This special edition comes with a free poster (the reverse side of the dust jacket) celebrating National Geographic's Photo Ark Initiative, now in its 15th year. Photographer Joel Sartore's lifelong project to make portraits of the world's endangered species conveys a powerful message: To know these animals is to save them.

Joel Sartore is committed to documenting every animal in captivity--with a focus on the growing list of endangered species and those facing extinction--circling the globe, visiting zoos and wildlife rescue centers to create studio portraits of 12,000 species. Paired with the eloquent prose of veteran wildlife writer Douglas Chadwick, and with a foreword by Harrison Ford, Sartore's animal portraits are riveting: from tiny to mammoth, from the Florida grasshopper sparrow to the greater one-horned rhinoceros. Now, with the accelerating pace of climate change and its devastating effect on wildlife habitat, his book presents a more urgent argument for saving all the species of our planet.