The Penguin Counters is a documentary of a story that’s never been told, about tackling climate change one penguin at a time. For the production team – Peter Getzels, Erik Osterholm and Harriet Gordon – it was a labor of love to follow field-biologist Ron Naveen and his team as he tracks the welfare of colonies of penguins in the world’s most pristine scientific laboratory: Antarctica.

You can help complete their project on Kickstarter.

Background

Ron and his intrepid field-biologists have tracked the welfare of 200 colonies of penguins in an area of half a million square miles for over twenty years. And what they’ve learned is that penguins truly are the canaries in the coal mine. With some colonies thriving and others declining, Ron believes the penguins are sending game-changing signals about what it takes to cope with one of the world’s most rapidly warming climates and increasingly volatile weather.

The Film

The Penguin Counters packs important science in with an emotive adventure, shifting perceptions about climate change from pessimism to empowerment along the way. The film shows how one man’s passion for birds resulted in the world’s most comprehensive data-base ever achieved on the Antarctic Peninsula – information that would not exist if Ron hadn’t quit his job thirty years ago and headed South.

How to Help

Watch the video above. Donate to the campaign by October 10, 2013 to fund two additional shoots about the science behind the Antarctic Site Inventory, plus scripting, editing, music, voice-over, sound mixing, color correction and graphics. Don’t forget to share the project on social media so others can do the same.

More information is available on The Penguin Counters Kickstarter page.