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John Wendle

The Gambia River is the main draw for lions and other wild animals in Niokolo-Koba National Park.

Mouhamadou Ndiaye, a Senegalese field technician with the wildcat conservation organization Panthera, shows the horn of a dead roan antelope at a lion kill site in the park. The antelopes, which can grow to more than 600 pounds, are a favorite prey of lions—and a target for poachers.

Rangers investigate a poachers’ camp in the northern part of Niokolo-Koba National Park, where hunting of lions’ prey, such as antelopes, threatens their survival.

Until now, critically endangered West African lions were thought not to form prides. But here in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park, Florence, a radio-collared female, lies alongside a female pride member.

Eivind Støren (L) hands Willem van der Bilt (R) of the University of Bergen a small 'daisy core' pipe for use in the core sampling.

Scientists Eivind Støren (L), Jostein Bakke (C), and Torgeir Røthe (R) do hundreds of squats to raise and lower a heavy weight to drive a tube into lake bottom sediment, in order to retrieve a core.

The team of scientists gathers all the equipment they can carry at Innvika Cove and carries it for more than a mile. They cross a broken terrain of boggy mud and ankle-breaking boulders on the way to Lake Ringgåsvatnet, on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago.

Jostein Bakke of the University of Bergen pushes a coring tube and apparatus into the waters of Lake Ringgåsvatnet, on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago. The tube is driven into the mud, sand, grit and gravel at the lake bottom and used to extract a core of sediment produced by the Ahlmannfonna glacier, which feeds into the lake.

The team of scientists prepares a tube for the coring of lake sediments on the shore of Lake Ringgåsvatnet.

The sailboat sits at anchor on a calm day off the Svalbard archipelago.