Forrest Galante came into fame the same way he came into the world: naked.
But the Santa Barbara resident has evolved far past his initial spot on the Discovery Channel reality survival show Naked and Afraid and now hosts his own series on Animal Planet’s Extinct or Alive, where he tracks and finds animals that have been mistakenly declared extinct. His finds include the Zanzibar leopard, the Pondicherry shark, and the Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise.
Galante also just wrote his first book ― Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery ― which is out this month in print. It starts with his free-living childhood on a 200-acre Zimbabwe farm and follows his career through civil unrest in Africa; life-threatening bites, fights, and falls across the globe; and an investigation into the connection between COVID-19 and the mistreatment of wildlife.
Read more about the UCSB biology grad and find his book at forrestgalante.com.