2026 Edition

Wildlife conservation needs to embrace the “big stupid ideas,” says Matt Trevelyan, who in April of 2024 became a viral sensation after deciding to dress up as a human-sized Eurasian curlew and walk across his county in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, England, a whopping 53 miles over one weekend. By day, Trevelyan works on curlew conservation for the Nidderdale National Landscape. But if he had his druthers, he’d become a curlew. Trevelyan is a classically-trained clown, master puppeteer and Buddhist. This photo was taken as we began filming him for a documentary about his efforts to protect Eurasian curlews, which has just seen its close cousin, the slender-billed curlew go extinct. While the problems for wildlife can be dire, the efforts to save them can inspire joy. Conservation deserves to sometimes be a spectacle, he says.

34 mm f/2.8 Lens - 1/250 sec at f/6.3 ISO 1250