferocity is always lurking there.

But I like that idea that we're not at the top of the food chain. In Manglesen's portraits, ferocious grizzlies have personalities too. But sometimes it's easy to miss the details. Notice a leftover piece of grass tucked in the corner of this grizzly's mouth like a toothpick. But it's Manglesen's wide shots that may matter the most. They help people understand animals like 399 can't survive without their habitat. Mangelson took us out to show us why he believes seeing your first grizzly can change your life. It's right there. It's right there. Oh, okay. So it's really close. It was an adult female grizzly resting just off the road. That's crazy. She's a gorgeous bear now you see how she just, like, just scratched the back of her ear just to get your dog mite.

Yeah. Isn't that great? Now that she's scratching her belly, it's so incredible to see. It's amazing. A third of 390 nine's offspring have been killed in interactions with humans, hit by cars, or shot by elk hunters. Out of fear, last year, the federal government removed grizzly bears around Yellowstone from the endangered species list. Wyoming and Idaho are now deciding whether to open a hunting season on the bears. There's people here who have said that they can't wait for a season to open so they can shoot $3.99 because that would be the biggest prize, the biggest trophy you've had. Hunters actually say that to you, that they want to shoot 399 because 399 is so famous? Yeah. Hard, hard to believe.

While he worries about what will be lost, Tom Mangelson is determined to show us the beauty and fragility of what still survives. And so he sets out once again, patiently making his way alone into the wild. It's my gift in a way, that I can give people, hopefully, to preserve what we have left, preserve wilderness, preserve species like goozy bears, and make them think about it, make them think that this is what we need to say for our children.

Wildlife Photography, Conservation, Jane Goodall, Inspiration, Science, Technology, 60 Minutes