On a full-moon night, a boy climbed onto a tree to sit with his friend. Around midnight, they heard a strange call.
The words from a book he had once read came to life: the sawing call of the leopard.
Both were instantly wide-awake, sitting high up with their feet dangling, surrounded by moonlight and shadows. And then, they noticed the leopard walking under the tree, climbing onto the trunk beside them and putting its paws up. They stopped breathing as the leopard attempted to climb.
Instead, it called again, its breath shone through the moonlight. Then, just like that, it disappeared into the darkness.
At that moment, National Geographic filmmaker Sandesh Kadur realized this was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“To capture moments like this, that connected me so deeply to the natural world,” Kadur told the audience gathered in the Performing Arts Center on Jan. 28. “And through those images, I wanted to connect people around to a world that is slowly being lost and inspire them to care and take action.”
That same mission is what brought Kadur to the Central Coast, selected to be a speaker for Cal Poly Arts’ National Geographic Live series, according to Coralee Macias, a programming and development specialist for Cal Poly Arts. The organization prioritizes bringing diverse global voices to campus, Kadur’s work offering “the perfect combination of entertainment and education,” she said.
In 1996, Kadur moved from India to the smallest town he’s ever lived in, Brownsville, Texas, at the southernmost tip of the state. He enrolled in a community college that accepted just about anyone, despite not completing high school. On free days, he found himself nearby in the Rio Grande Valley. No mountains. No dramatic landscapes. Just a river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.
“I was pretty depressed in this unfamiliar town. So I decided to drown my despair underwater,” Kadur said to the crowd.
Kadur began teaching himself underwater filmmaking. He filmed turtles in Mexico, including Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, the world’s most endangered species.
Kadur found many of his opportunities through Gorgas Science Society, a small science club he discovered at his community college campus. The club operated a field station five hours south in a transition zone between North and South America. Kadur described the experience as the “silver lining” of Brownsville, falling in love with the landscape of the forest and its biodiversity.
The region blends tree and bird species from both continents. The hands-on fieldwork gave Kadur a newfound knowledge of birds, expertise that impressed his college professors.
That immersive experience would later define his approach to conservation storytelling. His films aimed to make wildlife visible to the public by documenting species and ecosystems that are overlooked. Currently, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service debate changes to the Endangered Species Act and delay protections for certain species, more than 1,300 species remain at risk nationwide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
About 40% of U.S. wildlife, plants and ecosystems are at risk of collapse. The changes include delayed protections for species such as the monarch butterfly and ongoing debates over public land use. Conservation advocates warn that delayed protections often stem from a lack of public awareness, a gap Kadur hopes to fill with documentary filmmaking.
“When you don’t see something,” Kadur said. “There’s nothing you want to conserve.”
That initial passion found through his time with the Gorgas Science Society led Kadur to a three-month summer project in India as an apprentice for award-winning wildlife filmmaker, John Bax.
The opportunity would serve as a ticket back to his home country. His plan was to accompany Bax and help film the wildlife of a region that had barely been documented at the time, around 1997 or 1998.
One week before their departure, Bax called him and said, “Sandesh, I can’t go to India.” Bax believed he was too old to go on the trip.
“My dream was shattered before it had even begun. And once John made up his mind, that was it,” Kadur told the crowd.
He went back to his small college in Texas. The head of the field station program, Professor Lawrence Loff, asked him, “Do you still want to make the film?”
As his mentor, Loff encouraged Kadur to continue the project independently. With no clue on how to begin a documentary, he figured he needed at least a camera and a tripod, gear that could cost thousands. At the time, the Sony DSR-200 camera had just come onto the market. When Kadur started, drones didn’t exist and editing systems could cost upwards of $100,000.
“Storytelling evolves with technology today. You already have the best camera in the world, the one that’s with you,” Kadur said. “Every one of you has a phone capable of capturing powerful images. Use it. Spend your days outside. Find stories that haven’t been told.”
He set out for Southern India, with nothing but a camera and tripod.
As summer came to a close, he did not feel his journey in India had reached its end. He still barely knew how to use the equipment.
So, Kadur decided to drop out of college — much to his parents’ disappointment, staying in India for three years. He lived in tents, bus stations and the homes of people who took him in.
He filmed everything. From ants on the forest floor to elephants to birds like the great hornbill, along with many other species endemic to the Western Ghats, (even catching a glimpse of the purple frog that lives underground and comes out for just two weeks of the year).
In 2002, “Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon,” was released.
The documentary changed Kadur’s career, winning numerous awards globally. It was picked up by the Discovery Channel and broadcasted internationally. He was able to pay his Loff back the funds lent initially for gear.
Kadur, through his unconventional path of learning filmmaking through immersion in the field rather than formal coursework, encouraged students to spend more time engaging directly with the environments and stories they care about within his talk.
“Nature doesn’t follow scripts,” he said. “You observe, respond and let the story guide you instead of forcing it.”
During his visit to Cal Poly, Kadur spent time with students in the Art and Design Department, offering advice to aspiring storytellers interested in nature photography and filmmaking. He emphasized the three P’s – passion, patience, and persistence – and shared career advice, including how to apply for National Geographic grants.
Macias said she hoped attendees left the event feeling inspired and curious about the world around them. She also emphasized the power of storytelling as a catalyst for real-world change, pointing to Kadur’s first documentary work in 2002 that helped bring international attention to the Western Ghats.
“It’s important that students hear firsthand about the impact they can have in the world,” Macias said.
In 2013, a coffee-table book of “Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon” was launched by the Prime Minister of India. Together, they helped establish the Western Ghats as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Kadur says he works to keep his focus on “marrying” visual storytelling with cultural context. His images bring these two worlds together in media that go places where they can make a difference to policymakers, decision-makers, schools and children for long-term change.
“We often act as though we are above everything else, but the truth is we depend on every part of the natural world for our survival,” he said.
One recent expedition he journeyed to was in a region of the Eastern Himalayas called the Siang Valley. The name of the river itself, Siang, comes from the Adi language, where si means “water” and ang means “heart”, reflecting its role as “the heart of water” for the valley. They searched for new species, like tiny fish and insects, as well as new data, behaviors and ecological relationships because much of this region has never been studied.
In places like the Siang Valley, Kadur emphasized that protection is urgent, noting that very little wilderness remains.
“Our human population has reached a tipping point, and we must preserve every remaining piece of intact habitat,” he told the crowd.
In India, for example, less than 5% of the landscape is protected according to Nature Sustainability, World Resources Institute (WRI).
“If we can’t live responsibly within the 95% of land we already occupy,” Kadur asked the crowd, “how long can that final five percent continue to sustain us?”
Kadur pointed to a quote by forestry engineer and ecologist, Baba Diom, that helped shape his approach to conservation: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. And we will understand only what we are taught.”
Inspired by this outlook, Kadur returned to India and founded a company called Felis, with a motto: We create to conserve. They make books, films, and stories that help people want to protect the world they live in. To learn more visit Felis and the National Geographic.