For 20 years, Joel Sartore has been on a quest: to photograph every animal species in human care, and then some. This year, on the 20th anniversary of the Photo Ark somewhere in Australia, Sartore photographed the project’s 18,000th animal. He’s not totally sure which one pushed the project over the threshold, but gives it to the critically endangered red handfish (Thymichthys politus) a grumpy, red Muppet of a fish that could use the publicity. When Mongabay asked Sartore, just a few days after the official anniversary, about the last animal he had photographed, he got very excited about a small moth on the screen door of his home in the U.S. state of Nebraska. He coaxed it into an old cup and photographed it. He was still waiting on an identification from a couple of moth experts, who, he notes, are night owls. Portrait of National Geographic photographer and PhotoARK founder Joel Sartore with frill necked lizard, (Chlamydosaurus kingii). Photo by Douglas Gimesy for National Geographic Photo Ark. If you find Joel, you’ll likely find him working. Midwestern-friendly, practical, and optimistic, the National Geographic photographer shoots wherever animals turn up. This includes zoos and aquariums, pet shops, bioblitzes — where scientists and volunteers race to find and document as many species as they can — stream samplings by the Tennessee Valley Authority (a power utility), a cave in Kenya, and, as in the case of the moth, on his porch. When it comes to scheduling, “I would say we…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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