By Juliet Eilperin, Published: February 20

Steve Winter has followed snow leopards through the Himalayas, been trapped in quicksand in the world’s largest tiger reserve, in Burma, and been stalked by jaguars in Brazil. As a National Geographic photographer, that’s all just part of his job.

But he also serves as media director for Panthera, a nonprofit group that works on behalf of big cats in the wild. He will soon have dinner with the Honduran president and some of the group’s scientists to discuss creating a wildlife corridor for jaguars between the United States and Central America.

“The world needs no more pictures of pretty animals,” Winter said. “What the world needs is the story behind these animals and their struggle of being around humans.”

Michael “Nick” Nichols, a National Geographic editor at large, has been worrying about the decline of the world’s lion population for more than a decade and spent years devising equipment to chronicle the animals on the Serengeti. Because they’re active at night, Nichols is using infrared lights and sensors. He’s employing a miniature German-built helicopter to capture how lions live. “The technology is in place to look at lions in a new way,” he said.

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