National Geographic is bringing Christian Cooper, the viral Black birdwatcher who was falsely accused of threatening a white woman in Central Park, his own TV show.
Cooper will host a new series for Nat Geo called Extraordinary Birder, where viewers will be thrown into Cooper’s “wild, wonderful, and unpredictable world of birds.” Cooper has previously stated in interviews that he has been bird watching since he was ten years old.
“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,” it said in a statement.
The new series has yet to be given a premiere date, but Cooper told The New York Times that when Nat Geo approached him with the concept around a year ago, he was “all in.”
“I was all in,” he said. “I love spreading the gospel of birding.”
The show will launch in the spring of 2023, according to a National Geographic spokesperson.
On Facebook, Cooper expressed his excitement; he wrote, “Birding has exploded in popularity recently, and I’m looking forward to putting a spotlight on these amazing creatures and the extraordinary birders who love them and work to protect them!”
In 2020, the birdwatcher gained global attention after recording a white woman calling the cops and making false charges about him threatening her and her dog in New York City’s Central Park.
