Sierra Club Magazine: Rae Wynn-Grant Is Breaking the Mold

For most of her two-decade career, Rae Wynn-Grant has studied big, charismatic carnivores. She’s tracked bears through North American forests and researched lions in East Africa. Now, she hosts Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, becoming the first Black woman to host a major wildlife television series. On a recent taping of the series, I joined Wynn-Grant and the production team as they followed Utah’s Zion National Park biologists conducting mountain lion research. The day began at an abandoned kill site. The smell reached through the trees long before the carcass was in sight: the unmistakable scent of rotting flesh. Beneath a circle of piñon pines, a mule deer lay scattered across the desert floor, little more than fur, ribs, and a skull. Wynn-Grant's goal (is) to help the viewers understand the circle of life, and how delicate wildlife communities are. “Every species is dependent on other species, and even small changes can make cascading effects,” she said. “Predator life is hard!” Read ON.