How Charles Munn is Saving the Amazon

more invested in protecting it. Over the past four decades, the conservation biologist has helped to preserve over twelve million acres of rainforest in South America, home to what he describes as the most biologically diverse protected areas on Earth. And I've been there. I went to Peru with Charles Mount in two thousand to shoot a documentary for T n T, directed by the Great Robert Drew. Months tours are memorable, but the byproducts are better local jobs, community engagement,

and a surge in the value of the rainforest. Still, for the son of a legendary Palm beach family, it's a delicate balance between access and exploitation, one he prepared

for in a different type of jungle. I was working for the Bronx Zoo or the Field Division of the Bronx Zoo, which is the headquarters are really what calls itself the Wildlife Conservation Society before the New York Well it was it was the New York Zoological Society originally and has several zoos and the aquarium and the Central

Park Zoo, the Bronx Zoo. The International Division does conservation field work research on rare species, wildlife species, and mostly the tropics and and some also temperate latitudes China, a lot of a lot of countries around the world, usually seventy countries they work in doing field conservation. So they're one of the biggest conservation groups in the world that headquartered in the Bronx Well, they're their headquarters of the

Bronx OOO. Yes, indeed, And how long have you been working with them At the point that I met you, I've been working for them for sixteen years. At that point, I was working in the Amazon the whole time. My specialty was the Amazon and other parts of tropical South America. And you grew up in suburban d C. In Baltimore area, the Baltimore area. You lived on a piece of property that was adjacent to some reserve that you became well, I have a small conservation easement that I protected, um

fifty acres from development. It was going to be turned into twenty or thirty houses, and I was able to buy it when I was young and protected. And it has a oak trees and other large asciduous trees that are more than three ft thick, and so there is I think it's the tallest, biggest forest. It's not a

big forest, but it's a fifty acres. But I think of the biggest trees within a half an hour of the Amtrak line between New York and Washington, I think I think they're bigger than in any of the protected areas of the Maryland state, or Pennsylvania or New York. What was it about you when you were that age that you decided you wanted to take money of yours and buy land and preserve How old were you when you executed that deal. Let's see, I think it must

have been sixteen or seventeen. I had to convince my trustee to dip into what was going to be resources, which I wasn't supposed to be able to do, but since it was not a bad thing to do, he eventually agree. Because I was already fanatical about protecting nature. What do you think it was mean most sixteen year olds, I think, isn't saying, oh, let's go by this fifty acres of land with these wonderful trees adjacent to the Amtrak line and preserve it. Why were you hitting in

that direction? I just think I had been hypnotized by some very beautiful songbirds when I was nine year old boy, and truly, yeah, they just captivated me. And I always felt since then that if I could, if other people could see the birds as and other beautiful animals as well as I did, they would also fall in love with them and want to protect the habitat. So it's

as simple as that. Tell us about Chandler Robbins Well, Shannon Robbins is appropriately named rob He was a great ornithologist who were one of the best bird guides in the history of the world. And he was worked for the U. S. Government as a field biologist as a

bird scientist for them in Laurel, Maryland. When I was a young boy, he was our idol because he would come up to the Maryland Ornithological Society meeting is every May in Ocean City and he would be like the God when he would appear, so I'd go out birding with him, you know, try to tag along with him and other serious older birders and see if I could learn something. But but where does this birding begin? Where does your passion for this begin? Well, it's the white

throated sparrow and the myrtle warbler in breeding plumage. Specifically, if you see either of those in breeding plumage up close, it will change your life forever. And you were how old when they change your life? And nine and you're sitting in the backyard of your home, your family's home. Actually, the white throated sparrow was at the neighbor's bird feeder because on the wintertime they have a boring plumage and then they switched to their breeding plumage. And that's pretty spectacular.

And merble warbler comes through in May every year and it flies up through New York and Central Park and you probably may tenth or so. And uh, that was just an amazing bird. And I had no idea that was not just one kind of warble. There were like forty kinds of warblers you can see in one morning, all heading up to Canada to breed in the summer. So I was amazed all these beautiful butterflies, almost of the bird world were coming through Maryland and going through

New York up to Canada. I didn't even know they were there until my my stepbrother actually turned me onto this. He's he was a burger. He was in a in a circle of serious burners, one of whom was one of the biggest bird listers in the world, the case Inner brothers. Actually both of the Casener brothers. So the Casner's brothers were from Baltimore, and there some of the as well. Yeah, I think there are maybe in the top ten of the most bird species seen in their

lives in the world. One of them works for the State Department only went it works, I think from Acormick Spices, so they can travel the world. Each have their excuse to travel the world so they can bird more. And your your stepbrother was how much older than you? He was two years older than me. He's eleven. Yeah, describe described me the mon household at the eleven year old boy and the nine year old boy are so passionate about birding. Well, he was in this circle drawn. My

stepbrother was in this circle with the Casener brothers. And they were so fanatical. So he was fanatical because he was in the same school with them. And then he started showing me these things that, wow, what these things are around here? I'll come over. No one ever told me before. Were you raised by people that were fond of this? Not particularly? I mean my mother liked like nature. My father died when I was three. So were you

raised by a stepfather? Yes, indeed, And was he a naturalist? Well, he liked nature also, but it was really a drum and the Casener brothers, that whole, that whole circle that I sort of got involved with, and and that that they turned me on too birding. It wasn't either of my parents particularly or No. When you finish school as a as a young man and you're about to go to college, what what what becomes the path to you? Then?

What do you decide you want to do? I only applied to to colleges and I got into both, and I chose the one that had better bird watching, which was which was Princeton out there and Hope both junction in that area there was better bird washing. Well, yeah, there was. The The Institute for Advanced Study has a beautiful forest right next to the Princeton University. R. Einstein used to walk and stuff to think about relativity and whatnot, other flying things and and so you went there and

got a degree in biology. I did. And then after that, what did you do? I wanted to continue working on bird science, and I went to Oxford, got a master's there, came back to Princeton in a PhD. Always in the Amazon, and I got stuck with the Amazon. I got the Amazon bug, you might say, a lot in the good way. I became obsessed with with working in Amazon farm. Did you first go there in seventy six, twenty one? I

guess I went with graduate students from Princeton. I was a senior undergraduate and with John Turberg, who was the professor that we all idolized, who was working in the proving Amazon. So I was able to tag along with him as a senior undergraduate. Your twenty one and you're with Terborg in the Amazon, exactly proving Amazon is that the place to go if you want to study birds is the as opposed to the Brazil. Let's see, the Amazon basin is the Amazon rainforest is the size of

the forty eight states. It has been cut, but seventy eight percent is still standing. That's a lot of forest, and so Brazil has the bulk of it. But after Brazil it's Peru. Peru has two California is worth of rainforest. That's a lot of rainforests, and so it is some of the highest quality rainforest in terms of species diversity and being pristine. A lot of the uncontacted Indian tribes left in the Amazon are in the pruving Amazon rather

than Brazil. Your work down there becomes what, well, it's a if you give a mouse a cookie, I mean, it's a one thing leads to another, sort of inexorably. So if you're interested in birds, and working in the Amazon is the one of the most amazing things you can do if you're a bird scientist, because the bird diversity there is much higher than than anywhere else in the world. You'll have five hundred species of birds in just a few square miles. They're only ten thousand in

the whole planet. And then one park I've worked in has a thousand species of birds. The entire US and Canada has an eight hundred and fifty. So this one park about the size of Massachusetts has a thousand, has ten percent of all the bird species in the world. So once you're working there, you become spoiled. If you're an ornithologist or bird scientists, you really want to continue working in such a pretty much. And I was lucky

enough to work on mixed species flocks. What does that mean? Well, they are of the five bird species, three and thirty live in the forest. Others live in lakes and river banks and things. The threety that live in the forest a third of them, more than a hundred species live in mixed species flocks. So it's a very strange and amazing thing to see. You can have seventy species of birds in one flock at the same time, so and it's and the best bird watching in those flocks in

the middle of the day. So it's like contrao. You have to get up early a dawned to see the birds. Well, in the case of the flocks, the best flocks to bird watcher in the middle of the day and the Amazon, you should be word watching the middle of the day and have a late morning snack and a and a mid afternoon snack. You should actually bird watch all through the middle of the day. What's the area in the United States and even just the forty eight if you will,

that has the most diversity of bird species. The part of the US that has the most diversity of bird species would be Texas and California. And they're amazing, uh circles of crack birders in both states and they always try to beat each other in the an annual counts Christmas counts and try to see who wins. I think it usually some of the Texas birding groups tend to win. Which is the most number of birds you can see

in one day, So Texas is typically the winner. When I met you in UM two thousand, my then wife and I flew from New York to Miami and then on to Peru and Puerto Maldonado, which I'm told has changed dramatically. Well it's gotten a lot bigger. Yeah. And then we went a very long journey on the boat up the river. We get to this place. Had you

ever been there before? Had you worked with those people before? Oh? Yeah, I mean that was a frequented That was a research site that I stumbled upon thanks to some tips from a local Bolivian Indian actually who was living in that part of the Amazon. He was living Olivia has a lot of Amazon forest too. They have about one and a half California's worth, whereas Peru only has to California's worth. So he took me off about that clay lick where we watched macaws and parrots eating, and Uh, I thought

he was kidding me. But when I started, you know, ask him difficult questions, he could answer them really quickly, and so I said, well, he's onto something. So I went up and looked at that area. So I found that area a few years earlier thanks to local informants, which is the way we get everything done, is by relying on local people to give us great information that they don't even know. Is that interesting? So when we went there, I mean, the film is what it is.

Bob Drew, the famous documentarian and his wife Anne, we make a movie about the illegal market in exotic birds from that area. And how would you compare now what's going on in that department to what we experienced seventeen years ago. Is it's still a huge problem. Actually that part of the proving Amazon The problem was already declining when when we visited, because in part because of your visit, uh and brought attention to the area, and so there

was more resources than more. More travelers visited the area. So the major concentrations of macaws and parrots at the clay licks, we're all protected at that point by new parks, and so really that black market bird trade out of southern Peru basically had stopped. It was more of a question of central and northern Amazon and Peru because they improving Amazon is so enormous. So actually things have gotten much much better since you visited. What was the smuggling

like back then? They would bring those birds into the country. How well, In fact, the major smuggling of parrots would have been more out of Mexico and Central American countries up through the border into the U s sneaking them into the US. The smuggling of parrots wasn't so much

from South America to the US. There was a legal export from some countries, not from Peru, which they BOLIVI you next door until the nineteen eighties and the two the US passed a law outlawing the importation of wild caught exotic birds, and the New York's oological side he played a role in that, so did I and helping pass the national law because there are already some state laws prohibiting exotic bird importation, so that that put an end to a lot of the trapping because people couldn't

sell it to the US anymore. We actually we're greener than the European Union. The European Union took many years before they finally shut down the sort of nasty, cruel bird trade. When people would bring them in, how would they bring them in, Well, they would typically sneak them in drugged so that they wouldn't be squawking and wiggling

and drawing attention to themselves. So they would they would have them in suitcases or in a little a little plastic PBC pipes that would be hidden, maybe in parts of a car if you're driving across the border. One guy who was smuggling ridiculously rare, very valuable mccaus out of Bolivia. He was uh and Paraguay. In fact, he

was sticking them in his hand luggage. He worked for Paraguay and National Airlines as a cabin steward, so he was sneaking them in his carry on dry and then selling them to woke up one day, well actually his his buyer, as it were, the person that was hiring him to transport them as a mule to Europe. Because he would fly them to Europe. He was caught, he was busted in the late eighties and then so that that made it difficult for that to continue. So actually

the bird smuggling is declined a lot. Really, it's as good news. You have kids, I do, And how old are your kids now? Thirty three and twenty nine and twenty and to seventeen year old twins? No, indeed five kids indeed, or any of them in the family business so to speak. Well, I would say yes, two or three of them were really serious about going into the family business. One of them is studying at Cornell Hotel School.

Because we're involved in creating green jobs through eco tourism, which is a form of service industry, like the float tells. So when I leave, um, you know, when we're done with the with the television show, what do you do after that? When do you start getting into the eco You weren't in the eco tour was in business then? Were we were using the argument of eco tourism development as the excuse for trying to convince politicians it was worth creating these parks. In the case of Tamba Pata.

It's good that we talked about Tamba Pata specifically. Uh, that Connecticut sized park now has about a half a million bed nights of foreign visitors per year, and it's the best land use economically of that area, which is

pretty remote and hard to get to. Turns out to be eco tourism, and so we were right, and the wildlife has recovered and there are thousands and thousands of jobs now related to this, and so that actually is a bulwark against the mining that's a little bit further west to keep the mining mess from flowing over into this area. So that's a big success, and you saw it when it was kind of in the early stages.

What do you think people in this country can do who want to have any kind of participation in the solution here? Well, I think I think there's been quite a bit of success um in the last say five

or ten years in convincing large retails. I'm not sure exactly if it's Home Depot and Lows or a number of them, I think have taken a pledge to only sell wood from sustainable sources that actually can be traced to be sustainable as opposed to being laundered, and I think a lot of that initiative came from the World Widlife Fund. They convinced industry to police itself, to make

it easier for you. Believe they are. I think they are for you and I to do the right thing, to buy something that's sustainable now producing trees and fibers. One thing that's very important in the Amazon. I'm a big believer in creating parks and and Indian reserves and and and protecting them to the tourism. So that's also part of it. It's not the only thing. But I think a lot of people don't realize that there are seventy four airports in the Amazon that have regular jet flights.

A lot of people will guess their five or ten even that they'll think that's high, but in fact it's seventy four. If seventy percent of the Amazon is still in forest, more than half of that is in protected areas. It's probably thirty times or fifty times more protected areas by percentage than the US has, And that's extraordinary. And about half of that protect the area is owned by

Indians or maybe in biological reserves. You can get to these protected areas within a half a day from one of these seventy four airports, and so eco tourism has to be part of the mix because you only need to have one lodge in partnership, even with Indians, local Indians, at the mouth of a river of a million acre rainforest park. And yet that one small lodge can have turnover maybe one or two million dollars a year, and it protects a million acres behind it because it keeps

people from getting in behind it. So it's a it's a very inexpensive way to protect enormous pieces of forest. And anything you can do that can slow down deforestation will help slow down climate change because burning rainforest, especially in Brazil and some other countries but Indonesia, was about equivalent to the carbon released by the entire transport sector in the entire world. It's about of all carbon releases from burning rainforest. Anything you can do to slow that

is useful. So that's why I try to create parks and try to create green jobs related to protecting the parks. And you would you say from your experience or the primary activities that are occurring that they're burning this rain forest, logging, beef cattle. I mean a certain amount of logging, when

done properly, is not very destructive. If you're taking five six seven species of trees, it doesn't tend to be too destructive, especially if you minimize the number of logging tracks or for for the heavy equipment, and you fell the tree in exactly the right atraction, you've cut the vines attached to it, that doesn't bring down a bunch of other trees next to it. So things like that

can reduce the impact of logging enormously. But as soon as you start to do twelve fifteen, eighteen species of trees, you're destroying so much of the canopy that you're really opening up the forest of desiccation and it becomes like a tinder box. You can actually catch fire in the

dry season. What else are they doing there? Cut down well, the when a lot of forest is cleared for cattle ranching initially and also sometimes for for soy farming, And it's quite big, and there has been an enormous that the good news has been enormous drop in the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon, especially the peak year was two thousand five two thousand six, and it's gone down by more than half the deforestation rate in Brazil has gone way way down. You attribute that to what it's

been better policing by the Brazilian government. Frankly, I mean it's enormous areas to police. They have very few wardens or or agents who can check this. They actually collaborate with the US Space Agency and they get real life images of new fires, and so they can send agents right there. Instead of trying to comb over an area the size of the US. You send an agent right to where you see the fire from the satellite, and you can find someone some rancher who is cutting down

much much more forest than he's allowed. He's allowed to cut down a little bit, but he's not allowed to cut down anything like the amount that he tries to. So now they leve the enormous finds on these ranchers and they'll they'll typically back off from doing that. Coming up, Charles Mann on his unrivaled jaguar guarantee. South America's eco tourism industry may help shield the region's wildlife from extinction, but on the continent where the safari originated, poacher's still abound.

You know, I could describe it that if God forbid, what was happening to elephants were happening to people. We would call it a massive genocide. They're being exterminated for ivory on a mass level, correct using the latest technology, net's weapons, cell phones, sat phones, vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and the ease by which massive amounts of ivory can be illegally shipped to markets has never been greater. To hear more about Richard Riggero's story, go to Here's the Thing

dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing these days. Charles Mann is a legend name one of the leading experts on wildlife tourism by Condie Nast Traveler, featured in National Geographic Newsweek and Time. But even before the world was watching, Man was working on his mission to save the rainforest, which began fittingly by connecting with the people who live in it. Well, I used to help Ruvians and Bolivians and Ecuadorians and

Brazilians get involved in ecuotourism to protect parks. So that's back since nineteen eighty. I mean I've been I've been using that as the argument. I only got more involved in actually trying to create sustainable systems with local partners. UH in the nineties and in the last say fifteen years, so it had to actually get more involved and try to actually organize trips to send people to see jaguars.

For instance, we we guarantee people will see jaguars and the typically see them for hours a day hunting right in front of you. It's amazing. So to tell me who's the average client you have with the what part of the world, if any is completely mixed or they're parts of the world more crave the Briton experience. The British are absolutely nature crazed. There's no culture that loves

their nature and their wildlife more than the Brits. And so they are an enormous segment outside segment compared to their population. Whether there's sixty million people in UK and they must represent you know, a thirty or forty percent of all guests coming to see jaguars and giant otters and and there, and also the large birds. They love their birds like no other culture in the world. Really, did you have to customize your flotels? Well, we had to design the first ever flotel that had rooms as

big as a hotel room. So I think our our flowtel rooms are jaguar suites, and I think they're the largest standard rooms on any ship in fresh water, maybe even in saltwater in the world. It's like an ocean liner, except it sits in one place, right in the middle of the jaguars, so the jaguars walk by. In fact, do you have with jaguar window on one side and a much bigger picture window on the other side. We have a jaguar indow on the on the side closer

to the forest, because there's a jaguar alarm. If the jaguar walks by, you look through the window and see it walk right by your cabin. Any danger. They don't seem to find anything interesting on the floating hotel, No, they not a problem. Well, there's nothing. There's no snacks there. And then they're busy trying to hunt alligators and that's their primary source of food. Alligators and enormous guinea pigs. They're the hundred and twenty pound guinea pigs. They're called

cuppy barrows. They love cuppy bars and they eat the caymans. Actually they're called caymans. And when they eat the caymans, I mean I've seen horrific videos of snakes devouring quilled animals and passing this through their system. Then eventually they die because they cut the steak open. See the quills sticking through their degestive tract. But when you when these animals, what do they do? They split up them open. They cut them open some now and then eat the inside.

They don't eat the skin of the cayman. Uh. They eat almost everything. The jaguar has the most powerful bite of any cat in the world. So the tiger and the lion is bigger than a jaguar. But these big jaguars in this area, they grow much bigger than the ones in the Amazon because they eat so well their whole life. The genes are the same, but they grow to enormous. They grow to their maximum size to they eat perfectly their whole lives. The males are three and

fifty pounds. That's a pretty big cat. That's bigger than a that's the size of a female lion. More or less so, they and they have much harder bite. They have bigger jaw muscles than either lions or tigers, and they can crush the back of the skull of a full grown cow or of a alligator cayman like this. So once they've crushed the back of the skull, they've basically killed the cayman. They've paralyzed it. But then it's gonna die immediately at me by by cutting the spinal cords.

It's basically hasn't died in the first two seconds. It's still alive, but it's paralyzed. And then and they'll they'll eat, they'll eat the thing for several days in a row. They'll eat for three or four or five days in a row, and you just sit there with their distended belly. Because they meant so much. The leat almost everything. They they can show up the bones, they can chew up the skin, they their their their jaw strength is incredible. It's just like a really good taffy to them. It's

just a really strong pretty much. And the funny thing is one some jaguars that we were studying tracking them, they would they would walk next to a field with young calves, you know, baby cows, and the other side of the fence there was some a little there was a little pig sie with some little piglets that were kind of seen bite size, and these jaguars day after day, night after night, would walk between the calves and the little piglets and ignore them, walk down to the river

and jump on these things that are, you know, these caymans that are basically like dinosaurs. They just had been taught by their mothers. They had been taught by their mothers to eat caymans, and so they kind of ignored these things that would be much easier to eat and much easier to kill. It waswhere and that's one of the reasons we're not too scared of them, because their mother didn't. You eat what your mother gave you as

a kid, that's what you love to eat. And that's why the jagguars don't show interest in us, because their mothers didn't teach them to eat us. Because they don't know if we taste good, they don't know if we're dangerous. If they're two of us, they don't know what the second human will do, you know, And so that jaggars are not crazy, you know, crazy predators who just kill senselessly. If they make one wrong move, they can break their ankle,

let's say, and then they'll die of starvation. And that's what we see the jaguars did. They jumped down eight or ten feet onto these big caymans that are like nine ft long, that way more than the cat. And if they if they twist their ankle or break their their ankle, that happen their wrist. Yeah, you'll see every year or two you'll see one of the fifty jaguars that we know well that will let you watch them in real time all through the day. You'll see them

with a really really bad limp. I mean they can barely even walk. And in that situation they often recover. It's amazing how tough they are. But that's the moment. That's one of the ones. I'm sure they I'm sure they starve, you know, they go into the bushes and probably hide and starve. Yeah, do you still have a home in the US at all? I do. I have a home in Baltimore Native Area neck next to that forest with the big trees. And how much time are you in the US? Every year? Every year it varies

a little, uh several months. I try to catch the spring migration here in the eastern US in April and May. But the big season for the jaguars is really is really June, July, August, September, October November sweltering hot, or it's a bit cooler there in the southern hemisphere. June and July it can be quite cool, quite nice that way. September October gets quite hot. October a few rains started a little bit more, and just enough rain starts in

early November that it cools off. So my favorite time of the year to do jager watching is actually early in November. But because some guide books say November is the beginning of the rainy season in the Puntenale, people go the rainy season, Well, that's actually raining season is a blessing because it's so hot sometimes in October you're

just praying for some rain. Do you think that some of what you've learned and some of what you've created and supported down there that could be applied to here at home as well. Well. I'm interested in the in the cougars or mountain lions that exist in Florida. There are several hundred of them. They call them the Florida panther. That's a local name for them. There are several hundreds of them, and you don't see them, but I think with the right techniques you can see them. And it's

probably the most graceful of all. The one of the most graceful cats is is the is the puma or mountain lion when it's when it's hunt. So if you and I decide to open up the flotel business that's in the Effort Glades, there's the white tailed deer. They're eating lots and lots of white tailed deer. And of course in the U we're safe, absolutely well. I don't know once again, any large cat as a human alone, don't trust any large cat if you're alone and don't

turn your back on it. Cats don't like to attack if there's several of you because they don't know what the second humans capable of. They don't have direct experience with how dangerous we are or are not, because most of the time, unless we have a gun, we're not toy dangerous for a large cat. I think the wolves in Yellowstone would be interesting because I don't know the

wolf tourism. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I understand there are a lot of people who love the wolf tourism, you know, travelers who want to see the wolves badly. I guess it's in the western edge of the National Park. And then there, and then the ranchers near the party hate the wolves, and I think the wolf hunting has been reopened in that area. So

that's an interesting situation where I'd like to see. I'd like to know more about how the wolf concert ration could could create green jobs there and help protect wolves. There was a New York Times story about how boring ecotourism is in the Amazon. That was a very unfortunate story, But the writer was a TV producer for one of the major networks who went to the Amazon and came back and said, I didn't see anything, basically, and that's

because he the Amazon is complicated. You have to know where the fruit tree is that has all the action. If you don't go to that fruit tree, you may not see a lot in the rest of the forest, but that fruit tree is stuffed full of monkeys and birds, and it's just amazing. There's no substitute for knowing exactly what's going on tree by tree in the forest, and a square mile of typical Amazon forest, it's unhunted and has all the original animals. Only two or three trees

are stuff full of animals that day. But you need to know which trees those are. You have to be at those trees at the right time, then you're gonna have a great time. You'll get the impression that they're more animals in the forest, and there actually are because they're all concentrated in one tree. You know, there's still any uncontacted Indians down there. As far as there are

un contacted Indians and Brazil than Peru, we're both. There are some pockets, especially in Peru and Brazil in Venezuela where they're uncontacted tribes. That doesn't mean that they don't know that the outside world exists. That means that they're choosing to live out of contact, and they are out of contact, but it's not that they have no idea that there's something else. There's there's other stuff out there.

They choose to avoid it because they all know from tradition that it's dangerous, because it typically is dangerous when they come in contact with western civilization. We worked a lot with Indians who we helped TITLE while I was

working for WCS. We raised a million dollars for land titling of Indians to create a big buffer zones around the national parks, and that was quite effective and many of the Indians that we worked with were some of our best executives and informants and gave us new ideas about how to make the rain for us more interesting. One of them, who had been working with me on Macause, said, uh, oh, you want to come to my house a couple hours away,

and I've got a macau there. And I said, oh, you mean you took you're working with maccause of me and you you kind of treat out and took the baby Macause at pet. That's no good. He says, no, you don't quite understand. Come to my house and I'll show you. So we drove a couple of hours by river to his house and it was the end of the day and he said, they'll probably show up any minute. I said, what do you mean they'll show up any minute?

And suddenly these giants, you know, the Scarlett Macause, flew out of the forest and landed right next to the house. I said, what's going on? And then they give them snacks. They gave them some corn from their corn field, and the and the Macause eight and then they flew away. Said no, no, there are those are pet Macause. We never clipped their wings, so they just come and go they'll come and get snack. They'll top off the tank a couple of times a day. They're eating in the forest.

They're wild macause, but they come back to get snacks from us. I said, you're kidding, really, you mean because the second baby, and they have two babies, the second macause starves to death. Normally, that's part of macau biology. They want to raise one healthy one and the second ones in insurance policy in case the first ones are done, so the second one almost always starves. I said, well, why don't we raise the second one in a field lab and release it. It will come back to get

snacks for the rest of its life. And you know, ALEC and and UH and National geographic photographers and and guests, we'll all get amazing photos of wild macause that are like dual citizens. They'll come in and visit us and then leave again. You saw some of those birds. I think one of them was telling you were a great actor. I think, yeah, it was bobbing its head, you know, And yes, indeed it was. It was doing lines from all my greatest films. Now, how much more do you

see yourself doing this kind of thing? I mean, isn't there a part of you that wants to kick back and finish the whole thing, or have a nice autumn of your years where it all started on your five acre ancestral home in Baltimore, bordering the fifty acres that you secured with your selling all your Halloween candy. Well, I'd like to be a little bit less involved with worrying about whether we have enough ripe tomatoes in the kitchen.

I'd like to be a little less involved in making sure that every single transfer from an airport to hotel goes properly. I like to be less involved in the day to day operations and more involved with thinking about things like the Florida panther. You know, we know that we have techniques that can be applied, that have legs that can be used over and over again. There's no reason to have to rediscover the wheel. We know how to make McCaw's ridiculously fun and attractive and it's easy.

And yet even when the country of Costa Rica we propose that they have what I call assisted fledging, the second baby is gonna starve anyway, Take it from the nest, feed it in a field lab, and release it and we'll come back and guess we'll get pictures of Scarlett Macause next to in national parks or next to national parks in Costa Rica. And they have a million tourists and fewer the one percent got a good photo of

a Scarlett Macau at the moment. But if they did what I said, they'd have ncent that people would getting good photos of Scarlet ut Macause. And that would mean people might spend an extra night in the country. And a million people spending an extra night. You can do the math. So and yet Costa Rica doesn't doesn't take that suggestion seriously. I suggested that to them twenty years ago because Costa ricause renown. Now there's an eco tourism spot. Well,

they just outlawed all all feeding of wild animals. You can't even feed a bird in your backyard in Costa Rica. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's purest biologists who have the training that I have, but who don't understand that if we don't, I mean, there's a there's a there's a continuum of you know, putting an animal in a cage and making it suffer, and having a wild animal that you give a snack and there's everything in between. You can know wild animals. You don't

touch at all. Wild animals, you give them a little snack to make them easier to see. If you can protect a forest by giving a few wild animals a little bit of a snack that doesn't hurt them, and you can protect a million acres of forest by doing that. I much prefer that than torching the place into carbon, which is what happens literally. I think biologies have to be more dynamic about using their knowledge of animal biology and animal behavior to make animals more accessible and more visible.

I challenge my friends, and people are gonna be mad at me for saying this, but I challenge my friends who go to Costa Rica literally to come back with trophy photos of wildlife. And they come back with precious little in the way of trophy photos of wildlife that could compete with what they saw in Kenyer or in South Africa. And that's because the animals are there. But you have to be able to get close enough to them.

Because the animals are smaller and they're not dangerous, and they're more colorful, but you need to be able to get close to them. And one of the ways you do that is by giving them a structured snack that is harmless. Yeah, and so I mean you can feed animals the wrong way, and I'm opposed to that, but you can also do something intelligent and make some animals more visible than they would be otherwise. You can see

amazing birds. And I actually asked the coustoar because anyone in the room there were a lot of scientists in the room at the last meeting where they said no, they're not going to allow assisted fledging of macause. Has anyone been to Sydney or Melbourne where cockatoos are backyard feederbirds? I said, you should have a hundred thousand Scarlett Macause in Costa Rica, not sixteen hundred like they have. No every home in the lowlands in Costa Rica should have

Scarlett macauss backyard feederbirds. What's wrong with that model? And there is nothing wrong with that model, but they actually instead of heading in that direction doing test, they've actually gone in the opposite direction. What part beyond the South American rainforest? What are other places you crave? I want to go to Antarctica, yeah, and I haven't been to the Galapagus yet, which is embarrassing. No, no, I would expect you for many summers there. Well, they already know

what they're doing with eco tourism and conservation. They don't need any tips from any consulting. No, no, they don't need any tips from me. But I maintain that we have better wildlife viewing in the Puntinel in Brazil than even than they have. We have a lot of large mammals, otters, jaguars, a lot of large birds, uh copy bars, the world's largest rodent, as I said, the giant guinea pig, these big big alligators, and the caymans, and so I think

I may we have four species of monkeys see them ridiculously. Well, we have the largest parrot in the world, the highest of malcaul there. So I maintain that we have something similar to or even in some ways better than the glap the glab because has no large there's no hunting. The animals just aren't there. Other very interesting and there's no question about it. But you're talking about they don't

have colorful, big mammalian predators like that. So the reason you're you, as you said before, the reason that your situation there is as vivid as it is and is is conducive to the secut tours. Something is the lack of hunting correct, it's because the country, Brazil outlawed sports hunting in nineteen sixty seven, and that's amazing. I'm not

even sure what they were thinking. But in fact it's been amazing for my work because I've seen the quality of wildlife viewing in Brazil increase so much in the last thirty year is I just can't believe it. So a lot of places in the world are declining, the wildlife is declining, but in Brazil it's a wildlife bonanza. Now you can see pink dolphins ridiculously tame right outside of the city of Manouse. You can fly to Manouse, you know, American airlines in five hours from Miami and

have pink dolphins right around your legs. They don't care. And so Brazil has amazing stuff that I would never have predicted that, for instance, that I could see jaguars on demand. I would never have guessed that was possible. And I spent years in the rainforest. I saw jaguars in the Amazon rainforest. In the Amazon, they're in the forest hunting wild pigs, and so you don't see them

on the river bank, but in the punt thenale. They're hunting the copy bars and the caymans on the river bank, which is where those things live, and that's why you see them. You know. I have a story that I don't think I told you. Did I tell you what was happening in that blind while we were waiting for them Acause to come down? Please, I'm on tenter hooks. So it was there was a cameraman. One end of the blind was only what big enough for four or

five people? Yes, And so I had my colleague proving colleague at ward and Nikander was in the blind with me. He was sitting next to me, and you were just beyond him, and then I think Kim was just beyond him. And then the cameraman was sitting somewhere in there, and we were we were waiting for the Macause to come down to eat clay, and there was a raging flood next to us. It was January. That was a crazy time to go. It's a difficult time for this to work.

So the rain let up and the flood was coming up and it was starting to come into the blind. It was actually starting starting to wash away the blind while we were sitting there. Did you notice that I was so engross Well, there were large tree trunks going by, I said, about ten miles an hour, and one of them, one of them had hit the edge of the blind

that would have been the end. And there were rocks coming down this hundred foot high clay wall not far from you and Kim, you know these rocks coming down the side of your head coming down, and they were smashing into the water. Did you notice that that I heard? I heard like a little plunk, I heard one. Remember, I heard a sound that I thought it was something had fallen down in the range, because I know what

happens those banks. Sometimes the whole bank collapses. But there's a third thing that was happening all at the same time. We're all waiting for the macause at the end to come down or not. And that is that it were a n can to sort of did his eyebrows and looked over in the corner and sort of indicate I

should look down there. And I looked down there and there was a venomous snake had come into the blind, something that people are terrified snakes in the rainforest, But there was a venomous snake a small one, but it was always about six seven inches maybe maybe a foot long. I had crawled because the flood was coming up, and it had scared this fair delane snake into the blind.

And so this fair de long of snake was sort of making its way over towards the two of you, you and Kim, and I said, dude wardo in Spanish and whispered to him. I said, keep them busy by whispering to him, and tell him a few stories. And so he was telling you a couple of stories, and

you were listening to his little stories. And as he was talking quietly, and I had a little stick in my hand, and I put a stick on the head of the snake, and I kept watching you, God, hang on a second, and uh and uh and and so and I sort of smiling listening to the story. But meanwhile the snakes wriggling while I had it pinned down near its head. And then I had a Swiss army knife and I cut the snake's head off. I'm sorry to say, I mean, I'm afraid I couldn't deal with

that snake in another way at that moment. It was a small snake. But maybe you I'm gonna get in trouble now. But so I didn't tell you that, and this is the first time you heard that. My god, everyone's terrified they're going to see a snake when they go to the rainforest, and you know, actually come in

my bedroom when I was in then, you know. But I mean, so here we had the raging flood with the huge logs going by a venomous snake and these big boulders coming down the hillside, and you guys were I think somewhat oblivious, and then the macause came down and we filmed it and all worked well. You know what's great about going on these trips with a guy like you and naturalist who's got a PhD from Princeton and all these kind of fancy's piled higher and deeper.

PhD bs MS is more of the same PhD piled higher and deeper. Well being with someone where it's piled higher and deeper. The great thing is, as I may die in the rainforest here in the blind, but at least I'll know how I died. We'll explain it's the is the log genus species. You'll see this snake that just bit you was a what's it called fair Delance, the French name for a South American and Central American pit fighter related to the rattlesnake on the copper head.

But I don't want to like terrify people because I mean, that's one the few fairalnes I've ever seen. It just happened to be in the blind with you with him. In a recent interview with the Telegraph, Charles Mann captured why as a zoologist he promotes encounters with animals. Quote, there's a continuum from pets and animals and zoos to a wild animal in nature approaching you, to really wild

species that are terrified of you. I'm willing to use any point on that continuum except captivity to promote forest conservation. I'd rather have the monkeys running wild, but realistically it's no longer an option. Unquote, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. I think our