Doug McConnell spent much of his adult life doing something that sounds simple and is not: he helped people look closely at the places where they lived. For decades he turned Northern California’s open spaces, back roads, and overlooked corners into familiar destinations people came to recognize and talk about, shown not as scenery but as places shaped by human care and choice. He died on January 13th 2026, after nearly half a century on air and in the field, still working, still curious, still convinced that attention to land mattered. He was a broadcaster, but his real subject was place. McConnell’s programs treated public land as something worth learning about, not just visiting. He did not lecture or scold. He did not argue from a studio desk. He drove, walked, hiked, climbed, and filmed. He listened to rangers, volunteers, advocates, and scientists, and tried to explain what they were doing in plain terms to viewers who might never attend a planning meeting or read an environmental report. McConnell often described himself as someone fortunate to have joined two long-held interests: nature and storytelling. “Getting a chance to do what I have been now doing for so many decades, which is to go wander around, usually with a small camera team and put the spotlight on great people, great places and the wonderful people doing great things on our behalf, has really been a way for me to combine my two passions in life,” he once told the Midpeninsula Regional…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed