Christian Cooper, the man who went viral after recording a woman angrily refusing to put her dog on a leash — the woman then called 911 in dramatic fashion — has landed a new project on National Geographic.
“Lifelong birder Christian Cooper will take us into the wild, wonderful and unpredictable world of birds in his new show, The Extraordinary Birder,” said National Geographic TV on Twitter.
In May 2020, it was bird migration season, and veteran bird watcher Christian Cooper was ready with his binoculars in hand. Cooper came across a woman with her dog and asked her to put the dog on a leash, per park rules.
Things escalated quickly, and Cooper pulled out his phone to record the entire ordeal. “An African-American man is threatening my life!” the woman told emergency operators in a moment that quickly went viral. The entire internet, it seemed, took the woman to task for making false accusations - an action many felt could have put Cooper at risk.
“I’m not excusing the racism,” Cooper told The New York Times. “But I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart.” On social media, Cooper posted, “She went racial. There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage.”
Cooper tried to be a peaceful force in an ugly situation, and that attitude paid off. After the announcement of his new show, Cooper shared his excitement.
“I love spreading the gospel of birding,” he said in the Times interview.
National Geographic announced this week that, Cooper will take viewers on a ride. “Whether braving stormy seas in Alaska for puffins, trekking into rainforests in Puerto Rico for parrots, or scaling a bridge in Manhattan for a peregrine falcon, he does whatever it takes to learn about these extraordinary feathered creatures and show us the remarkable world in the sky above,” the network said in a statement.
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