Forrest Galante
Forrest Galante is an American outdoor adventurer and television personality. He works in the field of wildlife biology, specializing in the exploration of animals on the brink of extinction. He is the host of the television show Extinct or Alive on Animal Planet.
Early life
Shortly after his birth in Zimbabwe, Galante and his family moved to Harare, where his mother ran a safari business. He and his sister were raised on a farm that cultivated flowers and fruit, and served as a home to livestock and wild African animals. Throughout his youth, Galante spent time exploring the African bush, learning to wrangle snakes, trap small animals, and snorkel the reefs of the Bazaruto Archipelago. In Zimbabwe, he attended an English boarding school and headed up the Junior Herpetology Society, studying native flora and fauna.In 2001, following the political uprising in Zimbabwe, which led to the invasion and burning of the family farm, Galante was forced to return to California. He resumed his education in Santa Barbara, where he graduated from high school and later earned a degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Galante's interest in wildlife and conservation continued into his adulthood. "After university, I set out to explore the world looking for the most beautiful, remote and wild places on the planet," he said. "I have been bitten by a venomous snake, in a plane crash, mauled by a lion, charged by a hippo, stung by a man-of-war jellyfish, bitten by a shark, in a car wreck, tumbled off a waterfall and stabbed by a stingray."
Career
In 2013, Galante made his first foray into television with an appearance on the Discovery Channel's Naked and Afraid, where he participated in the show's 21-day survival challenge. He completed the challenge—being dropped with a stranger in the remote section of northwestern Panama—and scored one of the highest PSR in the show's history.In 2016, Galante and his photographer were among the first to ever swim with crocodiles, wearing special suits that mimic the crocodile's scaly skin and block the body's electrical current, allowing them to capture the reptile's natural behavior. The duo came within inches of the crocodiles, filming them in their authentic habitat for their film Dancing with Dragons.
On June 10, 2018, Galante's docu-series, Extinct or Alive premiered on Animal Planet. The show sought to reveal whether animals believed to be extinct can potentially still be found. In each episode, Galante explored the habitats of these animals, often seeking protection to help preserve the species and encourage their continued survival. Destinations have included Taiwan, Newfoundland, and Madagascar. Forrest Galante has stated that he is committed to uncovering the thyalcine and, after two expeditions, will continue searching.
Galante produced the History Channel show Face the Beast where two men attempt to retrace the steps of predators going on unexplained, killing rampages against humans. In 2019 he appeared on 24 episodes of Natures Strangest Mysteries: Solved.
Galante has also made media appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience, The Nightly Show, Shark Week, and The TODAY Show. As well as GQ, CNN, HLN, and NowThis.
In 2019, Galante testified in front of the US Congress to promote legislature change and increase funding for conservation.
Notable Discoveries
In his search for unique wildlife, Galante has visited over 60 countries.During filming for the show in 2018, a camera trap caught apparent footage of a Zanzibar leopard on Unguja Island. The animal appeared smaller than specimens from the mainland, and seemed to have smaller, more solid spots than normally seen on African leopards. Further investigations are planned in order to confirm whether or not this is a Zanzibar leopard, and whether a viable population still exists.
During the shooting of a Shark Week special on the island of Sri Lanka, Forrest's wife Jessica discovered a pair of deceased sharks that had previously been killed by fishermen. Although one of the sharks turned out to be a bull shark, DNA testing of the second specimen suggested that it could be a Pondicherry shark, a species that hadn't been seen since 1979. Although some regional experts are confident that the shark found in the episode is a Pondicherry shark, additional molecular confirmation is needed before the shark's identity can be confirmed.
While shooting footage for Season 2 on the remote Galápagos Islands chain in February 2019, the team discovered a single female Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise, presumed extinct since 1906. Members of the Turtle Conservancy later analyzed the findings, saying that pending genetic confirmation, the photos "almost undoubtedly" show the lost animal. The tortoise was described as being “in good health” but “underweight,” and was transported to the Fausto Llerena Tortoise Breeding Center in Isla Santa Cruz for the purpose of conservation and genetic tests. Trace evidence found on the expedition indicated that more individuals likely exist in the wild, and new searches were being planned to find a male Fernandina Tortoise that could potentially save the species. Washington Tapia-Aguilera, a biologist at the Galapagos Conservancy and director of the Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative, disputes these events, saying he, not Galante, actually decided where to look for the tortoise and Ecuadorian park ranger Jeffreys Málaga was the one that knew the land, tracked the tortoise, and ultimately made the discovery before calling over the rest of the team. "Forrest and his team first are not scientists nor were they part of the scientific expedition," Tapia-Aguilera said."
While shooting footage for Season 2 on the island of Borneo in April and May 2019, the team caught five pieces of footage on a camera trap overlooking a mineral spring that clearly showed the Miller's grizzled langur, presumed extinct since 2011, at both day and night.
While shooting footage for Season 2 in Zimbabwe in 2019, the team collected DNA samples from an abnormally large lion that had recently been sighted in the area. Upon analyzing the DNA, the male was found to have 14% different DNA from a typical African lion, suggesting that it may have remnant genetics from the Cape lion population, which went extinct in the 1800s. The team theorizes that, through continued breeding, a pure Cape lion might one day be brought back.
While shooting footage for Season 2 at Dong Mo Lake in Vietnam in 2019, the team, along with members of the Asian Turtle Program, captured footage of a Yangtze giant softshell turtle, a functionally extinct species with only three known surviving individuals, surfacing from the lake for a brief period. Although efforts to bring a surviving female of the species to the lake to possibly breed with the individual recorded in the episode failed due to her death in April 2019, the team hopes that their findings could contribute to a possible rescue of the species from extinction.
While shooting footage for Season 2 in Colombia, the team caught and collected confirmed DNA samples from multiple individuals, including juveniles, of the Rio Apaporis caiman, a subspecies of Spectacled caiman that had been believed to be extinct for over 30 years, suggesting that a healthy breeding population may exist in the area. A Colombian scientist named Sergio Balaguera-Reina had discovered the caiman prior to Galante's excursion and published a paper on it in 2019. Balaguera-Reina further disputes the claim that the caiman was believed to be extinct, saying, "We never thought that this caiman was extinct. But the political situation in Colombia prevented biologists from safely accessing the animal’s habitat to confirm that it’s still there." "The ongoing conservation work by an in-country scientist like Sergio is the best news of all,” Galante remarked.