Our Great National Parks and the curious feeling of hope

James Shackell

May 5, 2022

In a crowded, post-Attenborough genre, Our Great National Parks tries something kind of radical. It tries to sell you hope.

Our Great National Parks is the latest five-part nature documentary series from Netflix, Wild Space Productions, and Michelle and former President Barack Obama’s production company, Higher Ground. In a crowded, post-Attenborough genre, and in a world tearing itself apart, the series tries something kind of radical. It tries to sell you hope.

Netflix’s new five-part documentary series, Our Great National Parks, opens with the gentle shushing of waves, and a drone zooming low over Hawai’i’s Hanauma Bay, where we see a lone figure in a linen shirt, walking slowly over the sand. Wait a minute… that’s former President Barack Obama.

He looks older than I remember him, but without that exhausted, beaten-down, pursued-by-wolves vibe he seemed to carry around late in office. The eyes are still bright and intelligent. The hands move and bounce with every oratorical beat.

“I grew up in Hawaii. This was my backyard,” he says with that trademark, yes-we-can, Obama cadence. “My love of the natural world [slight pause] began here.”

When you choose Barack Obama as the voice and face of your new flagship nature documentary, you invite political commentary and (let’s face it) partisan attacks. It’s inevitable. Which makes Our Great National Parks kind of interesting, because it’s a show that wants more from us than your average wildlife doco series. The Obama choice was deliberate, and not just for PR purposes. The show isn’t about cute, anthropomorphized animals and soaring 4K drone footage—although, to be fair, there’s plenty of both of those. It’s more about us, and our relationship with nature. The good and the bad.

In short, it’s a series about hope. The thing, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “with feathers that perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops at all.”

Obama, backed by snowy mountains, points to the distance. — According to the makers of ‘Our Great National Parks,’ tapping former President Barack Obama to host and narrate this series, “isn’t out of left field: Obama protected more public lands and waters than any US president.” Photo: Netflix

“No one’s trying to sugarcoat the reality of the conservation movement,” says producer Sophie Todd from Wild Space Productions, who worked with the Obamas’ company, Higher Ground, to create the series. “But there are a lot of good stories out there, good examples that allow people to see what could be done. It’s not all hopeless.”

“It’s not politicized,” insists biologist and Wild Space executive producer James Honeyborne, prickling slightly. “It’s about giving people agency. The project as a whole, it’s about how we as individuals have power. Conservation struggles are where people feel hopeless—and there’s always a temptation, especially for big conceptual issues like climate change—to feel overwhelmed.”

I know the feeling. As a kid, I used to love nature documentaries. I would sit up late in front of the TV, watching Blue Planet on an endless, hydro-powered loop (my favorite episode was called ‘Open Ocean’, which featured a big expanse of empty, humanless nothingness; I didn’t have many friends). But lately, the genre has started to feel unreal to me, like slow-motion disaster porn. Like I’m sitting in the future, watching archival footage of a beautiful, long-dead world. Seeing unspoiled wilderness only sharpens my existential dread. It reminds me of everything that’s already spoiled, and everything we’re in the process of spoiling. Watching a lone polar bear amble, oblivious, across a melting ice sheet, I don’t feel hope. I feel lost.

An aerial view over yellow sand and turquoise water. — ‘Our Great National Parks’ explores 13 different national parks around the world—from Kenya to Patagonia—in the five-episode series. Photos: Netflix

Elephants seen from above, cast shadows across the red earth. — ‘Our Great National Parks’ explores 13 different national parks around the world—from Kenya to Patagonia—in the five-episode series. Photos: Netflix

The travel writer A.A. Gill touched on this strange discomfort in his review of the BBC’s Blue Planet, where he advanced the theory that Sir David Attenborough may, in fact, be God. (“Consider the evidence,” Gill muses. “Attenborough is omnipresent. He says come and the elements come. He says go, and yeah, even the waters of the deep recede. Once he was corporeal… now he has ascended into the ether, and is just a voice of unutterable wisdom and love.”)

The problem, Gill says, is that Attenborough’s furry world, with its neat animal parables and incredible, jaw-on-the-floor footage, isn’t real. This awe and connection we feel isn’t real. It’s an illusion, carefully shot, scripted, edited, polished, and finished by a man with a bucket in a sound studio. At best, Gill says, this illusion can “provoke a greater awareness of the fragility and privilege of life.” At worst, it can lead to “a sort of self-hating, utopian intolerance” or even “violent nihilism.” Basically, it leads to despair.

For the last 10 years or so, I’d argue despair has been the nature documentary genre’s greatest export. And the more beautiful the footage, the more it hurts.

A polar bear on a sheet of snow approaches the water. — “Every wild space matters,” says producer Sophie Todd. “Even if all you have is a small pot on your windowsill, you can do something.” Photo: Netflix

This is where Our Great National Parks tries to subvert the genre slightly. In the past, nature documentaries, however spectacular and wonder-provoking, either completely ignored mankind’s impact on the natural world, or shoved that impact right in your face. There wasn’t a middle ground. You were either oblivious and naïve or emotionally shattered and pumped with guilt. The genre got stuck halfway between worlds. It wanted to chronicle the unfolding environmental catastrophe, but also wow you with high-def images of snow leopards. As a viewer, the lingering feeling was abstract sadness.

“There’s a forward-facing story to tell, for all generations, I feel. It’s a series that is purposely hopeful.”

- James Honeyborne

Our Great National Parks is the same, but different. By casting President Obama, a figure somehow imbued with hope, practically overflowing with the stuff, the series wants you to feel energized, invigorated and—despite Honeyborne’s insistence—vaguely politicized. (The series ends with Obama’s final thought, “Vote like the planet depends upon it.”) It wants to show you things, but mostly it wants you to do things, or at least feel capable of doing things—which might be just as important.

“Every wild space matters,” Todd says. “Even if all you have is a small pot on your windowsill, you can do something.”

“The President is the perfect person to tell this story,” Honeyborne adds. “He’s protected more US wilderness than any other president in history. He’s always been a fan of wild spaces, and he has so many connections to the places we looked at, either from his family line, or creating parks and marine sanctuaries himself.”

Obama smiles for a selfie with some young people while filming. He is backed by snow covered mountains. — The world’s national park movement is a surprisingly recent one. “Half of all the world’s national parks were established in the last 50 years!” says executive producer James Honeyborne. “So it’s actually quite a contemporary movement.” Photos: Netflix

An aerial view of a waterfall surrounded by green trees cascading into a green pool. — The world’s national park movement is a surprisingly recent one. “Half of all the world’s national parks were established in the last 50 years!” says executive producer James Honeyborne. “So it’s actually quite a contemporary movement.” Photos: Netflix

Some critics have (half-jokingly) suggested that Obama’s mere presence, along with the locations chosen for the series—Hawaii, Kenya and Indonesia, each connected in some way with the President’s biography—are deliberately trolling the Fox News, birther conspiracy, anti-environmentalism crowd. Todd laughs when I put this to her. “It’s always funny what people decide you were thinking,” she says. “but no, that wasn’t deliberate. We were looking for a mixture of habitats and climates around the world. But we were also affected by COVID, which struck about seven months into production, so that limited where we could film.”

One of the parks chosen was Yellowstone, the world’s first national park. It’s tucked away in the northwestern corner of Wyoming—nearly 9,000 square kilometers of canyons, alpine rivers, geysers and forests. Yellowstone became a “public park… for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” in 1872. Technically, there are two legally protected areas that date back even further—Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve in Trinidad and Tobago, and Bogd Khan Uul Mountain in Mongolia, which was safeguarded by the government in 1778. But really, the world’s national park movement is a surprisingly recent one.

“Half of all the world’s national parks were established in the last 50 years,” Honeyborne says. “So it’s actually quite a contemporary movement.”

Hippos swim underneath the blue water. — Tsavo National Park, located in Kenya, is featured in ‘Our Great National Parks.” Described as “the heartbeat of Africa” by Obama, the park is home to Kenya’s largest elephant population—as well as the black rhino, Cape buffalo, leopard, hippo and Maasai lion. Photo: Netflix

The series zeroes in on this quite a bit, highlighting the rapid progress that’s being made by the rewilding movement in Chile, for example, or animal populations bouncing back in Indonesia’s Mount Leuser National Park. The overall message is: we fucked up, but we’re getting better. Most episodes follow the genre’s tried-and-true formula: eye-wateringly beautiful drone footage, orchestral scores that make your scalp tingle, three or four animal stories, then the current threats to eco-conservation. And finally (most importantly), hope. A solution, an action, an answer. A narrative we can cling to. This bit really needs to sing, and, for the most part, it does.

There are over 4,000 national parks in the world now, the President reminds us, representing about 15 per cent of the Earth’s land surface. There are brilliant, passionate people in the world doing amazing things. In many small, significant ways, we’re getting there.

Obama is a skilled narrator. Friendly and warm. He’s not in Attenborough’s god-like realm, of course, but that’s not really a fair comparison. And when he speaks, you do feel… something. Like a candle flame deep down. The fragile stirrings of a long-forgotten emotion. Maybe, just maybe, this will all somehow turn out all right.

“I’m always of the opinion that you have to try,” Todd says. “You have to believe. There has to be something positive in a documentary. Everyone keeps thinking that, any day now, someone in the future is going to fix all this. But it has to be us. It has to be now.”

James Shackell

James Shackell is a freelance journalist with words in The Huffington Post, Red Bull, Canadian Traveler and Smith Journal. One day, he'll be bumped to business class, and you'll never hear the end of it.