If you can imagine a place or a country on this earth, Bill Weir has probably been there and reported on it.

He has covered war zones, ancient underwater cities, remote wilderness regions and everyday American lives—he also just returned from covering the devastation in Puerto Rico left behind in the wake of Hurricane Maria and weathering Hurricane Irma in the Florida Keys. 

“Puerto Rico is the worst humanitarian disaster I’ve seen since Katrina,” said Weir. 

“The whole island is broken in so many different ways. The big downtown area and the beaches in San Juan are getting back on their feet faster than most but most of the island is completely devastated.” 

While Weir noted that, with Irma, the Keys experienced structural devastation, the loss of life was low. However, many places in the islands didn’t fare as well with Maria. 

“I’ve never seen anything like the aftermath on Vieques. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off. Every tree is gonStrips of greenery,” he said. “Tourism is their bread and butter and they are going to be hurting.”

Weir talked about the importance of revisiting hurricane devastated areas as one of the ways in which travelers can support storm-ravaged destinations. 

“It takes a certain type of adventure traveler to go to these places but the upside is that you get so much gratitude from the people who depend on those dollars to survive and there is still enough natural beauty and undersea life to make it worth your while,” Weir noted. 

“People might make a trip around the idea of a relief vacation to get some money back in there and show them our support,” he added.

“Tourism has never been a monster driver of the economy in Puerto Rico—it’s only maybe 8 percent or less—but I know that fishing captains and bartenders in the Keys and the islands have said to me 'make sure you tell people we are going to be back up and running. We are going to rebuild. We will be ready to host them as soon as we possibly can.”

Weir has found a niche reporting on destinations around the world that are struggling to survive. As Puerto Rico begins to heal from the wounds of Maria, his show “The Wonder List” shines a spotlight on other destinations that are also struggling to survive.

In a recent interview with TravelPulse, Weir discusses how “The Wonder List” came to be and why it is so important that we pay attention now. 

Travel Pulse: How did the Wonder List come to be? 

Bill Weir: I originally came to CNN from ABC to do a primetime show. But I ended up on the air the week that MH370 disappeared and talked about that for the first month. 

My bosses recognized my misery and they said: “Why don’t you come up with an original series…”

There was an appetite for documentary storytelling and so I said: “I know exactly what I would do…” I have a daughter. She is going to turn my age in the year 2050, so I wonder: how many elephants will be left in the wild; how many tigers in India; how many glaciers in the Alps, will Venice still be above water; will there still be pristine, untouched islands in the South Pacific?

So wonder is both a noun and a verb. We travel to the wonders of the planet and then wonder what we are doing to them and about the choices we make.

Sometimes its cultural shifts that are changing a place, sometimes its political, sometimes its environmental, but when you make people fall in love with their planet again on sort of a primal level, and immerse them with escapist adventure and glorious pictures then it’s easier to pivot to 'well, here’s what’s happening in this place and here is how we could lose it if we are not careful.” 

Travel porn is a candy-coating but at the center is this sort of lump of important existential worry and concern. 

When I was a kid people talked about sea-level rise, but now you can actually see it. Do you think it’s hard for people to comprehend these changes?

READ MORE: Global Tourism is at a Crowded Crossroads

We live such pampered and sheltered lives its hard to notice climate change from an air-conditioned mall or from our morning commute. But, when you talk to a fisherman in Madagascar or a farmer in the Nile Delta, there’s no debate that things are changing for the worse, and the ramifications of that touch us all.

TP: How do you create the Wonder List and choose the destinations?

BW: We look for variety and spread it around and we hope to do every continent in each season in some way. Then it’s a hunt for great stories, and sometimes the location becomes secondary.

TP: What is one example?

BW: I’ve always wanted to go to Patagonia but what really drew me in was the story of Doug and Kris Tompkins, these millionaires who started the North Face and Patagonia clothing companies and who became disenfranchised by consumer culture and cashed in all their stock and sold all their art and started buying up these huge chunks of land in Chile and Argentina to turn them into national parks and who were reviled by the locals who were deeply suspicious of their motives. 

That to me is just a great story. What happens when gringos drop from the sky and start telling gauchos how to live? Then we talk about what wilderness means to us and how we can save it. 

Really, I have the best job where I can open the atlas and say I wonder what’s happening in Madagascar or New Zealand. 

TP: Between global warming, politics, conservation and overcrowding, which do you believe is threatening the planet and its treasures the most? 

BW: I think it’s the very American idea that you can have it all and the consumerist society that we have all grown accustomed to. It’s setting us up for destruction.

Millions upon millions of people in China and India and now have disposable income and what do they want? They want what we want: two flat-screen TVs, two cars in the garage and a 2,000-square-foot home. We don’t have enough planet for that. 

How we have altered the chemistry of the sky and the ocean is a result of that globalization and progress. Sea level rise will be the first thing to smack us in the face on a financial basis…That seems to be the most pressing right now. 

TP: Is there a certain destination that you think is on the verge of breaking through, somewhere travelers and fans of the show can get to before it’s on “The Wonder List?”

BW: Portugal and Laos are two places that I keep hearing bubbling up but if they do go, all “The Wonder List” viewers must promise that they tread lightly and travel consciously to these undiscovered gems. 

TP: Last question: You travel for work and take on some of the world’s most challenging destinations but where would you go on vacation? 

I never thought I’d say this, but I have a little lake cabin in New Jersey. 

The new season of the Wonder List will begin this Saturday. Weir travels to Patagonia, Alaska, Egypt, Madagascar, Peru and New Zealand. For those who can’t wait, the last season of the show is streaming now on CNN.