Nations protect God’s creation

Christian nature lovers might wonder if the new Netflix documentary Our Great National Parks, hosted by former President Barack Obama, is worthwhile, or if it veers toward extreme environmentalism. With some discernment, viewers should really enjoy this beautifully filmed and well-paced five-part series that explores national parks around the globe.

Protected national parks like Yellowstone, the world’s first when it was established in 1872, can have enormous impact on conserving the landscape and wildlife of our natural world. Our Great National Parks seeks to document the positive work being done by nature preserves all over the world, and in doing so, gives viewers a glimpse of the incredible diversity and beauty of the Lord’s creative work.

President Obama, whose Higher Ground Productions is the producer of the series, introduces each park with an overview of its location and unique characteristics, often highlighting the park’s “re-wilding” and conservation efforts. Each episode then moves to a more intimate story of the park’s distinctive animals and animal families.

Every episode makes note of humanity’s impact on the environment and climate and our responsibility as stewards of the globe but does not take an overly heavy-handed, nagging approach. Instead, our narrator highlights the positive work that people have done through establishing and expanding national parks.

A highlight of the first episode is the surfing hippos of Loango National Park in western Gabon. These enormous creatures enjoy crashing through the waves and surf of the Atlantic Ocean each night as they make their way along the coast to their feeding grounds.

Some of the most enjoyable footage of the whole series shows an endangered lemur species, the Decken’s sifaka, that leap from crag to precarious crag, up to 30 feet at a time, as they make their way to and from different groves of trees. A baby sifaka clings to its mama as she confidently bounds high above the ground: One false step, and both would be dashed to pieces, but the mother’s pace is hardly slower than her companions’.

The second episode explores the national parks of Chile’s Patagonia region. A male Chilean stag beetle, whose huge, heavy jaws weigh down his progress, climbs the equivalent of two Eiffel towers, as he catches the scent of a female stag beetle—anything for love, they say! These large distinctive jaws, the largest of any animal in comparison to its body size, also serve to fight off a rival, as two males duel nearly to the death for the right to secure a female companion.

The documentary explores Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park in its last two installments. If viewers can ignore a few references to “millions of years,” and don’t mind the former president being the narrator, they will marvel at the incredible scenery and unique stories of this ode to the world’s national parks.