For 40 Years NATURE Has Explored Natural Frontiers

Now celebrating its 40^th season on PBS, NATURE travels to the uppermost points of the United States to explore the impact of warming temperatures on wildlife in “American Arctic,” airing at 8 p.m. April 13 on PBS (check local listings) on PBS.org/nature and on the PBS Video app. The episode features  160,000 porcupine caribou making the last great land migration in North America.

The 1,000-mile round trip, from their wintering grounds around the Yukon to their calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is one of the longest land-animal migrations on the planet – a fitting journey for one of PBS’s longest-running series.

Excerpts from the program, including a grizzly bear hunting the caribou herd, polar bears scavenging for food and a newborn musk ox’s first day, are available online on the NATURE website and on the NATURE YouTube Channel, with an interactive feature on the Arctic coming to the website this summer.

The weekly NATURE series, produced by The WNET Group in New York, has long been funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through the PBS National Program Service. Through a 30-month Digital Transformation Grant from CPB and additional funding from the Anderson Family Charitable Fund, The WNET Group has expanded the program’s digital presence on new platforms, producing not only videos, fact sheets and other content related to the broadcast, but also a podcast and hundreds of evergreen videos and other digital pieces.

NATURE podcast 'Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant'

The CPB-funded podcast, Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, which details what it takes to find and save some of the world's most intriguing and endangered species, reached the #1 spot in Apple Podcast’s Nature category and broke the top 10 in the competitive Science category. The additional digital content has led to a 215% growth in unique pageviews to the NATURE website and a 457% increase in YouTube views to 128.5 million in an 18-month period, plus explosive growth on social media channels Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter.

NATURE has been nominated for three WEBBY Awards, honoring the best of the internet: general social/animals, social video education & discovery and “Going Wild With Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant” for health, science and education podcast. NATURE also received more than 1,300 submissions and comments from fans of the show who wanted to share their favorite moments from the first 40 seasons. You can share yours on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #NaturePBS.

The 40^th season finale of NATURE, “Portugal: Wild Land in the Edge,” premieres at 8 p.m. on April 27 (check local listings).

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