5 minute read
From Africa to Idaho
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/ROBBIE LABANOWSKI
Filmmaker Bob Poole's Wild Spaces
BY APRIL NEALE
Few people are as knowledgeable or as immersed in the ways of African wildlife as Emmy Award-winning natural history cinematographer Bob Poole. A “Huck Finn” childhood filled with nature and adventures, along with his sisters, set the tone early in his life in Kenya, East Africa. Bob’s curiosity took the filmmaker’s path, as his older sister Joyce, often featured in his cinematic efforts, became a world expert on elephants’ communication, behavior, and language skills.
Their life’s work has taken them all over Africa, exploring the natural world. From Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park to the Tanzanian wilds in Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and Serengeti National Park, and so many other places across the globe, Poole has chronicled—through his remarkable lens—nature, documenting wildlife in pivotal or rare moments that few, if any, have been able to capture. “I was raised in Kenya, my father worked in wildlife conservation, and sadly, he died in an accident when I was 17. But that was also the beginning of my National Geographic career,” he explained.
Behind the scenes: Bob Poole on James Cameron’s Secrets of the Elephants.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NAT GEO CHANNEL
Today, Bob Poole calls Hailey, Idaho home, though he still travels the world for academic talks and film assignments for many networks. “In the early nineties, I was asked to come to Sun Valley to work with Jim Dutcher on a film about the Sawtooth wolf pack. They had an enclosure up near Stanley in the Sawtooths, and a pack of wolves was there,” he said. “So we lived in yurts and snowmobiled into this place. It was cool. But when I came to work for him, I bought a little house in Hailey, and time went on, and I’m still here.”
Bob’s first experience working with National Geographic as a teenager was on a film about elephants, a subject to this day that resonates strongly for him and his sister Dr. Joyce Poole. James Cameron’s ongoing “Secrets of” series features the recent Secrets of e Elephants on the Nat Geo Channel, which shows Bob’s experience in finding the never-before-seen moments and clever shot framing for elephants in the forest, Savannah, and even in Asia, where each faces unique obstacles for survival. Bob works closely with rangers, scientists, and his sister on Secrets of the Elephants. He introduces viewers to a world known only by pachyderms and the few humans lucky enough to follow these herds.
A mother elephant and young calf roam through Kimana Sanctuary, a crucial corridor that links Amboseli National Park with the Chyulu Hills and Tsavo protected areas in Kenya. As well as being the largest land mammal on earth, elephants are a keystone species and play an important role in the environment where they live.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/CEDE PRUDENTE
In Bob’s latest TV work, he’s again working closely with Joyce. “My older sister is the world’s leading expert on this; she is extraordinarily good at [interpreting] elephant behavior. She’s in the [Nat Geo] Secrets of the Elephant series, and I’ve learned so much from her. When she was just 20 years old, Joyce went to the National Park in 1977 to study bull elephants and got to know elephants well. She’s got to be the best in the world in figuring out what elephants are up to and what they’re doing, and their communications and predicting what will happen next. And working with her is amazing,” he said.
The pygmy elephants are in no shortage of water, as they live by the Kinabatangan River and are well versed swimmers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/CEDE PRUDENTE
Bob, who was a teenager when he first worked on an elephant film with National Geographic, believes that his career as a cinematographer really began with a film he pitched to National Geographic in the 90s, called Coming of Age with Elephants, which was about his sister.
Elephant expert Joyce Poole poses for a photo. She has studied elephants for almost five decades and, along with her husband, has created the elephant ethogram—the first comprehensive library of thousands of elephant behaviors. There’s nothing like this for any other species on earth.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/WIM VORSTER
“People who watch this [series] will learn that elephants can communicate over long distances and frequencies we can’t hear. They can feel that sound coming through the ground in sensors in their feet. They communicate in all kinds of ways,” Bob said.
“Lucky to have grown up close to elephants. This wild, gentle giant loved to hang around the Amboseli lodge when we were kids,” wrote Poole.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR DISNEY/WIM VORSTER
If you’ve ever seen Bob Poole in action, his connection to the people, animals, and place that raised him shows in the passionate way he approaches his work. The rugged west, including Montana where Poole went to college, and later Idaho, captured his imagination. When the Dutchers asked him to come work with them, it seemed like a natural fit because, he said, he already loved the environment, which included winter, outdoorsports, and skiing. “There’s so much about the West, especially the Northern Rockies. It reminds me of Africa, the wild spaces, and the wildlife,” he said.
Although he says it was difficult to leave Africa after his father died in an accident, he ended up a student in Montana, a ranch hand, and an employee in a Yellowstone town. And then? “I got back into filming, back through my Africa connection,” he said.
“My heart is also in the West,” Bob said.
