Photo Ark: Snapping Every Endangered Species - Joel Sartore

Conservationists often quietly lament that the public appetite to save pandas, tigers, and other beautiful animals that may go extinct despite best efforts to save their wild populations often overshadows achievable successes of less sexy species. But photographer Joel Sartore, known for his Photo Ark project’s efforts to photograph every kind of animal in captivity, recently had a success for a “tiny little brown bird.” His images of Central Florida’s grasshopper sparrow helped publicize the plight of an animal that has only 200 nesting pairs left in the wild. His images helped raise awareness, and money, for the bird and its prairie habitat to hopefully ease the bird back from the brink of extinction.