30 Years of National Geographic Specials

A bright outlook in Birkenhead for a thriving British enterprise.

Under 30

In a small rural town in Pennsylvania, the refuge of a rare salamander and the only source of clean drinking water for 700 people is threatened by the installation of a fracking waste injection well, prompting community members to band together to fight for the rights of their people and nature.

Melvin and Buddy are two space-exploring pups on a mission. Scarfing down facts like dog biscuits is their plan, but they can't learn about all the topics that interest them without some help. That's where Professor Brain comes in. He's the T-Rex with the mega brain-flex. Climb aboard for all the intergalactic fact-finding fun.

African Adventure: Safari in the Okavango

A youngster begins to understand the wisdom hidden within legendary whaler-man Tall 12's sea shanty songs in the whaling town of Barrouallie, St. Vincent, a place where men still wrestle with the creatures of the deep for survival. Against a backdrop of cruise-ship tourism and economic colonialism, this lyrical documentary discovers a surprising renewal of interest and hunger to preserve local traditions and cultural knowledge through new interpretations.

Love them or hate them, there are 33,000 urban foxes roaming Britain's suburbia. For the residents of the Copse in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire - as for so many other suburbanites - the urban fox provides evenings of enchantment. A cul-de-sac of neighbours compete to offer the tastiest snacks for their bushy-tailed visitors, with one couple even setting up their own CCTV system to provide happy evenings of Fox TV.

"The World's Loneliest Elephant" Kaavan will finally experience freedom, thanks to his biggest champion, the one & only Cher. We'll follow Cher, Free The Wild, Four Paws International, and Kaavan on every step of the trip.

Wildlife photographer Richard Sidey joins an international team of whale research scientists in Antarctica to document their work on how Humpback Whales are adapting to a changing ocean.

Humboldt et la redécouverte de la nature

For generations lions have ruled over the Londolozi region of Mpumalanga but one brotherhood reigns supreme: a coalition of two brothers descendent from a long dynasty. To get to the top they have hunted, fought and won many battles. This film follows this Brotherhood as they conquer prides, kill rivals and continue their bloodline guaranteeing their genes are firmly entrenched in future generations to come.

Le monstre

Julien Temple's second documentary profiling punk rock pioneers the Sex Pistols is an enlightening, entertaining trip back to a time when the punk movement was just discovering itself. Featuring archival footage, never-before-seen performances, rehearsals, and recording sessions as well as interviews with group members who lived to tell the tale--including the one and only John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten).

The grasslands of Africa are a banquet spread for feline predators. Explore the hunting and nurturing habits of lions, leopards, and cheetahs of the African savannah, as well as the overlooked grasses that lay the foundation for the amazing array of wildlife flourishing among its leaves.

In the Moroccan desert night dilutes forms and silence slides through sand. Dawn starts then to draw silhouettes of dunes while motionless figures punctuate landscape. From night´s abstraction, light returns its dimension to space and their volume to bodies. Stillness concentrates gaze and duration densify it. The adhan -muslim call to pray- sounds and immobility, that was condensing, begins to irradiate. And now the bodies are those which dissolves into the desert.

The film Journeys alongside the filmmakers behind Disneynature’s “Polar Bear” as they face profound challenges 300 miles from the North Pole. The team, who created a revolutionary arctic camp on site, navigated virtually impassible snow drifts and tenuous sea ice, garnering unprecedented footage revealing adaptive behaviors that surprised even this veteran team of filmmakers.

April 8, 2003: Karsten Heuer + Leanne Allison left the remote community of Old Crow,Yukon, to join the Porcupine Caribou Herd on their epic life journey. For 5 months the Canadians migrated on foot with the 123,000-member herd from wintering to calving grounds in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and back again — 1500km across snow and tundra. They completed their journey on Sept. 8, 2003.

Seven-time Emmy Award winner Betty White shares her love for animals and VIP backstage pass to three of America's top zoos and safari parks for a characteristically irreverent, intimate and unique tour of everything big cat.

A 3-D documentary chronicling a sea turtle's journey across the oceans.

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.