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While some people express their thoughts about the natural world through their writings, Nebraska-born photographer Tom Mangelsen expresses his feelings through photographs of the wildlife he has encountered.
When Mangelsen finished high school and went to college in the 1960s, he was not sure of a major or a career. At first, he chose to study business at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). However, he knew from his early days of accompanying his three brothers and father to hunt, fish, and trap near their Grand Island home that he wanted to be involved in the outdoors.
At UNL, he had a life-changing meeting with Paul Johnsgard, a professor of ornithology. “He was the biggest influence in my life,” Mangelsen said of Johnsgard, who died in 2021 at the age of 89. “He taught me a lot about natural history. He had done more than a hundred books on natural history and ornithology and was possibly the most prolific nature history writer in Nebraska.”
Mangelsen shifted his major to zoology, in which he then earned a degree at Doane College (now Doane University) in Crete in 1969. He continued to associate with Johnsgard, who hired him as a grad student to count ducks on the Platte River for a semester. “I was counting all types of ducks,” recalled Mangelsen, who worked for two more years as a field assistant traveling all over North America. Johnsgard was honored later as an professor emeritus for his works. “He took me under his wing,” Mangelsen said, as the professor introduced him to photography and taught him how to photograph birds in flight. Every spring from then on, they visited the Platte River to watch sandhill cranes pause there on their northbound migration to Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. He also gave up hunting, fishing, and trapping to concentrate on photography.
In 1970, Mangelsen shifted his studies to the University of Colorado’s Mountain Research Station near the small town of Nederland. He studied arctic alpine ecology and improved his photography skills while living in a former mining cabin. Not forgetting where he grew up, he returned annually to Nebraska for the spring migration of the sandhill cranes. Wanting to learn more about them, he journeyed to where they wintered in the southern states, as well as to their nesting grounds in Alaska.
In the early 1970s, along with his brother, David, Mangelsen began selling prints of his bird photos. In 1978, he opened a photography gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, where he established a home nearby in the shadows of the Grand Teton Mountains.
A few years later, National Geographic made plans for a documentary film about whooping cranes, and the staffers there decided to lean on Mangelsen for his experience with the sandhill cranes (which sometimes accompany the whoopers). So, they hired him as a cinematographer for the project, called Flight of the Whooping Crane, which aired in 1984 and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Six years later, he worked not only behind the cameras, but produced and directed a PBS-BBC production, Cranes of the Grey Wind, with a narration written by Johnsgard.
Mangelsen’s interest in the world grew, and rather than writing about it, as some do, he showed photographs of its wildlife and their habitats. If the old adage of “a picture is worth a thousand words” can be applied, he began creating beautiful essays to introduce others to the wonders of where we live.
Among his many images are elephants visiting a waterhole in Namibia, a mother cheetah cuddling her cub in the grasses of Kenya, a pair of penguins standing tall in the frozen wasteland of South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic, lions lazing in a tree in Tanzania, and a group of white Camargue horses splashing through sprays of water while galloping in a river in southern France.
Mangelsen has also recorded landscapes. Baobab trees stand as silhouettes in front of a low-lying sun in eastern Africa, a tall, pyramid-shaped sand dune rises above the plains in the southwestern part of that continent, an array of wildflowers brighten California’s Carrizo Plain, and the rich autumn colors of New Hampshire woods reflect in a pond.
Over the years, he traveled across all seven continents, roaming from the Arctic to Antarctica. Mangelsen doesn’t pop in and out of a place like a tourist might—he immerses himself in it. For 10 years, he journeyed to the small Canadian community of Churchill (population 890) on the western shore of Hudson Bay to photograph the polar bears that live near there. He came in the spring, summer, and fall, visiting when they were on land rather than living on the ice in the bay during the cold months. From those visits came his book, Polar Dance. Its title image shows two bears tussling while standing on their hind legs, cavorting around each other as if in a dance. Another image that has become famous, “Bad Boys of the Arctic,” shows three polar bears, one lying back against a mound of snow while two younger ones stand nearby. Despite its title, Mangelsen explained the bear lying down is actually a mother bear taking a moment to scratch her back while her male cubs wait. Other pictures show the white bears inspecting ice floes, blending into banks of snow, swimming in waters while unaffected by the cold, and lying in the warm green meadows of summer.
Mangelsen is always on the go. If there’s light, he’s out there to use it. He will hit the road before sunrise to reach a particular vantage point and linger until after it sets to photograph in the twilight or when the stars shine. He’s dedicated and patient. He told Anderson Cooper of 60 Minutes that he spent up to 14 hours a day for 42 days searching for a particular cougar, which he finally did, producing a picture of her coming out of a den one evening.
His first camera, a Pentax, used film. However, around 2005, he decided digital equipment was good enough to replace film. Now, he packs Nikon bodies and several lenses ranging from a fisheye to long, heavy telephotos. He also carries an assortment of filters and other items, such as a tripod to provide a stable platform when using telephoto lenses and shooting in low light. In the 60 Minutes segment, Mangelsen’s camera can be heard clicking a series of rapid-fire shots almost like a buzz.
Throughout his career, Mangelsen has shot more than 4 million pictures. Prices for prints that hang in his galleries (in Jackson; Park City, Utah; and La Jolla, California) and are displayed on his website, mangelsen.com, range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands, depending on size and the type of display. A few years ago, he began offering bronzes cast of some of the animals in his images. These cost anywhere from $2,500 to $15,000.
Mangelsen’s works have earned him worldwide recognition. In 2010, Outdoor Photography magazine named him as one of its “40 most influential photographers.” That same year, the International League of Conservation Photographers (of which he was a founding member) named “Polar Dance” as one of the “40 most influential photographs of all time.” In 2011, Nature’s Best Photography named him Conservation Photographer of the Year. His works are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. He is involved with the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall herself has accompanied him to witness the passage of the sandhill cranes on the Platte. He co-founded the Cougar Fund. Mangelsen is a board ambassador for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and holds honorary doctorate degrees from Doane and the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
One of his pictures has been mentioned by many as being one of the best wildlife photos ever. Titled “Catch of the Day,” the 1988 photo shows a sockeye salmon leaping up a segment of a waterfall on the McNeil River in Alaska only to find itself entering the open mouth of an Alaskan brown bear. According to Outside magazine, Mangelsen used a remote trigger, and, when he saw a fish leap, he fired a shot. However, he didn’t realize the “catch” he had until going through the processed pictures later.
When asked by Anderson Cooper if he uses post-shoot digital programs like Photoshop, he said no, and that what he sees when he shoots a picture is what people see in his prints, nothing more, nothing less.
He has also become known for photographs of one particular bear. About 19 years ago, some began to report that a grizzly bear was frequenting the area around Jackson. “There hadn’t been any resident grizzly bears that lived here year-round for a long time. Some would travel through the park, but there were no resident bears for about 50-plus years,” explained Mangelsen, who lives on the edge of the park with a postcard view of the sharp-edged mountains. “So, when one showed up with three new cubs following it one spring, it caught everyone’s attention, including mine.”
Believed to have been born in 1996, the bear was captured in 2001 by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, fitted with a radio collar and given a tag, 399, which became her nickname. “So, I went 30 miles up into Teton Park where she was reported and I saw her one late evening on the Oxbow Bend feeding on an old carcass. That was my first sighting of her and I thought, ‘that was cool,’ and figured that was a one-off sighting and I probably wouldn’t see her again.”
The next spring, Mangelsen and an assistant saw Grizzly 399 feeding on fresh grasses along a roadside with three cubs. They saw her some more that spring, but in the summer she disappeared, possibly up into the high country. Then, she returned to the lower areas, possibly feeding on berries.
Mangelsen, who realized she was a beautiful rarity and a great mother, wondered if he could film her. He contacted author Todd Wilkinson and worked up a story about her and the cubs for a Teton-area magazine. “Then we did a book on her,” Mangelsen said. “Of course, I started making prints, and pretty soon bear jams (traffic blocks) went from 10 or 20 people to up to almost a thousand in the last days of her life. Her fame became worldwide. She was the most famous bear.”
Grizzly 399 was collared at least six times but shrugged off each one. Finally, the authorities thought she was so well-known that sightings of her would suffice. Mangelsen never used telemetry to track Grizzly 399. He just knew her haunts and could identify her by her markings. Once he even saw her in the pond outside his house. “I didn’t go trekking after her, that’s just asking for trouble,” Mangelsen said.
He leaned on cinematographers Sandy Mell and her partner, Greg Balvin, for some help. “He referred to us because we’re probably out in the field more than he is,” she said. “We knew 399 before we met Tom who’s easy to work alongside.”
At one time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) was being petitioned by the governor, legislators, and the Game and Fish Department in Wyoming to take grizzlies off the endangered species list so they could be hunted for sport. “In other words, killed for fun,” Mangelsen said. “There’s no reason to kill grizzlies and cougars unless they’re an imminent threat, which they rarely are.”
It’s estimated that there was once about 100,000 grizzlies who lived in North America. Now, about 30,000 live in Alaska, 29,000 in Canada, and less than 2,000 in the lower 48 states, with about 725 in the Yellowstone-Teton area.
In 2017, the USFWS decided to allow the hunting of grizzlies, and Wyoming decided to permit 22 to be hunted. “There were hunters who thought she’d be the biggest trophy and they could brag about killing the most popular bear that ever lived,” Mangelsen added. “There was some kind of mental skip in their brains.”
More than 7,000 people applied for permits to hunt the grizzlies. Mangelsen himself applied, and won one of the permits, but planned not to use it, just to deprive a hunter of its use. Before one bear could be shot, the decision to shoot the bears went to court. In July 2018, a federal judge reinstated the ban, and the hunt was off.
Knowing that male grizzlies would kill her cubs, Grizzly 399 would lead them to the lower elevations where they could be somewhat near people along the roadways, which the males did not like. “She felt more safe around people, a habitat that other bears don’t necessarily use. She was remarkable to integrate her lifestyle with a lot of people and vice versa along the roadsides. Sometimes she’d walk right past a car by five feet,” Mangelsen said. However, just because she and her cubs became somewhat accustomed to people, that didn’t mean anyone could approach them. With the increasing popularity of the grizzlies, a group of area volunteers formed the Grand Teton Wildlife Brigade to maintain a safe distance between the bears and visitors.
Grizzly 399 bore eight litters, including a set of quadruplets, three sets of triplets, several twins, and some singles, 28 cubs in all. Officials estimate that because of her, more than three dozen other bears came to call the Tetons their home.
Unfortunately, poachers and traffic take their toll. From 2009 to 2023, 49 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem died when hit by vehicles. And so it was in the dark of one night in October 2024 that a car traveling on a highway about 50 miles south of Jackson hit and killed Grizzly 399 while she fed on a carcass with a cub. “She had been going there about four, five years,” Mangelsen said. “Also, archers would kill deer and elk and leave gut piles along the roads. They had been feeding on a carcass for a day.”
Mangelsen said authorities did nothing to protect her. “They knew she had this particular carcass because people took pictures and videos and called them to say she’s there with this cub,” he said. “They didn’t put up any flashing signs, didn’t put any people on the road. I’m talking about all the agencies. They knew she had been there since the night before. Why on earth didn’t they remove the carcass and haze her off the road? It’s unconscionable to me and negligent.”
“I’m really upset about that because she would most likely be alive today if they had done that,” Mangelsen added. He said no one knows the whereabouts of the cub, which was possibly too young yet to fend for itself.
Todd Wilkinson, an environmental journalist who has worked with Mangelsen for years, said the photographer has been at the forefront of using photography to elevate awareness, sympathy, and empathy for wildlife in their natural habitat. “This really is a passion project for this humble boy from Nebraska.”
For more information, visit mangelsen.com.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
