Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 934: Paul Rosolie on Uncontacted Peoples, the Amazon, and Junglekeepers

Transcript

Ep. 934: Paul Rosolie on Uncontacted Peoples, the Amazon, and Junglekeepers · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
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• 0:43
  Speaker 3: All right, everybody.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: We got an awesome guest right now who knows a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: ton of stuff about something I wish I knew a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: ton about. You're in a great position right now.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: You sure you want to learn about it?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Dude, I'm jungle curious, man. I'm jungle curious because I've
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: been fortunate to spend. Let me see. Let me add
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it up.
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  Speaker 3: I've been fortunate to spend maybe like eight weeks, I guess.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Scattered out. Maybe eight weeks or so.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: In the jungle in south america just enough to go
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: like i should have had more of this in my
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: life yeah should have had more of my life and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: it's like it's a real miss of mine if i
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: don't want to go so far as to say if
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  Speaker 1: i could do my whole north american life over again
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: i'd move it down to south america but i'm way
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: jungle curious okay so i'm gonna i got a lot
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of the right place right.
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  Speaker 4: Now but uh paul rosalie so paul's a naturalist an
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: author he's a jungle expert uh maybe most importantly he's
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: the founder of jungle keepers a conservation organization in the
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  Speaker 4: Peruvian Amazon.
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  Speaker 1: I'm holding his book here, Jungle Keeper, What It Takes
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to Change the World. We're going to talk a bunch
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: about jungles, and we're going to talk a little bit
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: about something that our listeners are familiar with because it's
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: thematic through all of our discussions. This is a very
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: North American-centric show. We spend a lot of time on
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: issues that are centered around, that are peripheral issues, to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: discussions of what we call the North American model of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: wildlife conservation. I think some people hear that and they
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  Speaker 1: just get bored just hearing the term, but it's the system.
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  Speaker 3: It's a system that.
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  Speaker 1: Accounts for, in the United States, in Canada, it's a
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  Speaker 1: system that accounts for how can we be so rich
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and have 360 million people and be like military and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: technological innovators and still have woods and wild places.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: That doesn't happen by accident. No, it doesn't happen by accident.
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  Speaker 1: We achieve that through a model that isn't always exportable. Right.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: It worked here and it's worked here.
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  Speaker 1: But it's a model that, as we discussed before, it's
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  Speaker 1: a model that like in Africa, there's a different take
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: on that model. Yeah. Right? And so I think a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people, as we get into this discussion, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people will, as they're thinking about it, they'll
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: be like, oh yeah, for decades I've been hearing about
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the Amazon, deforestation in the Amazon, illegal logging in the Amazon,
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  Speaker 1: illegal poaching in the Amazon, the Amazon's disappearing. One of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the things I want to get in with you is,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: does that look like how does that happen how does
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it how do we stop that from happening right is
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: our system applicable is there another system that's applicable so
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  Speaker 1: we'll get to there great but first i gotta ask
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you about some of my can you handle some jungle.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Questions uh-oh no yes yes please you don't need your
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: notes for these i was gonna say okay Okay, here's
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: jungle question number one.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. And this is like, again, I've been fortunate to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: do a little dabbling down in- What country were you in? Well,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: so some was in, so I spent some time in Bolivia. Okay.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: In the headwaters of the Amazon.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Then I spent some time in what's sort of like
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  Speaker 1: cheating to call it the Amazon, but I was just
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  Speaker 1: over the ridgeline in Guyana. So if I took a piss,
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  Speaker 1: it would have flowed out into the Caribbean. Okay. But
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  Speaker 1: if I went a little ways yonder and I took
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  Speaker 1: a piss, it would have made its way out the Amazon.
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  Speaker 2: You're sort of, so you're almost, were you in the
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  Speaker 2: Orinoco river basin?
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  Speaker 1: Well, it was the, I'm trying to remember the main,
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  Speaker 1: the main system, the, um, the hell is that main river?
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  Speaker 1: i'll have to look it up.
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  Speaker 2: That's all right yeah i get where you were though
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  Speaker 2: and diana's beautiful no it's freaking gorgeous dude i went
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  Speaker 2: down some reason it's like untouched i actually don't know.
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  Speaker 1: We were in some wild country man we were in
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  Speaker 1: some wild country it was amazing.
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  Speaker 3: But first off have you been bit by those bullet.
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  Speaker 2: Ants oh as soon as i got to the amazon
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  Speaker 2: and i was like fresh off the boat you know
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  Speaker 2: fresh i just you know new york kid got to
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  Speaker 2: the amazon and they looked at me and they went
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  Speaker 2: so you like the wild right now yeah you know
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  Speaker 2: they saw me catching snakes and climbing trees, and they went, oh,
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  Speaker 2: so you're like a jungle man, right?
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  Speaker 1: And I went, yeah. Big jungle guy.
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  Speaker 2: And they went, come here. They said, we're going to
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: give you the initiation. And you take a bullet ant
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  Speaker 2: that's this big, and you put it on your forearm.
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  Speaker 2: So what we would do is put it, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you just drop it on so it's not upset. And
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  Speaker 2: then me and you rub forearms together. It's sort of
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  Speaker 2: like Russian roulette with a bullet ant. And whoever it stings,
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  Speaker 2: it stings. Hold on, who's doing this? Me and one
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  Speaker 2: of the guys. He just goes, you know, you want
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  Speaker 2: to see what it's like? He goes, let's get this
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  Speaker 2: out of the way. That was my initiation.
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  Speaker 3: So you're doing it and you're like, who's going to
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  Speaker 3: get it?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So you just rub it between your forearms. It's like,
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  Speaker 2: you sort of just have this little. So he gets
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  Speaker 2: pissed and grabs somebody.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And so they have huge pincers on the front, you know,
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  Speaker 2: their mandibles are for cutting and holding. And so he
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  Speaker 2: got me with the mandibles, which hurts. And I was like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: this is killer. Now he hadn't stung me yet. And
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  Speaker 2: then they sting you and they use those mandibles to
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  Speaker 2: get leverage and get in on you. And they, and
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  Speaker 2: they inject you. I mean, it's a reason they're called
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  Speaker 2: a bullet ant. It, hurts yeah and the you know
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  Speaker 2: i've been stung by bees and wasps thousands of times
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  Speaker 2: and i just don't care this thing you feel like
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  Speaker 2: it's almost like their venom is engineered to make you
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  Speaker 2: feel like something's wrong because it's not just localized at
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  Speaker 2: the site it like goes systemic and then you feel
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  Speaker 2: it in your lymph nodes and you feel it in
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  Speaker 2: weird places on your back and you start getting the
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  Speaker 2: sweats and you go I'm having a bad reaction to this.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And like, the truth is, you just got hit with
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  Speaker 2: a bullet amp. And that spot's gonna keep throbbing, and
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: you're gonna have that back of the skull headache. And
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  Speaker 2: the first one really got me. Like, really got me.
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  Speaker 2: And I was, for like 24 hours, I was feeling it,
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  Speaker 2: and I felt terrible, and I really didn't do much.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, now on number... you know, 12 or 13,
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  Speaker 2: I think over the years where it's like, now it's like, man,
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  Speaker 2: now my day is ruined. I'm going to be in
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  Speaker 2: a bad mood, but it's not the end of the world.
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  Speaker 1: So you just ride it out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: When I, when I had got bit by one of those,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't know, I knew it was a thing and
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  Speaker 1: I knew it was bad, but I had the extra
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  Speaker 1: anxiety of not having read up on it. So I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know what was going on, but then it went away.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But then I heard about guys doing it, like doing
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  Speaker 1: it just to do it.
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  Speaker 2: The glove. putting on gloves they have the native glove
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  Speaker 2: where they make it it's like a basket woven into
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  Speaker 2: a into a flat glove and they stick their hand
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  Speaker 2: in there and the somehow these they're this tribe is
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  Speaker 2: able to put their abdomens in the in the mesh
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  Speaker 2: so all the abdomens are facing in i don't know
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  Speaker 2: how they do that and then you stick to what
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  Speaker 2: end it's an initiation ceremony for the young men and
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  Speaker 2: That's a whole other topic about how we don't have
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  Speaker 2: those anymore for our young men. But they do that.
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  Speaker 2: And then as the young men are, I mean, I'm
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  Speaker 2: surprised that it doesn't just cause you so much, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like anaphylactic shock or something, just overwhelm your system. But
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  Speaker 2: as you're recovering from this and you're, you know, feverish
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  Speaker 2: and laying on the ground, they pair you up with
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  Speaker 2: a young woman who cares for you. And it's supposed
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  Speaker 2: to be like a, yeah. So they knock you down
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  Speaker 2: and then they let you get nursed back to health.
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  Speaker 2: That's what I understand. That's what I remember of it.
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  Speaker 3: But it sounds horrible.
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  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the, like just for listeners, can
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  Speaker 1: you back up on for listeners what we're talking about here?
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  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: Like, I mean, it's many. I've never seen this. Guys
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  Speaker 1: just told me about it.
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  Speaker 2: I've seen it, you know, anthropology class in college. I
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  Speaker 2: remember they showed us a video of it and I
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  Speaker 2: don't remember if it was Yanomami or the Kayapo or
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  Speaker 2: who was it did it. But I'm talking, I want
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  Speaker 2: to say like, you know, over 80 or close to
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  Speaker 2: a hundred bullet ants. Which a hundred wasps would put
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  Speaker 2: you in bad shape.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: A hundred bullet ants. I mean, I would be worried
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  Speaker 2: about serious injury, you know, or systemic injury.
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  Speaker 1: Well, presumably some dude's got to be, it's got to
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  Speaker 1: over time has to have to kill somebody.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, sure. I mean, people die from, you know, if
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: you're allergic to wasps, I don't, I don't know if
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  Speaker 2: bullet ants are bad for people that have a wasp allergy. Uh,
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  Speaker 2: that's another thing being in the Amazon and I've had
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  Speaker 2: people come down and they go, uh, you know, they
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  Speaker 2: get there and they go, By the way, I see
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  Speaker 2: a wasp and I go, oh, I got to watch
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  Speaker 2: out for that. I'm allergic to wasps. And I'm like,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: you are in the M. You should have not come.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: And so I always have an EpiPen ready to go.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: On that wasp question, that was one of the things
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  Speaker 1: I was going to get to. Well, finish up the bulletin.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You already answered my question, but I'll just get it
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: over with now. Then we'll go back to bulletins. An
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: observation I had in Bolivia and other guys I was
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: with had it. It's like in an American summer, yeah
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: right now and then it's just now and then someone
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: gets bit by a hornet or a wasp like in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: an american summer this summer i got one wasp bite
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: okay okay and i could talk about it and tell
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you how itchy it was right but to come out
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: of your tent and just have it be that they're
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: getting you like mosquitoes yeah you'd be like i know
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: that when i walk out of this tent and just
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  Speaker 1: go down get some breakfast yeah in the other tent
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  Speaker 1: i know that when i walk out of this tent
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  Speaker 1: i'll be greeted by a wasp that will bite.
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  Speaker 2: Me yeah you get used to it man i don't
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: know it's one of those things and that's why the
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  Speaker 2: jungle is not for everybody when i come north america
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: and i'm doing some backpacking i'm like man this is
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: great you know this is great there's like one or
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: two mosquitoes you can walk barefoot into some brush and
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: not be worried about anything comparatively i mean i i
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: just i just getting stung by a wasp is a
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: daily occurrence yeah we just covered in wasps when you're
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: you have sweat on you they are so hungry yeah
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  Speaker 2: and so carnivorous they'll what i do now is i
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: have a covenant with the wasps and that is that
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: If they want to sit on me and eat my sweat, great.
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  Speaker 2: I'll be sitting there doing something. There'll be a wasp
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  Speaker 2: on my wrist and I'll be like, fair play. You're not,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not going to bother you. As soon as a
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: wasp stings me, I spend the rest of my day
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: trying to get the highest body count I can. I
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: start trying, I've gotten as high as 80 where it's like,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I will just start newspaper whacking them and just.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: You'll slowly have an impact.
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  Speaker 2: If you disrupt the covenant, I'm all for peace, but
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: if you disrupt it, I'm coming for your kind. And
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: then I'll.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: We covered it on Bullet. Oh, no, I was going
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: to tell you this about Bullet Ants.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: If listeners go way back, we had an episode. Maybe
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Nate can pull it up, the name of it. We
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: had the entomologist Justin Schmidt on. And Justin Schmidt studied
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: venomous everything, like anything that bites.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. That was his specialty. So insect venoms and all
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And the reason I had him
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: on is he famously came up with this thing called
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the Schmidt Pain Index. The Pain Index, yeah.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he put the bullet ant.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: The bullet ant occupies the highest position on the Schmidt
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Pain Index.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: And he has these really descriptive.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: See, I put myself in a word trap. Descriptive descriptions.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Descriptive descriptions. Break through the wall.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Of the bites. Yeah. And his description of the bullet
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: ant is funny. I can't remember what it is.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But do you agree? Highest?
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, the bullet ant sort of has a riveting
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: bouquet of semi-neurological effects and a trembling sort of feverish aftershock.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: It's bad.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It's real bad.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: However.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: There are some big, you know, there's a tarantula hawk.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: He talks about that. I think it doesn't score as high.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never been bitten by one, but
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: they fly by carrying tarantulas. You're just doing something. And
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: this giant wasp, it's like three inches long. You know,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: they have that suit. It looks terrifying. It looks like
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: a sniper rifle for an insect or something. It's like
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: that long abdomen with a big hangy stinger. And it just,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: it looks like it's made to cause pain. But what
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: it's made to do is get into a tarantula and
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: then they carry them off. And those just look terrifying.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: The worst pain I ever felt was there was a
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: big caterpillar with this vertical floofy hair and it was orange.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: It looks a lot like Donald Trump's hair. And I
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: caught this caterpillar and I knew it was bad news
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: and I had it on a leaf and I was like,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I am going to be so careful. I'm going to
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: put it in this box and in the morning, I'm
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: going to take a look at it and try and
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: get some pictures of it and figure out what it is.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: So I got it on this very sturdy leaf and
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I'm getting it in the box. And right as I
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: got it in the box, the leaf just gave way
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: and the caterpillar fell against my hand. So underneath all
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: that hair were these like Christmas tree spines. And when
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that hit me, I have never felt of an insect.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: We're not talking about stingrays, but of an insect. It
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: was shockingly horrible. Way worse than a bullet ant. Bullet
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: ant at this point.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe Schmidt didn't know about that one.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Maybe he didn't know about it. We're going to have
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: to call him up.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I think he might have passed. Nate, can you figure
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: it out? Did he pass away? I know it was
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: episode 208. Let's type in Justin Schmidt entomology. He passed
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: away in 2023.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: We'll never know.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Dude got outproduced right there by an engineer. All right,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: here's another one. Tell me.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: So I was with a guy.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was with a guy in Guyana.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: He's Makushi.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Makushi.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: I've never heard of Makushi.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: He's Makushi. He was explaining to me. We're sitting there
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: looking at an anaconda on the bank. He says to me,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, in all, these dudes that say a lot
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: of things where they're not being, like, they're not trying
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to wow you with, like, weird stuff.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: It's just like, you know what I'm saying? Like, just
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: a matter-of-fact statement.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: He said, if I touch that, I was asking him,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: is it okay to poke it?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: We got up by natural, like naturally snake. I know
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: being like, you know, in America, can I poke that American?
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: I had the impulse that we would poke it to
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: see what happened.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And he mentions to me, he mentions to me that
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: if you touch it with a bow, it will die
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: in about 45 minutes. And it's a painful death.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Wait, hold up. If you touch an anaconda with a bow.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: With a bow.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Like a bow.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: His bow. Yeah.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: You touch the anaconda.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: He says, if I laid my bow on it.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: It would kill it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: It would die in about 45 minutes. Okay.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: You ever heard this?
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: No.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: The different parts of the Amazon, they have completely different
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: local lore.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And I've heard everything from, you know, if you shoot
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: a giant anteater, the bullet will ricochet off and it
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: will always hit you back. Oh. So if you shoot
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: a giant anteater, you'll die. sure yeah uh i've caught
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: over 90 anacondas in my lifetime and not one of
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: them has died after now i've never touched one with
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: a bow but as rational humans i would unders you
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: know if i touched you with a piece of wood
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: right now there's not a lot of reason that you
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: would die afterwards you know anacondas are tough i've also
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: seen from capybara that you know rodent family those teeth
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: you know if they get them you know on the
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: stomach the rodent turns around And will go to work
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: just trying to chew that anaconda apart. And that's why
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: they wrap them up like that as much as they can.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: But I've seen anacondas with wounds that would cause us
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: to go to the hospital.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, to be clear, I don't think that the anaconda
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: would die if he touched it with his bow.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: And I don't even care what I think about it.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: I just thought.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I liked and was interested in that he didn't think this,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: but he knew it. Meaning I didn't feel compelled to,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: it's not my place to go argue with him about
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: what is actually happening.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, see, I'm from New York. I would argue the
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: shit out of that. I'd be like, what are you
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: talking about?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: No, another white dude.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Do it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Another white dude. I'd have been like, come on.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, so what is this? He gets some sort of
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: exemption for being indigenous? No.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: No, I want to see it proven.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: He got a huge exemption from me where I'm like.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: That's great. That's great. Let's not touch it with the bow.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Not interested in that. So you'll argue with guys? That's
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: all I do is argue. And I've learned a lot arguing. Um,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: they told me, you know, they said this route, all
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: you gotta do with this route is crush it up
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: and throw it in a stream and you can have
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: all the fish you want. And I said, how would
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: a route do that? That's true though. Well, that is
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: true basket. Yeah. That's the thing. So that one turned
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: out true and they picked up, you know, we'll, we
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: ate fish for lunch that day. Cause you know, I'm
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: gonna show you great. And then there's less verifiable ones
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: like up this particular river. there's a type of anaconda
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: that's triple the size of a normal anaconda. So instead
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: of being 20 or 25 feet, they're like 45, 50
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: feet and they have ears.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I said, okay, produce one in front of me and
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: then I shall believe it. You know, find me a skull,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: find me anything. Uh, this is what I tell the
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: alien people to, you know, find me some evidence and
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I'll be a lot more amenable to your wacko beliefs. And, uh,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: so far we're, we're still outstanding on that one. Uh,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the other one was, you break an arm you you
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: find a cane toad and they're native to the amazon
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: unlike australia where they're an invasive species you find a
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: cane toad you square it up on the ground and
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: you stomp on it real hard so its guts go
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: flying out its mouth and then you take the this
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: little skin wallet and you put it on the broken
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: bone area and wrap it tight with a bandage and
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: that's supposed to make your bones heal faster now cane
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: toads do have a very powerful poison in those poison
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: glands just behind their eyes. Now, maybe there is a
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: compound there that helps, but until I get a chemist
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: to confirm that, I don't care.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And you're bold enough just to go down and you're
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: in their neck of the woods and you're telling them
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: what's up.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: See, I need to get more bold. Well, I'm not
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: telling them what's up.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I'm saying I really want to understand your perspective and
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: understand what things are relevant or not. But growing up,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: people go, don't go running in the rain. You'll catch
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a cold. I'm like, go to buds. And also a
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: cold is rhinovirus. So you tell me there's a virus
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: in the rain?
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I run in the rain all the time. I see
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: a thunderstorm.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I'm like, bet.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going running now. And so these sort of old
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: tales that have no basis in reality. And I like
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: to undo those because I feel like, you know, science
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: has led us to the place where me and you
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: can get on a plane and go somewhere or a
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: relative can have a heart transplant. And like, there's a
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: lot that comes from this sort of logical way of thinking.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: And so when you're in the jungle, I want to know,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: is this true or is this not? People say, you know,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: a Bushmaster is the only snake that will attack you.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: If you see a Bushmaster, it's going to attack you. Okay,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: so I went out and I found a Bushmaster, a
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: big 11-foot Bushmaster. I stood near it and it was
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: all curled up, thicker than my arm, and they have
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: crocodile spikes on their back. It's one of the only
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: snakes I've seen that has like physical features.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Terrifying, that big angry face. They look like they want
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: to kill you. But he was curled up on the
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: ground and I sat there for a while and the
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Bushmaster looked at me and I looked at the Bushmaster
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: and he flicked his tongue and I was like, hmm.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: It was really peaceful for a while. And then I said,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: now I got to poke it. Now I have to
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: poke this 11-foot venomous snake. And so I went and
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: I got a stick and I picked him up by
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: the tail. And then, you know, the snake started moving
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: in such a way and there's people nearby and we
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: had to measure him because we were doing a reptile survey.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So I got him by the head and I had,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: you know, you have this snake with these giant fangs
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: just out. And your heart, you know, it's one of
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: those things where you have to be concentrated because they
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: could also close their mouth in anger and bite through
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: their lower jaw and envenomate you. Or as you're holding it,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, their skulls are so malleable. If you're not perfectly,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: if you don't have perfect form, they could, you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: get you. And that's all it takes. So I'm really
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: concentrated on head. And so I have a body going
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: over my neck. This is an 11-foot snake. And then
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: the most terrifying thing happened. I feel... a sharp point
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: piercing my skin, but it's not where I'm looking. It's
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: not at the business end. It's on my other arm.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: And I had a full body. I just felt my
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: blood reverse direction in my veins. I got so terrified.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I was like, I've been envenomated. And I said, this
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: makes no sense. And I look and on their tail, again,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: no other snake that I know of has this. I
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: think it's the males have a spike at the end
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: of their tail. Most snake tails just end in scales.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: This guy has a hard spike, like a nail spike.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: And it was driving it into my skin.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: It's like carrying a Derringer.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: In your boot, man.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It scared the hell out of me. I would put
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: that up there with top five moments that I've been
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: truly scared. I just didn't expect it, didn't know about it,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: never read about it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: But it didn't do anything to you? Or is it
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: just a spike?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: It's just a spike. But it works. It works. So
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: you've got to imagine if a predator grabs a Bushmaster
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: and it's not able to defend itself with its fangs, well,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: it's just going to scare him with this secondary punch
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: that's a stab, any logical predator is going to run
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: from that. Not to mention most of the animals in
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: the jungle know that a Bushmaster is bad news. Just
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: like even elephants, you know, a King Cobra will raise
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: up its head. I spent a lot of time in India.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: A King Cobra will raise up its head and look
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: at an elephant. You'd be like, look, if you want it,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: I'll give it. The elephants know. They know. They're like, yeah,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: we're not going to step on you.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Don't worry.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: We'll go around. And that's fine. That's why they have
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the hood. It's to say back off, just like a
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: rattlesnake's rattle. It's just like, hey, man, I don't want
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: you to meet God, but I can make the introduction.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: You know, here's one more we kind of solved yesterday
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: when we were talking about you coming on. This is
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: my second to last one. Is I, until yesterday, believed... Uh-oh.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to make fun of you. I,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: until yesterday, believed that there was a little teeny catfish.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: That climbs up your pecker.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And lodges into your urethra. I believe that so much
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: that I was wondering yesterday, is this a female problem
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: as well? Like, will it lodge itself in the female urethra?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: What made you stop believing in this yesterday? Someone, while
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I was talking to you, might've been him, was looking
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: online and they're like, that's not true.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think it is. The candiru is a fish.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's him.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Candiru. So we have large candirus that we catch.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: It's so annoying, man, when you're fishing and we, I
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: know what they feel like now and they're horrible. They're just,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a junk fish. You can't eat it.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: They're foul. It's a parasite fish. Okay. And in the Amazon, they,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: they have these barely eyes. They're sort of light sensing organs.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: They're incredibly archaic looking.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And they grab onto your hook and they come up
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: and they make a terrible noise. They make a terrible vocalization.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Locals just kill them and throw them in the jungle,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: let something else eat them.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: But apparently there's a tiny species of candiru that swims
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: up the gills of fish. So when there's rushing water,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: they can swim up there and latch like a lamprey.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: And then you won't get them out. So apparently in
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the annals of history, three or four people have been
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: swimming in the Amazon, submerged in the water, and had
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: one swim up their dick. This has happened, and it
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: is possible for women, although I imagine that the entry
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: is a little more complicated. But it's like, I'm way
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: more worried about getting struck by lightning, getting in a
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: car crash, getting bitten by a venomous snake. There's about
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: a thousand things I'm worried about, not dickfish.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: I don't want to overstate how, but hearing about it,
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: I would never not go in the water because of
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: something like that, but in the water, I was definitely
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: always like, How serious are people about this?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: The last one I'll hit you with I know is
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: not true, but I loved it. It's these guys. So
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: in Bolivia, these guys were telling me, they're like, hey,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: heads up. They're saying this through a translator, but heads up.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: If you see a beautiful woman, if you see a
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: beautiful woman rise out of the water. Oh, no.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Telling you she's drowning, don't go help her.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Because she will die. she will grab you and drag
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you under and they'll never see you again. Heads up.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's as far as it went?
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: But it was like the sirens from The Odyssey.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: When I say that, I mean Homer's Odyssey.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I haven't been fortunate enough to watch the new Odyssey movie.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: But I want you to know this is coming from
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a deeply literary perspective, not a contemporary film-going perspective. It's
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: like the sirens in The Odyssey.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: They beckon to you.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry to have to tell you that that's
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: somewhat true.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Okay. Because apparently there's, I was on a river where
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: they said, you know, there's pink river dolphins here. And
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: they said every now and then a man will mistake
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: a dolphin for a woman drowning. Oh. And, you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: you'll see this sort of very human-like skin and he'll
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: rush out into the water and grab this dolphin, which
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't sound realistic. The dolphins are curious.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: And again, in the annals of the, on all these tributaries.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: And they'll bump you along and push you under. And
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: they'll bump you along and push you under. And then
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: there's at least a few instances. They told me on
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the river, I don't want to have to tell you this,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: but they told me on the river, they said, you've
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: got to be careful. We don't know. There could be
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: people in the Amazon right now listening to this. They said,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: if a dolphin makes advances on you, whatever you do,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: don't have sex with the dolphin. And I went, thanks
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: for the note. noted yeah next river and then i
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: was like hey are there you know i want to
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: get a picture of a dolphin you know or i'd
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: like to see you i never saw one and i
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: said you know are there dolphins here and the guy
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: goes yeah he goes but if you make love to
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: a dolphin you have to stay in the shallow so
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: he goes because if they take you deep you'll drown
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and they they won't really they don't want to kill
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: you but they will out of pure passion you know
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: what how many of you were fucking dolphins i said
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: why is everyone telling me this and they all kind
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: of laughed they said no no yeah but at the
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: end of the day just be careful you know And
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: this was serious to them. One guy told me a
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: halfway reasonable story where he said this dolphin was coming
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: close to his wife and his daughter while they were washing.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But then they figured out over time that there was
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: a cadence to it. They figured out that the dolphin
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: was only coming at certain times in the month.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: They figured out it was a menstrual cycle.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: So the dolphin was picking up on the smell.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: And coming in. And the dolphin was just spending time
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: with them. being really friendly or just like swim around
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: to the point they could almost reach out and touch it.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Dolphins being friendly, this freaked this guy out. So he
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: shot the dolphin, which, which I think, you know, that's
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the coolest thing in the world. You have a friendly
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: dolphin coming by. There's certain, there's, I don't think there's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: any records of dolphins, you know, attacking humans in a
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: predatory way, at least the pink river dolphin, but they,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the locals definitely have a complex relationship. And there's always
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: been this sort of, whether it's seals and silkies and
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: the sirens in the ocean. When you're out there and
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: you start hallucinating, I think pretty much anything can look
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: like a woman.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Is that river dolphin, that pink river dolphin, are they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: moving in and out of saline water?
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Can they live their whole life and never touch salt water?
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Great question.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Apparently, when the continents were connected, the Amazon and the
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Congo were touching. The original watershed flowed. from east to
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: west in this sort of proto-Congo river system. The continents separated,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: and then South America hit the Nazca Plate, which tilted
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: the whole end up, and you got the Andes Mountains.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: And then, now it had, it was still a basin,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: and so it had salinated water in it. And then
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: as that started draining out, before the jungle ever formed,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: as the jungle formed, you had these these species like
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: freshwater stingrays, manatees, dolphins that gradually adapted to desalinated freshwater life.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's real interesting. All them damn stingrays running around
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Earth is crazy, man.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of miles from
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the ocean, stingrays.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. I mean, they're just jungle stingrays.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: And they're beautiful.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: So they've figured it out. They totally, totally unrelated. I mean,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: where I work is thousands of miles away from the ocean.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: It's about as far away from an ocean as you
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: can get, you know, there's only a few places where
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: you're that far from an ocean. I mean, because you
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: think you start in the Pacific, you're over the Andes
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: down into the Amazon. And then it's like 4,000, at
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: least 4,000 kilometers to Rio. You know, it's like you're,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: it's the whole Amazon basin to the Atlantic.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: So the animals that are living up in the little
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: tiny tributary headwaters, like where you were in Bolivia, chock
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: full of stingrays. No access. I mean, totally freshwater species
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: for millions of years.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: You don't even need to comment on this, but I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: just invite you to think about it. I can't remember
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: what the distance is. So over 100 miles away from
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: The bottom of that river is below sea level.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: How is that possible? possible? Is this like a deep trench?
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Just hold that in your mind.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know yet. We're going to interview a guy
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: that knows a lot about this subject.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Because in the Amazon, from the headwaters where I work
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and where you visited, to the Atlantic, it's only a
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: few hundred meters drop. Like it's not like thousands of
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: meters over the whole continent. You're going thousands of miles
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: and it's nothing. And that's why the rivers are squiggling
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: like that. That's why they S up like a snake,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: because when there's a steep decline, river's going to flow straight,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: you know, the easiest path when the landscape's that flat,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: it's kind of just finding the, the easiest path along
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: the way. And that's where you get those, you know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: as the crow flies in the Amazon, you go, that's
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: just 60 miles. Well, if we're going by boat, it
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: could be 300 miles. It's totally different. Crow flies versus
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: river miles, a completely different thing down there.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get more serious. Not that this problem
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: with these ladies dragging the hunters is.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: A serious issue, but we'll get more serious. Help me.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And others that haven't been lucky to explore this area much. When...
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: When we say the Amazon, what are we talking about?
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a river, it's a jungle, it's like
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: all these different countries. Help us understand what the Amazon
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: or the Amazon jungle, what does that mean? Oh, boy.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: What I can tell you is this. When I was
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: a kid, I grew up, my parents, they said, you're
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: not allowed to watch anything. Nature documentaries is all right,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: so I got to watch nature documentaries. And I would
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: always gravitate towards the ones that were about the rainforest,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: whether it was gorillas or whatever. But the Amazon, they
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: were like, this is the largest contiguous rainforest on Earth.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: When you look at planet Earth and you see South
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: America there, it's this giant green patch. And so in
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: my mind, I said, man, this is the largest wilderness.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Some of the largest wilderness areas where there's just no people.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: And you say that system has been developing for 55
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: million years. untouched so you talk about old growth this
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: is original growth never touched in much of the amazon
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: and you talk about species you know rainforests hold about
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: half of the species terrestrial species on earth and they're
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: only on six percent of the land mass Half of
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: the species on earth on 6% of landmass.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, I got you.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Along the rainforest.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Half the species on earth crammed on six, 50% of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the species crammed on 6% of the space.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: It's wild. And so there's so mega biodiverse.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: And in the Amazon basin. And so, you know, I just,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I just always had it in my head that it
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: was almost mythical. And when I grew up.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: That's what I have in mind.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's sort of, you know, just mist and giant
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: trees and undiscovered species and, know brightly colored birds and
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: super dangerous insects and giant anacondas and and we think
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: of you know we'll get to this but you know
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: top-down predator ecology you're talking about murderer's row it's not
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: one you got harpy eagles and giant river otters and
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: anacondas and cayman and jaguars and there's several in any
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: given spot in the amazon of these major predators and
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: then just the millions and millions you think of a
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: 160 foot tall tree that's 1,000 years old. You do
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: a time lapse on that tree from the time, from
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: 1,000 years ago to now, and that tree's been sitting
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: out there.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: 1,000-year-old trees.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: You think of all those historical events. You just go
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: to World War I, World War II, our great-great-great-grandparents. That
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: tree was standing out there in the middle of the jungle.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: And if you do a time lapse on that sapling
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: as it grows to be a tree that's bigger than
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: this room, thousands and thousands of species moving up and
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: down that thing as all the years pass by. And
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: so this single tree that has thousands of species that
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: have lived on it, and each of these trees are
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: sort of a bio water pump, pumping water up. And
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: so trillions of liters of water every day are coming
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: off the Amazon rainforest and forming that weather system that
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: makes it a rainforest. And my brain loved the ethos,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: just like we love the the feeling of the mountains
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: and antlers and clear water and sort of, there's a
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: feeling that comes with the American wilderness, that feeling of
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: the American wild. And everybody knows what that's like, even
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: if you've never been there. And with jungle, there was
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: sort of this drumbeat feeling of like raindrops and arrow
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: frogs and really sheltered green. You're underneath 100 feet, 120,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: 140 feet of canopy, and it's a 3D environment. You're
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: not just walking on a trail and you can look around. No,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: you're walking on a trail and you're on a little
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: trail that's a tunnel.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: That's a great point, man.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Some of the 50% of the animals that live in
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: a rainforest live in the canopy or off the ground
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: in branches and never touch the ground. So that's a
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: whole 3D environment where all the wildlife is and you
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: don't have access to it.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: That's a great point. You're around here.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Everything occurs at eye level yep everything is at eye
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: level yeah and so it's trippy you're almost at the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: bottom of a green ocean yeah so that's a great
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: point so getting lost out there feels incredibly claustrophobic and
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: so people say what's the most dangerous thing in the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: amazon is honestly just the size of the amazon because
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: you get off a trail you have no navigational points
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: You're just dead reckoning through the jungle, which most people
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: can't do. And even if you are good, you come
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: to a tree fall where there's two acres of trees
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: that have come down and you can't make it through there.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And there are wasp nests and venomous snakes and, and thorns. It's,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: and then you gotta make it around that, which is a,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: you know, let's say a mile long detour potentially, and
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: then you hit a swamp and then you gotta make
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: it around that. And all of a sudden you're going
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: miles in the wrong direction or your other, your only
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: other alternative. is to hack your way through that dense thing.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Open old growth forest, the canopy is so dense that
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: it is kind of open in the lower, under the understory.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: But man, I've hit places on solos where for one
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: or two days, you feel like you're never going to
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: get out. It feels like you're under just this impenetrable
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: mess of branches. And it's kind of terrifying.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: One of the things that struck me is, especially in
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: the evening or in the early morning, is you know
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the stress of having just too loud a noise? When
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: most people think about that, you always associate it with
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: music being too loud or a building having poor acoustics
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and it's too loud. But such loud animal noise, especially
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: when you throw in the howler monkey and everything, Such
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: loud animal noise that you, I would just catch myself
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes wanting to go like, shut up. Everybody has to
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: shut up.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Because like bewildering amounts of noise.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that's the dawn chorus in the Amazon.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: It's funny because at night you hear the frogs going
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: except times a million. And then there's this really quiet
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: period around 3.30 to 4 a.m. Things get a little
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: bit quiet. And then all of a sudden you'll hear
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: that first bird that goes and then all of a
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: sudden the macaw you'll hear a set of macaws on
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the horizon howler monkeys just before dawn at that purple
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: purple point oh and you're like oh there they are
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: and then the other group will start answering and the
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: jungle starts rumbling and you hear the tinamoos popping up
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: and the macaws and the motmots and everybody starts turning
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: on spider monkeys start calling and all of a sudden
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: the jungle turns on sun comes over the horizon and
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: it's just a party and then everybody's up and everybody's
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: trying to get to it's great Same thing in the evening,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: you get down, and again, somehow it's the Tindamoo's at
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: the crepuscular transitions. The undulated Tindamoo's side, it's sort of
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: the anthem of the Amazon. And you get to this point,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: you're like, wow, that was a beautiful, we get to
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: a high point, and you go, that was a beautiful sunset.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: And then you hear that first wah, you hear that
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: first frog, and then you hear something else answer, and
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: you're like, oh man, they just, it's like someone's switching
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: on the lights at night. It's like, oh, we just
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: switched over to the nocturnal chorus. And it's, it's, it's
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: really beautiful. If we were in a swamp in the
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: rainy season, when the frogs decide to mate, I would
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: have to be screaming in order for you to hear me.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like stressful. I'm sure you're used to it.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I actually find it very, it's like a blanket. It's
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: falling asleep to that. Yeah. You know, people, people I
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: find when I come back, people, you know, people like, oh, I,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: this is my noise machine. And I'm like, I'm going
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: to throw that out the window. Um, I fall, I've
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: fallen asleep to frogs my whole life. And, and, and
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I love it. It's kind of like a blanket when
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: I come. stay in a hotel room and all you
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: can hear is an air conditioner or that building sound
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: i i get i find it very i'm the guy
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: that'll put on rainforest sounds to go to sleep you
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: know i got kind of used to it.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Let me let me ask you about the amazon in
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a different way um i mean you're you're you talking
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: about what it's like to be in it is is
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: is puts you there and it's beautiful but like let
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: me let me try to express my question this way
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: it would be If you talk to Americans, you.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: Say, let's say you go the Rockies.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. The Rockies. Right. People have a picture comes
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: in their mind, a picture, a mountain landscape comes in
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: their mind. Right. But then it'd be like, not many
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: people that have visited the Rockies. It invokes an image
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: in their mind. Right.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: They might think of skiing. They might think of elk, whatever.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: They think of something when you hear the Rockies, but
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: not many people would be able to come and say
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: from other parts of the country would be like, well,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: You know, the southernmost, right?
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: They sort of begin, whatever.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I don't even know. They sort of begin in New Mexico, right?
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: The spine runs up. There's these ancillary chains coming off them.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: They go up into... British Columbia or whatever the hell
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: it is. Like, we know what it means, but we
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: don't know what it means.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the average person.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: So layout for me in sort of a, like in a,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: layout for me in, not geologically, but like geopolitically with
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: country boundaries or whatever, like, how big is it? What
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: do we mean?
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: So I always forget that there's so many numbers, you know,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: 20 trillion liters of water come off the Amazon every day.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: And well, look, I'll give it to you the best.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: I got it.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Brazil contains 60% of the Amazon.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: That's unfortunate.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: And so they're not who you want to have 60%.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Well, the problem, and we're learning this right now, and
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: I'd love to ask you questions about it, but you know,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: in conservation, they say that the victories are temporary and
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: the losses are final. Once you lose that old growth,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: And so the thing is, you can say, well, all
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: this is protected. Well, then the administration changes and they
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: come in and they go, well, actually, we're going to
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: use it all for oil. And so Brazil, the last
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: few presidents, we had Lula who said, he got in
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: and he said, protecting the Amazon is part of my mandate.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: My mission as a president. And then you had Bolsonaro
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: that was going, we have to open up the Amazon.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: We got to make new roads. I want to develop.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, try, he was, I mean,
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: this guy was coming out. This guy was coming for him.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: He was going, you know, tribal people are a relic
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: of a time past and we need to get them
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: to catch up. He wasn't like, oh, you know, the
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Warani and the Zingu people and all, you know, these
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: are great assets to our country, Amerindian nations that need
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: to be respected and, you know, respectfully integrated into our
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: idea as a national, as a country. He was like,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: we got to get rid of them.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: And he was saying it publicly.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a very, like, very aggressive mid-1800s view.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it was strange. It was spooky to hear it.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And he did a lot of damage.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: And then Lula got in and it calmed down a
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: little bit. But now I think there's either another Bolsonaro
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: or the same Bolsonaro almost running again. It's always terrifying
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: for the Amazon.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: So that's... They got... Okay, I didn't realize that.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: So they got 60% of what we... When I say
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the Amazon jungle and I'm picturing the scene you laid out,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: they're sitting on 60% of that.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Just this big basin.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Columbia has some, right?
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Columbia has a tiny bit. They got a little corner
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: of the Amazon, the upper Amazon. Okay. Ecuador has a
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: significant portion.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Peru has the next, next to Brazil, you have Peru.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: And Peru, if you're looking at a map, Peru has
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: the headwaters of the Amazon.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: So, you know, there's, John Hemming described it as the
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: tree of rivers. You know, you got the mouth in
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the Atlantic.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: And then you have this giant, you know, just lay
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: a tree down. You got the headwaters. Sure. And you
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: have this huge artery coming down. We, I work in
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: the upper branches. I'm all the way up at the
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: top of the tree.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: And because of geological conditions, features in isolation, you know,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: you got the Andes mountains that are extremely, you know,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: incredibly intense to navigate. And then you have all this
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: jungle that was always impenetrable. And so, you know, people could,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: you could take a ship from the Atlantic and drive
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: straight up into Manaus. You could keep going into Loreto, Peru,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: which is, which is, I think several thousand, it might
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: be the, the, the furthest inland shipping port on earth. That's,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I remember that's a superlative I heard, but it's like,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: there are tankers going in. along the main Amazon channel now.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Then from there, from Iquitos, then it branches out into
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of smaller tributaries. They do not connect to
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: our part of the basin. They're separated. There's different drainages,
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: just like you said. So where I am, we're in
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: the Madre de Dios, which is you have the Manu River,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: and you have the Tempopada River, and the Madre de
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Dios River. And so these are these other major rivers.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: These are all Peruvian rivers.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: These are all Peruvian rivers. And And so the Amazon
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: is this giant basin where everything is connected. It's this
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: huge rainforest. And when I say everything is connected, I
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: mean that the rivers all connect through political boundaries. You know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: the Heath river runs between Peru and Bolivia and they've
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: protected it on both sides. I believe it's Boa Hacen
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: in a national park in the Tambo Pata and then
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Medidi on the other side. And they share the river
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: as a border. Both countries have agreed that that is
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: some of the most pristine rainforest on earth that has
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: to be protected, which is, which is rare.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: And, um, Like that level of protection.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: So, so in this, all these countries that hold part
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: of it, Bolivia holds part of it.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And, and, and they have done, they have done forward
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: thinking protections in alignment with a neighboring country. And that
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: cooperation is rare.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: That cooperation is very rare. There's so many examples that
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I could think of where you have this beautiful national
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: park and then you have a boundary. And then on
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: the other side of it is complete destruction.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: And, Now, the other note on Brazil is I, in college,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I did a study abroad with Columbia University, and we
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: were out in the Atlantic forest. And most people, you say-
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: What does that mean? Exactly. And so the Atlantic, you
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: think of the Amazon, and to the north, you have
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: the Orinoco River Basin, which is another incredible rainforest river basin.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And then here, below the Amazon, in Southeast Brazil, you
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: had the Atlantic forest with a high endemism, a lot
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: of species that occurred there and nowhere else. You had
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: the golden lion, tamarin, all these other species. Different ecosystem
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: in the Amazon. There's something like 4% of it left.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Of what that Atlantic forest was? Yeah, it's gone. 4%? 4%.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: And so you have Rio and Sao Paulo and sort
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: of Brazil, the country, is developed in that area. That's
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: where they developed. That forest is wiped out. There are
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: conservation areas and little islands of biodiversity. But as a
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: functioning system, it's gone.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: So Rio de Janeiro was, that's in the rainforest.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: It was. I haven't been to Rio, so I can't
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: speak in an educated way about exactly how it is.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: But I also know that there's quite a bit of
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: forest right outside of Rio. I know it's from documentaries
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: where they're like sort of that boundary where like, here's
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: the city. And then there's boa constrictors and macaws. And like,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: I don't, you know, it's completely foreign to me. But
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: when you think of this giant, rainforest it's it's really
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: hard not to just wax poetic about this but it's
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: not just something that's held in seven or eight latin
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: american countries but it is this undeniable geographical feature where
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: everything runs together where the rain that comes off the
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: the mist that comes off the canopy creates the rain
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: that that makes this whole rainforest possible and when you're
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: there i mean you've seen it but it's this whole
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: system is water water and forest and water and forest
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and In the morning, there's all this mist coming off the, the,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: the canopy. And so with the Amazon, the re aside
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: from the fact that the, you know, there's undiscovered medicines
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: and more species than anywhere else, 1500, no 4,000 species
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: of butterflies that we know of across the basin.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Highest number of dragonflies spiders. You know, there's, there's, I
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: think Peru has more birds than any other country. So
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: birding is huge there. And then, you know, harpy eagles, macaws, everything.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I saw one of those harpies.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: They're very hard to see.
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Because they stay in the canopy.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We saw, I mean, I wanted to see it.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: We saw it.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: And it was regarded as that we were lucky.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: By the guides we were with.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was, we were lucky to see it.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's sort of, a harpy eagle is sort
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: of like a wolverine where it's like, you're not, they're
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: uncommon throughout their range. A visual encounter with one is
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: not something you can guarantee.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: And I mean, we only see, I'd say maybe one
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: a year and that's when we're living out there. But
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: the Amazon is such a system and it's so complex
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: and on every acre there's millions of species and such
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: complex botany and the trees that as these Latin American
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: countries begin to eat into the Amazon, the challenge here
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: is that we've already destroyed 20% of the Amazon. And
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: so as sort of a global society.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: That's the current estimate, 20% of it's gone.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: Roughly.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: It's hard to estimate. I would have expected you to say.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: A higher number.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: You know, 20% is the established normalized number that we say.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: You know, it could have been higher in the last
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: few years. But I would think that with, you know,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: sort of satellite mapping and everything, we have a pretty
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: clear view of that.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's 22% or 18%.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: With the Amazon, the worry is. And there's a lot
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: of scientists warning about this. This is a pretty simple equation.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: If you don't have enough forest to keep that massive
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: amount of moisture coming up off the trees, well, then
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: you're not going to have as much rain. And if
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: you don't have as much rain, that forest is going
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: to start to dry out in a snowball effect. And
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: they're worried that we can pass a threshold that there
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: is absolutely no going back from a sort of one
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: way door where we've removed too much of the rainforest.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: And no matter what we do, it's not going to
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: replace that amount of moisture. And then It's not just
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: the Amazon creating its own weather system. It's also there's
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: sand from the Sahara that's coming over the Amazon and
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: delivering nutrients to the forest. And so there's sort of
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: this interchange between Africa and the Amazon. And these, I just,
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: you know, I've become so immersed in these complex systems
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: and in the beauty of deep wilderness that to me,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: when I hear about what's happening to the Amazon and
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: when I watch what's happening to the Amazon on the ground,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: where areas of forest that I loved, that I grew
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: up exploring in my 20s, get incinerated to the ground.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Those thousand year old trees turned over, burned. I'm talking
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: about million dollar mahogany trees just burned because they're just
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: building a road. They're trying to get access. They want
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: to do cattle farms or grow papaya or cocaine or
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. They just want land, and the jungle's
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: in the way. And for all of history, it was
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: the impenetrable jungle, the heart of darkness. Now, they have excavators.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: And they have the funding. And the Chinese just built
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: a giant shipping port in Lima. because they want to
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: start getting into the Amazon. They want to start extracting resources.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: And so they're talking about building a railway system either
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: through or over the Andes to start sucking on the
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Western Amazon, which is terrifying. Because whether you care about
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: nature or you don't, we need this system. I'm sure
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: that everyone that listens to this podcast knows that without
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: clean water and clean air, nothing else you're interested in
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: is going to happen. And the Amazon, it seems like
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: it sort of puts it on a global challenge. This
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: is not up to us. It's not about whether you
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: believe in it or not. Do you think that we
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: should protect this monument? No, no. It's about survival, too.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: This is not just, is it pretty? It matters to
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: our health.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: The point you're making, I never thought about it at
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: landscape scale, but there's this idea, like take the passenger pigeon,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: which went extinct in the early 19th, well, officially extinct
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: in 1913 or something.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: But There's an idea that.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: There was no version where you could have a few.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: You had to have all of them or none of them,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: meaning their whole system, right, how they functioned and operated
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: relied on there being millions. Yeah. And there wasn't a
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: way to have 100. No. And so to hear you
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: talk about the Amazon as being That maybe you can't
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: have a little.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Because the thing that generates the rainforest, like, at a point,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: it's either you got to have X amount or none.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: You can't just have a little patch.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: No.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Down the road.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: No, and we can't turn it into an archipelago of, like,
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: protected areas and desert. I don't want to say desert wastelands,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: but just wastelands.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: And so where we are.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe it has to be big.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: It has to be big. That's the thing. It must be.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And so where we work in the Amazon, illegal gold mining,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: there's gold in parts of the Amazon, but you don't
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: get gold nuggets. You get sedimentary gold. In the sand,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: you have to put it on your finger, and then
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: you go, oh, there's a little piece of gold. It's
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: much better with a magnifying glass. But if you were
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: to cut down the forest, burn the forest, remove the forest,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: flood it, even better, do it to a lake, drain
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: the lake, and then use a hose and a motor
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: to just suck the ground up, and then get the
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: gold out of that.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Plaster mining, yeah.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Using mercury, and then you burn off the mercury with
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: a blowtorch, you're left with this little bit of gold.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: But you have to deforest and destroy unbelievable amounts of land.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: And so, not too far away from where I am,
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: there's hundreds of kilometers that have been denuded and destroyed,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: turned into a wasteland. And I was down there with
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: ABC News, and we literally saw tornadoes of dust. There
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: was a dust storm there. in the Amazon because that
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: part has been destroyed so badly. And that sandy environment,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: the sun is beating down on it, the mercury pollution,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: you're not, you know, and even if you were to
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: leave it, a thousand years, a few thousand years before
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: it becomes jungle again, like this is irreparable damage we're
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: doing to the earth. And, you know, when it's plentiful,
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: you know, in the areas that I protect with jungle keepers,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: you dip a hook in the river. Try not to
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: come out with a fish. You know, it's just, it's so,
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: it's original growth forest. And I think that, you know,
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: I've heard different accounts of how many, what the populations
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: of animals were in the U.S., you know, prior to 1700.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: The numbers are staggering, you know, what there was.
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: When there was habitat everywhere. And in the Amazon, it's like, man,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: just to, you know, you were in the Bolivian headwaters.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it was the same thing. It was like,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: there's just animals everywhere.
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: And it's beautiful to have that. But it's not an
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: issue of whether or not it's beautiful or preferable or
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: some people want it. In this case, the system depends
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: on that purity. You can't remove all of these things.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: And it's very dangerous. I think the information wars are
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: very interesting where people go, like you and I were
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: just speaking about this before we got on, where someone goes,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: you know, we could make an access road into Yosemite
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: and it'll be great because then more people can experience Yosemite.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: And it's like, You, sir, are trying to destroy Yosemite.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: We're already having traffic jams. You're just trying to get
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: your resort access to Yosemite.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: No, they play it. They play it. They play a
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: word game where acts, people, hunters, whatever, anglers, people out
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: in the outdoors, access is a positive word. And so
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: they rebrand certain efforts to be that it's access. So
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: right now we're going through a thing where they're rebranding
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: lot of efforts as fire mitigation which is necessary but
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: they're they're doing things that don't service fire mitigation but
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: just talking about that part because that part's necessary or
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: being like oh no it's access i thought you guys loved.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: Access yeah yeah yeah road building is access well it's
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: also it's real easy to sell like you said like
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: people don't really know what the rockies are and so
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: when you're selling america on a on a on an
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: idea of what can be done in a wilderness area
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: so well we got we got to make these these
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: fire stopping roads well i want to stop fires that
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: sounds great support it and it's like yeah no you
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: know you know so you can tell people that have
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: never been there you know we have to do that
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: you know in this they're not gonna you know i
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: could say in the in the there's just so much
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: rainforest never stops raining you know if you want if
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: you ever want to have the sun come out it's
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: like you could just you could sell it a certain
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: way if you wanted to but Fact is, is that
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: we're at a very dangerous point in the history of
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: the Amazon in 55 million years where the future of
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: it is uncertain. And I am not a climate alarmist
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: at all, but the Amazon rainforest does so much to
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: stabilize global climate and to influence. I mean, what we're
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: getting up here with hurricanes and what's happening on the
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: ocean levels, there's so there's such a tremendous influence that
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: comes off the Amazon and those moisture systems that supports
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: the agriculture all over South America. and those economies, which
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: influence our economy, that to mess with this system is suicidal.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: And so what I've been doing over the last 20
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: years is working with the local people. You know, it's funny,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: just the other day, I posted something about this new
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: road that's coming in and threatening the reserve that I'm
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: trying to create. We're trying to make a national park,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: and there's this road that's racing in, and there's our
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: protected land, and they're trying to get around us and
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: in before we're able to protect this land.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: And so it's a race.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Can we raise the funding to protect this land before
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: this road comes in? And someone commented and they went,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: if only there was a way that we could join
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the indigenous people and collaborate and get them the funding
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: they need to protect that land so that it doesn't
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: get destroyed. And I was like, That's what Jungle Keepers is. Like,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: I've been doing that for a living. If only there
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: was a way. Yeah. You know, if only there was
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: a way that I could walk without always injuring the
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: bottoms of my feet. Like, bro, you're going to love shoes.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: And so I, but that's what we've done. I met
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: this guy, Juan Julio Durand, who is, he's an Eseha Indian.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: And so he grew up no shoes.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Tell me what that means. You know, can you hold
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: that for a minute? Because I want to ask you,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you mentioned something.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: No, I, I, I really want to get to your work,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: but I got another thing that I wanted to ask
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: you about it. Cause this will help explain your work too.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, um, illegal, like illegal mining, illegal mining, illegal forestry,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: legal logging.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: I need you to help me understand that.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Like here, there might be an unpopular mining project or
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: an unpopular logging project.
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: But, It's not illegal, right? So I have a hard
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: time understanding the sort of logistics and scale. It would
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: be laughable that someone would sneak out into the national
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: forest in the United States of America and start hauling
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: out truckloads of logs illegally.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: It might be a policy position that you don't like,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: but there's a way this happens. So Help me get
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: logistically how it could be that you're filling ships with
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: logs illegally and some version of a cop or whatever
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: isn't able to go, but where are these logs from? Yeah.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: How does this happen?
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: That's a great question, and the answer's fun. In the Amazon,
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: so you fly into Iquitos or you fly into Puerto
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: Maldonado or you fly into Manaus. You fly into an
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: area with an airport.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: And then you go three days by river. And you
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: end up at the last place with a town. The
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: last place, I mean, once you leave the last place
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: with an ATM, let's say, right?
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: You go sort of off the grid. And then you
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: end up at the last place that will sell you
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: cigarettes and a Coca-Cola.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I got you.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: And then you're just in the wilderness.
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: And that might be three days by river.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: That might be three days by river. And then you're
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: just off the map in the sense that there's no
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: one out there. and there's really no one out there.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, if you get into a dispute,
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, you get into a dispute, whatever happens happens
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: because that's it. There's, there's no, there are no cops
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: out there. There's cops three days back that way, but
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: they don't have the fuel gasoline or inclination to come
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: out and mix it up with us. And so that's
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: why you have the Amazonian back country. You know, the
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: West is still being won. It's wild. So they might
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: be within the territory of Peru and, or the territory
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: of Brazil, but you're way past society. You're out in
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: unconstructed dream space.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: But you're producing a product that's huge, and it needs
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: to be exported.
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: They have an answer for that. They take the chainsaws,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: and I think we call it an Alaska mill, but
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: down there they get those long steel chainsaws, and they
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: put a rig on either side, and they have the frame.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: And so they cut down a log where the trunk
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: is standing nine feet high.
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: And then they'll just start ripping boards. And they'll sit
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: out there for a month ripping one tree, get it
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: into boards.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, what these guys do is just- And.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: This could be mahogany or something.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Mahogany, ironwood. A lot of people in different countries have
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: different trees that they call ironwood. It's just a common name.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: We have diptyrics, micrantha. And they've just been going through
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: a horrible period of extraction. They did the mahogany boom
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: about 20 years ago. Where they got every mahogany that
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: was within two kilometers of the river.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Just hunting them down.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Just hunting them down. They'd send out local, local tribe
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: guys who really could walk in the forest with no map.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: The real guys, barefoot. And they would go out there
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: and they would go, okay, I know where most of
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: the mahogany trees are. And then the logging crews would
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: go out and there'd be like one guy with a chainsaw.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: And they're milling them. They're milling. On site.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: On site.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: So they knock them down. They sit out there in
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: the jungle eating turtles and monkeys and piranha for three,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: four weeks at a time, living in the jungle. And
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about in a way that would make any
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: American outdoorsman cringe. People, you know, I post stuff where
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: I'll go, oh, man, my boat sank. And we have
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: a 30-foot canoe. You get crazy rain for 40 minutes.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: It fills up the boat, and the boat literally just sinks.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. While you're taking a nap or something.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: And people go, well, why don't you cover your boat?
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: With what?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: You know, the nearest store is two days away. And
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: even if I bring down a giant 30 foot tarp,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: it'll work for two months. And then what happens when it,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like, it's just nothing lasts in the jungle.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: So there's a reason we do things the way we
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: do them. And the local guys, you know, your clothing's
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: just going to get wet. And then when it gets
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: wet and sweaty and you hang it over a stick
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: at night, the moths and the mosquitoes, they're going to
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: lay bot fly eggs on it. You're going to put
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: your clothes back on and you're going to have bot
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: flies burrowing into your skin.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: And so you know what? Forget the clothes. It's easier
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: to just go bare shirt, bare chested. And so you just,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: you live out there and there's certain things that the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: ecosystem dictates. It kind of pushes you towards being naked,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: weirdly enough.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: And so we go up to these logging camps and
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of my local friends either are loggers or
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: have been loggers at some point. And that's part of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: my work is turning them into rangers, giving them better pay.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: But a logging camp is an amazing thing because they're
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: sitting out there with three chainsaws, a bunch of shotgun shells,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: one backyard shotgun where they bought a pipe and they
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: figured out a trigger and they have the shells, but
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: they've made the gun. And so I refuse to shoot.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: I did it a few times and then I'm like,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: you know what, for the sake of my eyes, no.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of output right by your face, of course.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: And they're just living out there for weeks. And so
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: they mill the wood up into these giant boards that,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: you know, 12 foot, 15 foot long boards. Then they
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: carry them on their backs. And I'm talking about a
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: 350 pound piece of wood. That's 12 feet long. They
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: carry them on their backs to the edge of the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: river where they pile them up. And now this could
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: take another two weeks. So now you're talking about two
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: weeks to cut it, two weeks to load it to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: the edge of the river. And then they cut down
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: a few balsa trees or they'll use like a big
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: oil drum with no oil in it and they'll make
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: this float. And then they attach, they take one piece
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: and they'll drill through it, make a hole and drop
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: a motor in there. And they'll literally make a logging
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: boat with these big flat beams of timber.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Ship it down.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: And they, and they'll go down river slowly. And so
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: if you run aground and you have, you know, 17
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: tons of timber, you have to figure out a way
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: of winching that off the ground back into the channel.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: And these rivers are not deep. Or if you get stuck,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: they generally don't log in the height of the rainy season,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: but in the height of the rainy season on those riverbends,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: sometimes you get a 40-foot whirlpool that if you drive
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: into it can be very bad news very quickly. That
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: can flip a boat. And so these guys will spend
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: another week going downriver with these logs where they'll get
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: to the nearest place that has Coca-Cola cigarettes and shotgun shells.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: And there, then they unload it onto the dirt, and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: there there's trucks waiting. And those trucks will load up
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: the wood, take it out on one of those roads,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: those access roads that are just kryptonite to the Amazon.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: And then when they get to the Trans-Amazon Highway, now
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: what you're talking about is like, how is someone not
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: finding out that this is illegal? Well, what they do
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: is they'll just put, you know, tree species like kapok
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: or something that's just, you know, a pulpwood that's not important.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: It's not an illegal tree. you know, mahogany at this point,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: it's illegal to cut mahogany. They'll just put the legal
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: wood on top of the illegal wood. And it's so
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: heavy that the, not to mention, but then you.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: Probably weaseled it.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: You've weaseled it into where there is legal transport.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: There is legal. You've weaseled it in. And then there's
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: just slipping the guy a hundred bucks and just saying,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: don't worry, just sign the papers. They sign the papers
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: and it goes. And so everyone's making money. Everyone's happy.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: And the logs are just flying out. And we see
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: these logs coming out of the jungle and Sometimes they're
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: in milled boards and sometimes they have these ancient trees,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: these giants piled onto the back of these trucks and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: it's just horrifying. It just drives me crazy to watch
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: this because each of those was a thousand year old
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: story or at least a 500 year old story with
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: all these animals living on it. And it's just being
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: ripped out with no regard for, you know, I explain
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: this to the locals where I go, you know, we
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: still have deer in New York because we have a system.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: You are allowed to hunt a deer because they monitor
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: how many deer there are. You know, we know there's
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: a certain sustainable take and we manage the populations. Here,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: it's just unregulated. And so then, you know, that's logging.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, illegal gold mining. If me and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: you go far enough out, let's go six days out there.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: We'll set up a mining rig. We could work out
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: there for seven months. From year to year, nobody's gonna
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: go out there. It takes an expedition and it's sort
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: of a serious expedition, boats.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: So in the mining, there's just the remoteness.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: Gives you an immunity.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Nobody can get to you. And then the other thing
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: is in the areas in La Pampas where they have,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: you can see it from space. There's a big scar
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: on the Western Amazon. It's just this sand pit. And
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: now they've developed this power where they're, they're like, we,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we have machine guns. We have, we, we
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: guard the boundary of what we're doing. So when the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Peruvian police, police are, you know, that's hilarious. We'll just
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: kill him.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: You know, if the military comes in, they can go
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: bag a bunch of these people, blow up their mining rigs.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: But even then, then they leave, you know, and we
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: come back.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: So they, they operate with a, with the might of a,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: like a, of a funded organized criminal enterprise in some cases. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: And Peru has been trying to, to, to peruse credit.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: They've been trying to figure out how to get this
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: under control. Cause it's not just the, the forest destruction.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: It's not just the mercury contamination. It's the destruction of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: watersheds that provides stability to the country. It's also that
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: when you have huge areas of it's almost medieval rain,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: These are not areas with the rule of law. It's
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: the Wild West. You have these teams of men working
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: around the clock in mines, and so then you have
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: drug problems, and then you have human trafficking where they're
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: going out into the native communities to get prostitutes. It's
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: just everything bad gets sucked into there, so it's in
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: everyone's interest to stop the illegal gold mining. No one's
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: come up with a good answer on how to do it, though.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: So in I want you to explain jungle keepers, but
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I guess within that explanation, as you're considering how you'd
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: explain it, I have this question. It'd be if they're,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: if they're rogue and illegal anyway, and you are able
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: to start an organization that buys land, right? Um, how
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: do you deal with the, how do you deal with
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: the illegal elements? They don't care who owns the land.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: They don't care if jungle keepers owns land. So like
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: within your explanation, I mean, it's two part, right? Like, again,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: just to keep bringing it back for, you know, for
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Americans listening who understand law, like land ownership and stuff,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a problem in the U S is not that you
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: own land, but you can't control the people on your land,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: stealing your wood, mining your gold.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: It's like, it's just, it's hilarious. Yeah. You can just
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: make a call and it would be done.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: There's plenty of things wrong, but that's not a thing
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: that's wrong.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: So people have this misconception where they go, well, nobody
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: owns the Amazon. I go, we got to buy this
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: land and protect it. And you always get those like
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: sort of bunny huggers that go, you know, nobody owns
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: the Amazon. And I'm like, is it an imaginary place
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: in your mind? You know, it's not. not Avatar, it's
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: the Amazon, it's on Earth. And so, what Peru has
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: done is gone through and drawn these giant grids and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: I guess in some situations just squiggled with a pen
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: and been like, hey, let's, because, you know, the idea
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: that wilderness is not economically productive was a problem in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: all kinds of places. But they went through back in
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: the day and they assigned lands to various stakeholders. Okay.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: So let's just say we give you 10,000 acres. Make
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: it 20,000 acres. And you go, great, I'll pay you
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: $ 6 for it.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Who am I that has it?
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: You're a proving guy. When the government formed, you went
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: into the office and said, hey, you know, this land
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: between the River So-and-So and the River So-and-So is really mine.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: You know, I've kind of always used that land. And
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: they go, great, well, here, that's a concession. That's yours.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Government owns it.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: You have a lease on it. Because I'm part of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: the political class?
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. They gave it to local stakeholders. They
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: really did. Okay. And they said, you guys can farm
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Brazil nuts. We have some mining and logging concessions.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: I have an interest here.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I've been here.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: And they're like, now that we're assigning ownership, it sounds
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: like you have basically squatters rights.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: And we're going to formalize it. That's huge in the Amazon.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: And so indigenous nations like everywhere else have to fight
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: for their titled land so the community that jj my
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: one julio my friend the guy that i've started jungle
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: keepers with he's from this community where he grew up
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: barefoot and they were local fishermen and bows and arrows
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: and all this now the introduction of the shotgun and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: the chainsaw which only happened 50 years ago changed that
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: and so he watched they had stable population of peccaries
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: they had stable populations of spider monkeys howler monkeys all
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: the game species like taper and fish, abundant fish in
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: the rivers, and he watched his community go from this
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: abundant place to all the big trees getting taken out,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: all the game species being annihilated, because there was no
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: bag limit. It was just like, we're gonna go out
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: and like we see a herd of 70 peccary, they're like,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: let's just surround them and get them all. So, you're
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: annihilating herds, you're not taking one or two, you're just
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: wiping them out at that point. And so, he watched
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: that happen. He watched a climax ecosystem become a silent forest, secondary.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: And so he said, I want to protect the wildest place.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: So he went up this river and chose a spot.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: Now out there in these really wild spots. And he's tribal, obviously.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: He's from an indigenous.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Tell me the name of his.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: The Eseha.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Eseha?
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: E-S-E dash E-J-A, I think. Dyslexic, I can't spell. It's
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: in there. It's in the book. He asked me to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: spell restaurant. I still couldn't do it.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: But that's admittedly a tough one.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: That's a tough one. Or camouflage. Yeah. But so out
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: there to answer your question is, is, you know, if,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: if you were, if your family at some point was
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: awarded 20,000 acres and, and, and JJ's father, for example,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: had several thousand acres in an area that became a
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: national park.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: And because they're local tribal indigenous, when the national, he got,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: they got grandfathered into the national park. Okay. Fair. And
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: so what I grew up doing, and when I say that,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, in my twenties was going on these amazing
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: hunting expeditions and, with these Amerindian guys. There's JJ's wild family.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: He has all these brothers. And we'd go for 10
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: days up a river into the middle of nowhere. They'd
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: be like, oh, that's, remember that bend? That's, you know, that's, uh,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: you know, Rio Tinto. That's, that's this. And then we'd
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: get past the point where I go, JJ, what's that
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: stream called? And he'd go, we ain't got names for it.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: It's just, we're just out there now. Okay. And so
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: we'd go hunting peccary and fishing for catfish and just
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: surviving out there. Open top canoe. and we would get
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: to the land that JJ's father owned.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: And I'd say, how do you know that this is
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: the land that your father owned? And they'd go, we've
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: been coming here our whole lives. We know the river bend. Yeah.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we just know it. Okay. And then we'd
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: make camp. We'd always hack a new camp. You know,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: there's not like an official camp. We'd hack a new camp,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: set up two sticks, make a roof shape, stretch a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: tarp over it, put our tents under that.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: And spend a few days there walking trail, you know,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: There was like little game trails that were also sort of,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: you know, you could see a few machete breaks on
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: them from last year. And so we grew up doing that.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: So that was Santiago's land. That was JJ's father's land.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: That's inside the national park. It's never going to be touched.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: Now in the rest of the Amazon, there's these huge
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: parcels of land. And so if your granddaddy got that
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: land and you know, he was, he used to be
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: a trapper and a fisherman and a jungle man. And
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: then his son, your father, worked the land a bit,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: maybe collected some Brazil nuts, did some light timber, but
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: never really into it. Now you got it. Actually, even better,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: your kid got it. Okay. So now you're dealing with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: a 25-year-old Peruvian guy who's probably by now moved to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: the city.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: No longer cares to be eaten hand to mouth, does
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: not want to eat a spider monkey, has been integrated
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: into sort of more modern society, has a TikTok account
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: and a bank account. You know, it's like... You know,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: this guy, you're going, you want to go eat some turtles?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: And he's going, no, I want to go to a
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: restaurant in Lima. Like, and they're like, but you own
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: 20,000 acres out there. Well, he's going to do what
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: everybody else does that owns land. He's going to go, well,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: how can I make money off of it? Call the developers,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: call the loggers, call whoever. And so what they do
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: is they'll talk to the loggers. The loggers go, hey,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: you own that land that's way up, up, up there? Yeah.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: He goes, it's completely illegal to log up there. And
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: they go, yeah, but. Who the hell's out there now? So, okay,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: I want 30%. You guys can go to my land,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: log the shit out of it. Well, then they got
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: to go make a road. So then the road starts
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: and then they talk to the various landowners. And so
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: it's just a race between the loggers and us. Because
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: we've gone to landowners and me and JJ, because, you know,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: he's the indigenous guy. There's these people, and I've seen
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: this in Virginia where it's, you know, are you one
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: of us?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: Are you local?
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: Or are you from outside of here? Because we know
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: how things work here. And there's a skepticism to people
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: from outside. And it's kind of beautiful. And in the Amazon,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: there's that same thing. If I show up as a foreigner,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: they're like, what does this gringo want? You know what
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: gringos want. And it's never good for us. That's what
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: they know. And so when I walk in with JJ,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: I say, hola, whatever else. Then JJ is the one
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: that'll sit down and go, so. And usually it'll be
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: the loggers. And we'll sit down at a logging camp
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: and he'll go, oh, you shot a pukakunga, a spix's guan.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: I'll go, give me a leg of that. He'll sit there.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: He'll eat their food. He'll go, hey, I brought you.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: What is that animal?
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: A pukakunga. It's a spix's guan.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, a bird.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: A bird.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like a turkey.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Very beautiful bird. It's dumb as hell. It's an indicator
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: species because if you are going hunting, If anyone is
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: hunting in this patch.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: Of forest, it's the first thing to go.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: I got it.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: They're loud and slow and terrible at flying.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: I was with some guys that got a guan, but
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't know the name for it.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. That's funny to be like, if he's around,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: no one's been through here lately.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: No one's been through here. They're kind of comical. We
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: love them for that. They're the ones that tell us
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: we're in good forest. And we'll sit down with the loggers.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: And go, what are you doing? And they go, oh,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: you know, we're going to be here. There's about 35
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: ironwood trees that we're going to get over the next
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: two years. So we're going to just live here and
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: they'll have kids running around. And they go, we're just
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: going to live here and cut the wood and we
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: have a deal with so-and-so. And we'll go, so who
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: owns this land? And they'll go, oh, you know, Sanchez
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: and JJ. I'll go, oh, yeah, my dad knew his dad.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: And that's that link. That link you can't duplicate. Okay.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: And so I could never do that because they'd go,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: who the hell are you? And then they'd shut down
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: the conversation. Whereas JJ is like, yo, and then you go, okay, Sanchez. Yeah,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: you gotta get it. Okay. And then he goes and
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: talks to Sanchez. He'll go find Sanchez in the, in
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: the city and go, okay, Hey, I saw the loggers
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: on your land. They're just starting out. And the guy
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: will go, yeah, you know, I don't go out there.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: I figure I'll make some money off it. And now
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: with jungle keepers, what we do is we go out
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: there and we go, how much is your land? 20,000 acres.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: How many years is it gonna take you to get
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: those ironwoods out of there? Six or seven years, it'll
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: probably make a few hundred grand.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: How much? $ 350, 000? Great. How about you get that today?
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: By the way, here's some paperwork. You want it today.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: You're saying today instead of over five years. Today. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: then we just pay him, get the land, and then
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: we go back out to those same loggers that were there.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: And you go, guys, Thanks for the guan the other day.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: The puka kunga was delicious. Now you got two options.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: You either got to get out of here and get
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: your next logging job or because we like you guys
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: and you seem to be jungle people. Do you want
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: to just come for work for us? And they're like,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: what's that like? And I usually have some jungle keepers
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: rangers with me at this point. And we go, well,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: we're going to give you a super cool t-shirt and
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: you're going to get to drive a jungle keepers boat.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: And your job is going to be to make sure
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: that people are not cutting down the ironwood trees. And
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: they're like, do I still get to fish? And we're like, yeah,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: you can still fish. And they're like, what does it pay?
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: And we're like, three times what you're getting paid now.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: And you'll have medical benefits and you'll be part of
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: a team. And we're going to teach you a whole
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff. And you're going to teach us a
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff because you probably grew up native. And
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: they're like, I don't have to use a chainsaw all day.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: And we're like, no. And so your family is going
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: to be better provided for. You can come in out
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: of the cold or you can stay out there. We
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: might build a ranger station. You already cut down some trees.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: We might as well build an outpost out there. And
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: we've done that a bunch of times. Because for our
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: rangers being two days up river, that ain't great. It's
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: much better if you have a little, you know, a
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: deck and a roof for them to stay at. And
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: so this is what we've been doing. It's sort of
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: this secret sauce that we figured out, which is like,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: these aren't bad people. They're not evil people. They're poor people.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: that are logging working for a larger enterprise who's probably
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: connected to a china who's selling stuff to the chinese
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: companies that have taken out all of this timber but
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: if you stop it at the micro level right down
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: there on the river we can stop it so we're
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: we're working on on the Las Piedras River, which is
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: this incredibly wild watershed. And the reason it remained unexplored
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: and undestroyed is that there's a lot of uncontacted tribes there.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: And that's when I say the West is still being won.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: These are the Comanches.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: These are people that would just as soon kill you
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: as shake your hand. We've had situations in the Madre
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: de Dios where anthropologists have tried to make contact with
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: them We've had situations where loggers have gone around the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: wrong river bend and, you know, there's the uncontacted is a,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: is a, is a stupid word for them. That's just
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: like their common name in society, but they're, they're the
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Mashka Piro. They're, they're voluntarily isolated nomadic people, people, they're
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: tribes that have chosen over the last few centuries to
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: have as little contact as possible.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: That's a pretty important distinction there.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: And that's something that's like, that I've kind of come
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: to understand is that And maybe you can tell me this,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: that at this point, we're kind of beyond the idea
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: that there would be people living in the Amazon who
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: are sort of unaware, that they would be unaware of
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, civilization is out there and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: that there's cities and, you know, cities and economic interests
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: encroaching on their area. Is it that they don't know?
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: or that some don't really understand that, they don't know that?
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: Or is it that they're like, no, I know that
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: very well, but I'm just choosing to not take part?
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: No, it's the weirder one. It's that they've been out
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: there for so long. So the rubber boom, industrial revolution,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: there were rubber barons going down to the Amazon. We
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: needed hoses and gaskets and tires and all this new
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: stuff for the industrial revolution and the war effort. And
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: so we sent these people down. And the only way
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: to get this was latex trees. And those only grew
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: in the Amazon and they only grew deep out in
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: the forest. And Henry Ford tried to make Fordlandia make
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: a giant plantation of rubber trees and didn't work because of, I.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: Got to plug the movie Fitzcarraldo.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that's exactly that time period. And he used
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: like Machiganga Indians for that. He used the real deal.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: He went and talked to a bunch of my friends
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: and said, you guys want to be in a movie?
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: And they were like, hell yeah. You know, he's, I
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: don't know if you ever saw The Burden of Dreams.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Herzog was on this show.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: I got to watch that episode.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I interviewed Herzog at his house, but what's so hilarious,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: just for people, we'll get off this pretty quickly, but
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: Herzog made this incredible movie about the rubber barons in
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the jungle.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: And it's called Fitzcarraldo.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: And there was a movie.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: about the making of Fitzcarraldo. Which is almost better.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's the same thing with Apocalypse Now and the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: movie of the making of Apocalypse Now, which is Hearts
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: of Darkness. And it's hard to tell which is better.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: It's hard to tell if Fitzcarraldo or Burden of Dreams
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: is better. But in it, the funniest part about it is,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: one of the funny parts about it, is Herzog is
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: the director. And he's working with a very volatile actor,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Klaus Kinski. And Herzog is always fighting with his actor,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: his lead actor. the indigenous people that are on set
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: know that Herzog writes the checks. And so at one point,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: a guy comes to Herzog and says, I see how
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: much this guy upsets you.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: Would you like me to kill him? He's like, no,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: please don't kill the actor.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Please don't actually kill him. We're just disagreeing. I mean,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: but that, for people, if you go watch that though,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: it's like that is the world that is still there
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: where there's these indigenous people. I mean, there's a scene
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: in Burden of Dreams where they wanted there to be
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: a moment where these people come up on sort of
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: untouched tribes and they cut the trees and they're falling
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: into the river. I mean, it's just so incredible, but
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: these uncontacted tribes, I'm just going to call that for convenience.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: These people still live. So during that rubber period, there's
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of tribes that got, if not annihilated, severely abused.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: It was a horrible moment in human history. And they
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: were just shooting people.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Well, like you keep using the wild west, but it
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: was like, it was very similar to us coming out
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: in the 1840s, 1850s into the west.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: It was very, very bad. I mean, there were, there's a,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: there's a quote from one of the, uh, the priests,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: you know, these missionaries that were down there where they,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: they said, it's, it's, it's untenable. They said these, these
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: rubber barons would come in, round up the village and
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: and be like, y'all are gonna be working for us.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: And the village would be like, no, we're not. Like,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: we're absolutely not gonna be listening to you. And they
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: would just set a few people on fire in front
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: of them and be like, do you want more? You know,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: and we're gonna take your wives. You know, this is
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: not a joke. You're going to listen to us. It
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: was horrible. And so during that time, there were some
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: tribes that said, not us. And they moved deeper into
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: the forest. And so since that time, you say since
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: the turn of the century, they've been living out there.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: And these are probably tribes that, what were they doing
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: before that? Living out there. I see. And then they
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: had this one horrible interaction with the outside world.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: And they learned the outside world is trying to kill
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: you and they are savages. They will light you on
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: fire and send you out for work for no reason whatsoever.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: Let's stay out here and you kill whoever comes because
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: it's safer to kill them than to see what they want.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: So the uncontacted tribes have been out there for ages
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: and some of the land that we protect now has
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: them on it. Mm-hmm. And exactly what you were saying,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: there's not really even planes that fly over where I work.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: It's so big. We've had a few narco-trafficking, like little
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: old Cessnas with a piece of duct tape on the wing.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: But even that, imagine these tribes, they watch it go by,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: if they could even see it through the canopy.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: They know there's other types of people out there. But
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: the idea that they don't know about or the internet or,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: you know, the fact- Legitimately, like today. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's, in the book, there's pictures of these people,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: because we were up working with a very normal, contacted
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: indigenous community that we work with, that we patrol with
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: and interact with, our friends and colleagues, and this uncontacted
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: tribe showed up on the beach. And they showed up
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: with bows and arrows. I'm talking six-foot bows, six-foot arrows.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: with bamboo tips that are 18 inches long. And so
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: when they fire these arrows, they'll go straight through a person.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: And they can hit a spider monkey, you know, at
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: wild angles as the spider monkey's going through the trees.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: So they're deadly accurate with these.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: And they don't know. And they don't speak a language
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: that directly translates to any outside language.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: The guys that I was with, the community that I
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: work with, they speak Yiné. They were speaking yin-yang to
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: the tribe, but there was a little bit of still
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: a barrier. They're related.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: So in the area you work, I'm guessing these people
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: are nomadic to some degree?
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: To an extreme degree.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: They move.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: They don't have houses.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: Got it.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: So in the area you work, in the areas you're
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: trying to buy and and just to point out to
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: people like you're buying areas willing seller willing buyer.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah somehow when i say buyer both sides get upset
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: um the bunny huggers get upset where they go you
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: can't buy the amazon and then i'm like no no
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: we're conservationists and we're it's indigenous led like jj and
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: and the local people are the people that are doing
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: it i'm the mouthpiece that can come up here i'm
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: from new york i could talk all day and i've
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: been down there and i'm amazed by it and so
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: i'm helping yeah right and so.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah i should i When I say you, I didn't
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: mean you.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 5: No, no, no.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: And that's okay. I'm just, I'm just, I'm, I'm slicing
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: into it because sometimes I do a public speaking gig
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: and someone will stand up and I'll go, you know,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: on my river and someone will stand up and go, well,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: it's not really your river. And I'll go, well, is
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: it really your house or is it just your turn
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: in that house? And it's been there since the 1700s,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: you know? And it's like, that's just how we talk.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: And, uh, and we're not buying, you know, people go within, uh, uh,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: you know, a white foreigner buying land in the, I'm like, listen,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: This is an organization that's Peruvian-led where we secure the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: land from the people that are trying to destroy it
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: and join it with the indigenous reserve that's protecting a watershed.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: So let me re-approach my question.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: You're totally fair to clarify that.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: You hear what I'm doing here, yeah.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: No, I do, and it's totally fair. In the areas
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: where jungle keepers is active, there are nomadic groups. there
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: are nomadic groups of what we're, and you did a
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: good job of explaining it, nomadic groups of what we'll
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: agree to call uncontacted people passing through these areas. And
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: you don't go, you, your partner, other indigenous employees, members
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: of the organization, you don't need to go and say, hey,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: You're cool here.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: No. No, they'll shoot you in the neck. Okay, yeah. No.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 5: Really?
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: No, you can't do that. It was really funny. We
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: were planning a gala as a fundraising event in New
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: York City. And it was funny because the planner, great,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: great human being, put on an amazing event. But he goes,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: you know, is there any way that we can get
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: one of those uncontacted tribe to come here and represent?
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: I was like, it's really hard to explain. But when
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: you see the pictures of these people that I have
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: in the book, or some of the footage that we've
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: shared of them, they're so wild. They're naked. They have
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: their penises tied up with string. It's really the only
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: thing they wear. They have bracelets. They like rope. They
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: don't really fish. You know, it's funny because I do
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: see comments on the internet where someone goes, you know,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: I said, we never find fish bones in their camps
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: because we find their camps. You find like a little fire,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: a few palm leaves like this that they've sat under
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: in the rain on the beach. They love turtle eggs.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: So you see all the things that they've been doing.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: You find a few skulls, a few bones, and a
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: bit of fire. So we know a lot from that.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: We've never found fish bones. And when I say we,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: I mean me and the indigenous trackers I work with.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Who know what they're looking at.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: Who know what they're looking at. And so they go,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: these people don't eat fish. They don't have access to them.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: Think about it. In that muddy water, how are you
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: going to find fish? We have mud water where we are,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: brown water. They're not using metal hooks. They don't have metal.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: They may have stolen a few machetes from loggers that
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: they killed because they do kill loggers. There's been a
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: few instances where loggers are working.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: You're not going to hear some dude.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: You're not even going to see them. They're right out
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: of the forest. Loggers are dead. And then they're like,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: we'll take the machetes. We have no idea how that
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: hellish chainsaw works. Leave that there. They don't even want
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: the clothes. They're just like, they'll take what they want. We,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't say we, the local people, so I stay
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: out of trouble. They said to them, so what do
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: you want? They said, first of all, please put down
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: your bows. And what do you want? And we were
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: on one side of the river and the other side
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: of the river. We were short of the shirts versus skins.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: We were over there saying, what do you want? And
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: they were on the other side. We said, put down
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: your bows, first of all. We had a ton of shotguns,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: but that was for self-defense. They're over there looking at
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: us with bows and we're like, look, put your bows down.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: We had a guy, a local anthropologist who could speak
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: to them. He said, we're not talking to you unless
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: you put your bows down. So they put their bows down.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: They came out to the river and they're clapping and
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: they're talking to us and they're gesticulating and they're... And
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: he said, what do you want? And they said, we
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: want plantains.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: We want rope.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: And so their wants are very, very basic. And so
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: we pushed a boat with plantains and rope. We added
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: in some sugar cane for good measure. And so they're
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: all like eating the, you know, they're like taking the
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: plantains and they're deconstructing the rope. That was so interesting.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: We get what they got was some nylon paracord, you know,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: pile of it. Instantly, they start deconstructing it, bringing it
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: down to the fibers and expertly weaving it into something
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: know to do to do their fletchings oh i got
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: it you know they just start making bow and arrows
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: right there in front of us like as they're talking
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: they're going yeah yeah send us some more and they're making.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: That in that in the internal line inside the sheet.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah and they were expert at it it was amazing
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: um but but they they you know we had this
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: exchange with them and the indigenous natural uh anthropologists were
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: saying you know you don't have to be violent like
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: we're friends yeah And they're going, ah, we don't know
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: about that. They're going, some of you cut down trees.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: We know some of you cut down trees. We know
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: you got those chainsaw things. Then they were like, why
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: do you cut down the trees? For them, they're like,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: what are you doing with trees? What could you possibly
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: want with these giant trees? We don't like that. That
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: was their main message. So we had this three-hour-long interaction
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: with them, which was incredible. I mean, absolutely. It's like
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: seeing a woolly mammoth or something. It's like you just go,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: this is something that, I thought was from a different time.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: And you're seeing people that are living like the way
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: that people would have lived a thousand years ago, naked
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: in nature with no... What do you do without a blade?
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: What do you just have a peccary tooth? How does
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: that work? They don't even have rocks. There's no rocks
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: in that part of the Amazon. And so, we left
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: that day, they went back into the forest and we
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: went back to the community and nobody had died. It
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: was a huge success. Me and the other directors of
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: jungle keepers head down the river. There was a whole
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: bunch of other, you know, secondary and tertiary things that
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: had to happen now because the Peruvian government was like, okay,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: this tribe came out and there's reactions. And they had
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: taken all of the yuca and the plantains from our
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: friends in the indigenous community. So we had to get
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: them supplies. Because now they were like, we don't have food. Like, yeah,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: we catch fish and stuff, but like our carbs, totally gone.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: So we were like, let's get back. Let's get a
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: boat up as quick as possible. It's going to take
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: two days. We were doing all that. One of the
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: guys that we were literally with the day before, my
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: friend George, he was driving a boat up the river
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: and the tribe came back out. But this time he
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: was driving a boat and we don't know what happened.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: I had a bunch of other friends on the boat,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: but the tribe was on both sides of the river
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: this time. And they started loosening arrows. These six foot
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: arrows start flying on the boat and everybody else got
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: under the edges of the boat. So they were sort
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: of safe from these arrows. And he's driving though. So
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: he's sitting up on the back of the canoe and
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: an arrow went in just above his scapula and came
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: out by his belly button straight through his lung. And
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: so they took him out of the boat and I
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: saw the boat later on and it was just blood everywhere.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: And they took him up to the nearest spot they
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: could take him and then we actually got a military
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: helicopter to go up and evac him.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: He survived? He lived. No way.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: With a pole through him. Somehow he lived. I mean,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: he's never going to be the same, but he lived.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: And so it's like, that's the thing. You can have
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: a friendly encounter with these tribes and they still, they're
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: not getting it. They don't know about the outside world.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: They don't know that if they would just be friends
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: with the next indigenous community, they could teach them how
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: to grow plantains. They don't even have agriculture. And so-
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: That's a complicated relationship that's going to have to play out.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: It is, and I was going to ask you a
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: half-smart-assy question just to have an intellectual wrestling match about it,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: which would be, well, you answered it already. Oh, okay.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: But it would be, I'm.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: Devil's advocating.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: I'm playing the devil's advocate role in something.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: It would be, if you have an uncontacted group or
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: a barely contacted group and they want stuff, Is it
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: fair to say, I'm not going to give it to
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: you because I like thinking about you how you are.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: And even though you want it, I don't want you
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: to have it because it's going to upset my view
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: of you as an ancient one.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: And it's fun for me to know that you're out
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: there without this stuff. Yeah.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: And I was going to, like I said, devil's advocate
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: that idea.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: But when it.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: Gets into a people.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: That a people peoples that I don't want to integrate. Like,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with you. I want
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: to have, yeah, I want to like, I want to
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: be here with my family, my people. I want you
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: to stay out of my area. I'm not coming to
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: you for these things. And I think it's different. And
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's like, it's noble to respect it. Unless
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: you have something to say about the devil's advocate position
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: is like, is it our place to tell people they
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: can't have stuff they want?
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: Uh, hell no. And it's funny, it's funny because this
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: would cause so many people to go nuts. This sort
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: of politically correct thing of, you know, uh, this is
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: like another culture coming to us and going, well, I
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: thought Americans drove, you know, used horses and, and, and
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: drove across the plains and wagons. You know, you guys had, no, no, no,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: you should still be Americans. Like go back to that.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: And I was being like, what are you talking about? We've, we've,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: we've grown. In this direction.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I mean, look, I think every- That's
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: a funny point.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: And it's like everybody wishes, or at least I really wish, that,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: you know, America formed and then the Comanches still had
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: so much power over so much land. Don't you just
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: wish that they just stopped at that and said, you
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: know what? You guys maintain control over that. We got
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: the coasts and like, you know, there'll just be the
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: United States with a few less and you guys keep it.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: It would just, we'd have Comanche. It would just be cool.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: And like, what's happening with the Mashko Pure, or picture
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: talking to Native American people today who's saying, why don't
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: you only live in buffalo skins? I like that. Go
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: It happens to Native people all the time here.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: Like, you want to hunt whales. Well, why don't you
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: do it with a, you know?
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: You know, with a, you know.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: You can only do it with a stick.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: Because I don't need to.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: We have other ways of hunting whales now.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: Well, there you go. And then it seems like the
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: only way that that gets through is when they go, well,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: it's better, it's more humane for the whale to not
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: be speared to death. But I think that here, there's
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: a few tribes in the Amazon, like the Waurani and
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: the Kayapo, I think, you know, who have done, and
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: the people in the Zingu River, who've done amazing jobs
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: of maintaining their tribal heritage and still sort of like
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: adapting their clothing to more modern traditions still a lot
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: of feathers, and they really, you know, they still do their,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: women wear makeup, they wear their tribal, certainly for ceremonies,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: and they've really proudly maintained their indigenous heritage as their
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: main thing. And they've even embraced ecotourism, and they're like,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: we're gonna bring you out there, and we still do
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: wear feathers, and we're experts, and we always have been experts,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: but they've had the luck, these are the few tribes
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: that have had the luck of getting some of their
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: members educated enough in Western ways to come in and
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: make that jump before the damage is done.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: Because what usually happens is you have a group of
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: indigenous people that are living out in the forest. And
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: then one road comes through, one missionary comes through and goes,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: I don't want you. I don't want you believing in
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: whatever you believe in. You need to believe in our
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: God in our way. And we're going to start, you know,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: put down the bows. You're going to start eating pigs
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: and chickens because that's what we want you to do.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: And they strip them of their indigenous ways, which is
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: just horrific. And what happens is that alcoholism, the, how
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: to say it, like the tribes that I work with
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: have a very strange relationship to money. They're like, why
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: are you going here instead of just going in a
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: straight line? Like I want meat, so I should go
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: get meat. Why would I have to work for the meat?
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: Or then I can just go out and shoot the meat.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: And then when they get the money, they're like, well,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get my family some soda and a
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: thing and a thing. And they kind of like, well,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: they'll spend all the money. And they'll be like, shit,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: now I need more money. I don't have any gasoline.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: I got to get somewhere. It's like, that's because you
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: got to save the money. And then they save some
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: money under their mattress and it gets stolen. And it's like, well,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: this isn't working. It's like, this is not a great
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: system for you. So with the uncontacted tribe, which is
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: such an extreme example of this, some people say, They've
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: been running scared for, you know, a few centuries or
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: at least a century. Someone should go bring them in.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: Now that's happened in different places and it doesn't go well. Uh,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: there's one place where a child washed down the river
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: in a, in a remote part of the Amazon and they,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: they picked him up and he was one of them.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: One of the Moscow or washed down alive, washed down alive. Yeah.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: They picked him up and, He never went back. He
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: stayed in this tribe who speaks Spanish and their local dialect.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: And the anthropologist that I work with, he went and
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: he spoke to this kid. He said, well, what was
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: it like when you lived out in the forest with
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: the nomadic tribes? He said, I don't really remember. He
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: got a trauma response. He got like, I just don't
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: worry about it. You know, it's okay. There's a wall
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: of of silence. It's not, you know, when you think
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: about what are their infant mortality rates, how are their
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: women treated? You know, is there intertribal warfare? What are
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: their wrong beliefs? You know, you want to talk about like,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: what things do we believe, any scientific method, you know,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: are they saying that, you know, all illnesses are bad spirits.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, every time that you look at
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: me funny, I should kill you. It's like, you just
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: don't know what they're operating on. One, I mean, after
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: seeing with them, after interacting with them and my interaction
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: with them was very simple, you know, holding up my
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: hands and they, held up their hands and we kind
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: of just kind of smiled at how different we were,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: you know, and that was this very human moment at,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: you know, almost across centuries. Cause you go, man, you have,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: I have no idea what's, what goes through your mind.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: You have no idea what goes through my mind. And
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: it was just sort of like, you know, basic hello. And, uh, so,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: so interestingly now coming back to our world, I come
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: back up here and I write this book about the
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: work that I'm doing with the local people and there's
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: these tribes and all this wildlife and I'm just trying
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: to protect it because the butterflies and the jaguars and
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: the ancient trees should be protected. And I even want
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: to protect the indigenous people, the uncontacted tribes. And then
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: you get articles being written online where people go, you know,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: Paul Rosely comes back from the Amazon and releases footage
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: of uncontacted tribes without their consent. And this is horrible.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: And you see, you know, the comments of people going,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: look at this, another white guy using this to sell
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: his book and to push his organization. He's probably making millions.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: And what we did was after that, most of it
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: was people just, just experiencing awe at seeing this footage,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: but they were the detractors. What's great though, is that
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: through jungle keepers, we raised enough money to protect another
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: 20,000 acres and that's land that the tribe lives on.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: So now, They're safe from loggers and gold miners and
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: narco-traffickers because we're protecting their land and they have no idea.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: And nor will they. Because if we have it our way,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: if they want to come out, they'll come out. But otherwise,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: it's their choice. And it's not that we want them
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: to stay like that. It's that they've made it very
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: clear they don't want us. On a trail, if you're
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: walking and the Mashko Piri are there, they put an
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: X over the trail. They'll cut two sticks and put
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: it over the trail. And you know, you go past that,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: you're going to get shot. Fair. Like, that's great. And so,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: you know, they have their own respect system. You just
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: don't want to surprise them.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I could go on all day about horror
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: stories about that, but they're very, very happy to engage
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: you violently if it'll mean that they're not in danger.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: Is there a, with Jungle Keepers, is there a direct relationship,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: like an infinite relationship direct relationship where dollars in yeah
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: dollars in yeah will continue to be acres secured or
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: is it or is it that um there's there's a
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: finite amount of available acreage so because you just keep
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: going and going and going and going great.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: Question and this is what makes jungle just two things
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: i think that three things that make Jungle Keepers different
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: than anything that I grew up on. When I was
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: a kid, you had these big organizations that are going,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: send us donations and we'll send you a stuffed polar bear,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: a teddy bear. But where's my donation going? Which project?
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: You're saving the environment. Where is it going? So if
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: I send you $ 5, $ 100, $ 5, 000, where? And so first
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: thing about Jungle Keepers is that Our whole plan was
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: developed by indigenous strategies to protect their land. Second, we
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: developed a donor program that allows all the kids like
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: me that are sitting at home wanting to save the Amazon,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: they can go join our team, which is giving $ 5, $ 10,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: $ 50 a month. And there's all these people, I keep
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: telling people, for the price of a latte once a month.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: You're helping us protect, you know, a lot of raindrops
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: make a flood. You're helping us protect all these acres.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: So the fact that normal people, and we have our
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: large donors that are going at the $ 100, 000 mark. And
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: so we're getting all this land and we're allowing people
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: around the world, because that's the thing, these Latin American
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: countries would say, you want us to protect our land?
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: Who are you? You know, several thousand miles away in
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: your other country to tell us what to do with
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: our land. Help us. And so what we're doing is
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: we're helping them. We're improving the lives of the local people.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: We're educating them. We're improving their standard of living. And
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: we're doing this by asking all the people up here
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: that go, yeah, I really care about species and the rainforest. Well, great.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: You know, you subscribe to Netflix. Well, help do something
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: important with your money. It doesn't have to be a lot,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: but give us the consistency. And that allows us to
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: keep blocking out pieces of this river, and it's not
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: a forever project. And that's the difference. We're not trying
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: to protect the ocean or the environment. There's one watershed.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: This Las Piedras watershed that we have identified as one
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: of the wildest places on earth, original growth, superlative biodiversity,
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: nomadic uncontacted tribes, and just this intact ecosystem, this rare
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: crown jewel on earth. And so once we were at,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: we're at, we're at about 160,000 acres right now. If
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: we can double that, we need about $ 15 million to
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: do this. We got $ 15 million tomorrow. We could do it.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: That is the mission I'm on. That's why I'm in
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: the US right now, is I'm talking to large scale
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: funders and also trying to talk to people like you
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: who have these huge audiences. Because out of the people
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: that listen to you, there's going to be those people
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: that go, you know what? I want to protect the
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: greatest wilderness area on earth. I want to be part
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: of establishing it. And that's what we're doing. We're doing
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: something historic. And so if we got that 15 million
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: tomorrow from one donor, we could finish the park. We've
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: had politicians in Peru We spoke to, what, the Department
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: of the Interior? Department of Labor? Where they said, look,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: if you do all the hard work of securing the
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: land and get it, we're never going to do that.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: But if you guys can do it, we'll sign it over.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: Do you trust those guys?
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: So, incredibly, everyone assumes that everyone in Latin America, like
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: the police, are corrupt.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: Man, no, no, no.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: I don't assume that at all.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: I don't assume that at all.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: Politicians. No, I'm just saying, does your vision, right, like,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: if it's a national park, you're sort of.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: Handing the deed over to agency.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And agencies missions change. I'm not implying corruption.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: All right. Political wins. Yeah. I'm saying like, is, do
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: they have, let me, let me put it dark. I
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: definitely don't want to imply that like, Oh, it must
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: be some banana Republican. They're crooked. I mean, is, do
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: they do a thing in other places that you look
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: at and you're like, yes, I want them to do
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: that thing here.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're already doing it. They have a template
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: for what you'd like to see. Yeah.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: Manu National Park, which is right near us, is sort
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: of like just the neighbor over, is a UNESCO World
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: Heritage Site. Incredible national park. You know, there's a little
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: bit of issues at the borders, but it's a roadless area.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: No one's allowed in. I mean, there's a deep, deep,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: deep research station in there that you can get to.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: If you really want to see Manu, you can, but
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: you can't drive through it.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: You got to go by river, which means you got
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: to be approved.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: So really that's the only way to access it.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: So there's like a thing.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, Peru has a great national park system. Yeah. So
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: that's why I say I want it to be a
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: national park. and if that means something that means something
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: it's not just a paper park yeah yeah now in
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: the tambopada there's been tambopada national parks there's been a
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: recent flare-up in people that are piercing past the park
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: boundaries and illegally mining okay now the question of is
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: there boots on the ground? Is there enough of a
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: park service to go out and stop them? Not really.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: Cause it's guerrilla warfare. Cause if you know, the park
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: service shows up with their little badges and says, guys,
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: you can't be here. You need to come with us.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: They're going to say, yeah, we got more guns than
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: you do.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: What?
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, and so that's the problem with the Amazon is
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: it's very wild West. If you want to go in
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: and arrest people, you better come with a lot more
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: guys and better guns.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: And, uh, And so if we can establish this as
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: a national park, it will be safe. And if by
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: political wins, let's just say in six months or 18 months,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: we get there and we do this and it's better
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: as a private reserve, well, then we'll put it as
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: a private reserve and have it as that.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: Whatever works to protect the river. Yeah, you could choose
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: that it wasn't the right.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, as we've seen, administration changes and
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: even the things you thought were locked away and sacred.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: Can be unlocked.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: And that's terrifying.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: We're going through that right now.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: That is terrifying. And so for us, the danger right
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: now is we're in a race against time because we
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: have roads coming. Right now, there's a road on our
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: northern boundary that, you know, if we got at the
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: beginning of the year, we got a lot of funding
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: because I was doing a lot of press. And that's
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: what happens. I do a lot of press. and a
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: lot of people reach out. $ 5, $ 10, $ 100 a month, great.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: But then you get those people that are like, we're
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: going to give you $ 300, 000. We're going to give you
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: half a million dollars. Go get that piece of land.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: Let's just do it. So we get these funders on
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: all levels. And then things quiet down. And so we
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: have the landowners on another 100,000 acres. The contracts are
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: drawn up. Our lawyers are waiting with the pens. We
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: just got to get the funding.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: 15 million is not that much money.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: You need to be able to go like you did
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: in that story you told where you're like, no, no,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: I'm talking today, man.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: Yep. And so right now there's a road coming and
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: we don't have the money for that land. So we're
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: a few million dollars short of that. That's emergency right
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: now money. And so we're just scrambling right now. And
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: it's funny because the last year at this time, the
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: narco traffickers decided they were going to kill me and JJ.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: That's what they figured. They said, well, this is, you're
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: making it very difficult for us to work out here.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: We're going to kill the two of you. And there
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: was actually a day that JJ was in a car
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: and they actually showed up asking for both of us. Sorry,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: it was a day that our car was driving, our
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: driver was driving. They showed up asking for us and
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: neither one of us was in the car because that
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: would have been it. We've dealt with that situation by
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: collaborating with the Peruvian authorities. That's no longer a problem
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: right now. But last year, we were dealing with that
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: and it seemed like everything was going to die. Then
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: we got some donations. We got some help. We worked
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: with the Peruvian police. We removed the narco threat. We
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: got a bunch of land. We got them out. Great.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: Now this year we have this road and it's like
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: every year something is coming and it's like if we
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: could just, I mean, I just met somebody who they
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: were renovating their cafeteria at a zoo and he said,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: we just spent 25 million on this new cafeteria. And
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: I went, oh, that was so casual. Can you please
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: tell me where you found that money? Because 15 million
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: to protect the wildest place on earth. I'm shocked that
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: I have to work this hard to get it. Like I'm,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: I'm writing books and I'm going on podcasts and we're
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: bringing people down there. We own the tallest tree house
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: in the world. We put it up in one of
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: those thousand year old trees. And so people can come
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: to this luxury tree house and watch the mist and
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: the macaws and the monkeys and the Amazon. Um, you know,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: so it's not even like you give the money and
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: there's no way to see it. It's like people, you
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: can come with us. And so we're, my job right
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: now is to just go find the person that's willing
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: to go. You know what? I want the park named
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: after me. I don't, you know, what's the thing that
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: someone said, they said, you can get just about anything
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: done if you don't care who gets the credit. I
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: don't care who gets the credit. I'm my gravestone. I
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: wanted to say that I protected more heartbeats than anybody else.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: That's it. You know, and I'm not doing this. I
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: know your audience. I'm not doing this from a bunny
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: hugger perspective. I love the abundance and I want to
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: be able for the local people to be fishing and
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: hunting and man fishing is good in the Amazon. But
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: if we don't protect it, we're going to ruin it.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: And I think it's really interesting being up here right
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: now because, you know, hearing what's going on in Yosemite
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: and what's going on with the roadless areas. And, you know,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: growing up, me and my dad, when I was 18,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: we went to, I think it was called the Wemenuch
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: Wilderness Area. And just learning that, and we did a,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: you know, multi-day trip. And just learning that there are
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: these areas in the U.S. that people before I was
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: born said, this should be protected. These mountains, these ecosystems,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: these forests should be protected. And we've put roads and
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: stores and polluted the crap out of everything. But let's
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: just pick a few spots on the map that we
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: don't touch.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 4: 2%. 2%.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: 2% is federally designated wilderness area.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: And is roadless even less than that?
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: Roadless is.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 3: Getting this too deep.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: But there is a thing that federally designated, like, congressionally approved, like,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: roadless areas. Like, wilderness with a capital W, 2%. We
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: also have a lot of areas that happen.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 3: To be roadless.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's a debate right now about do we
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: sort of codify that roadlessness and recognize it and keep
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: it that way? And it's been that way for 25 years.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: or do we say, um, nevermind, there is no sort
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: of like de facto protection of a roadless area, but
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: the 2% that is wilderness with a capital W is
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: very well protected.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 3: Uh, we could potentially grow that percentage if we choose
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 3: to do that.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: But, but that is such an important thing, I think to,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: to so many people.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: It's, it's, it's of an, um, I like to knock
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: around in those places, but I would argue that it
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: is of economic, it's economically.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 3: Imperative that we protect these places.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: Because my gamble, my investment gamble is that these places
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: will prove to be of incalculable value in the future
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: for future generations.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyways.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: And not just on a beauty or appreciation level, but
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: as a country.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: Just, yeah, I don't mean that we're going to, I
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: don't mean to do them later. I just mean that, um,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: as more of the world gets developed and laid over
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: in concrete and polluted and, and, and spoiled those places
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: that are like that will be, we'll look and we'll
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: continue to say, like we say of Theodore Roosevelt and
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: all those, we'll continue to say.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: What genius, what genius did that?
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and, and so that, you know, That's what
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: we're aspiring to with this Jungle Keeper story. And so,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: what the book is about is, you know, going from
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: a kid that was born in Brooklyn and grew up
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: in New Jersey and started doing solo expeditions in the
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: Adirondacks and the Catskills. And I kept coming out on
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: the other side. You know, I'd go into a 4,000
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: acre state park with my dog, you know, and like
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: go looking for bears and foxes and just, you know,
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: just tracking and having fun and camping and developing my bushcraft.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: But I was sick of coming out the other side.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: And I hadn't really been out west yet. I didn't
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: realize how big things were and that there's a lot
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: up here. But my love of specifically animals and poking them,
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: just like you. I really want to interact with them.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: I was just like, man, the Amazon is it. I
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: got to see this before I go. And then the
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: urgency of the rainforests are disappearing. I'm skeptical. If a
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: local person tells me, well, if I touch this with
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: a stick, it's going to die. Show me. And if
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: someone says the rainforests are disappearing, we're losing 700 football
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: fields a day. It's like, all right, I want to see.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: Is that true? What's really happening on the ground? I
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: don't trust anyone. I want to go see for myself.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: And I went down there and I was like, oh shit,
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: this is bigger, more beautiful and complex and incredible than
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: I could have ever imagined. And the first few years
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: was all just expeditions and, you know, climbing trees and
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: getting to know these guys. It was just playtime, wilderness playtime,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: hardcore wilderness expeditions. And then we saw the road, the
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: damn road and the smoke on the horizon. And then
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: we realized, I realized, I said to JJ, I said,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: who do we call? Because I'm from the US, right?
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: So I said, who do we call that's going to
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: show up and stop us?
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 3: This will not stand.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: This will not stand. I want to call the proper
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: authorities and stop this. And he, in his incredible, beautiful,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: almost perfect English, he went, he goes, you see anybody?
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: He goes, look that way. He goes, look this way.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: He goes, we're the only people here. He goes, you
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: want to do anything, you got to do it. And
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: then that ended up being the call to adventure in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: our lives. Like that ended up being the narrative. This
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: is all I've ever done. I've never done anything else.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: I've never had a job. I've never, nothing. I've been
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: living in the Amazon collecting bot flies and scars and
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: stories and just trying to convince people. to protect this
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: one wildest place on earth. And unlike every other, you know, yeah,
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: I started an organization, but we're totally accountable. You said
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: dollars to acres, 80% of every dollar that comes in,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: 80 cents on every dollar goes directly to land.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: And then there's, The rest is rangers and admin and gear.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: That's a great nonprofit percentage.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: That is a great percentage because a lot of them
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: are like 80% goes to advertising and the rest goes
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: to paying the CEOs.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: 80% to mission is commendable. I mean, it's good.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good and we're very transparent. The people
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: that become part of our team and are regular donors,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of them come down, which I also think
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: is really cool because it's not just– sort of a
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: faceless thing that you give to it. No, no, no.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: Come down. See what you did. Some people, one guy,
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: he did a quarter of a million dollars, $ 250, 000 to
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: protect this huge piece of land. And he was like,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: I got to see it.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: He was like, let's go.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: We took him on this canoe top expedition out there
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: to see it. And it was such a beautiful thing
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: to see. It was always just an idea in my head.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: And he said, I just one day said, I want
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: to be part of something important. And I said, look
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: at all these animals. They're all here because of you.
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 2: this whole thing would be gone. And so the fact
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: that it's not a forever project, if we can protect
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: this river, this watershed, then we've done something incredible. And
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: even better, we've come up with a blueprint that can
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: be replicated in other rivers in the Amazon, in rivers
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: in the Congo, Indonesia, whatever, how to mobilize the indigenous
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: people and empower them to connect with people around the
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: world so that you can just save these rivers. We
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: don't need to have this this common narrative that every beautiful,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: wild thing, every pristine stream, every great, you know, the
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: salmon runs that somehow it seems like there's always a developer.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: There's always a mining project. There's always a, you know,
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: there's always something trying to destroy the beautiful thing.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: And it's like, well, what if we just, you know,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: made it a little bit easier for people around the
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: world to protect that thing, especially when it's their indigenous,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: and we use the word indigenous, whatever, when they're the
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: local people that live there and depend on that ecosystem. Um,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: they deserve to be able to fight those powers that
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: come in from other places and go, well, we just,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: we're going to put a factory up river from you.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: You can't drink your water anymore. That's just, it just
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: can't be that way forever. I feel like we can
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: grow out of that. And I want to be part
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: of that movement.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: Well, man, thank you. Um, I, I, I'm probably guilty
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: of me. I sometimes describe myself as like an environmental nationalist.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, like a deeply patriotic American. And
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: I look at most, I look at conservation through, through
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: that lens in some ways.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 3: I'm very focused on America. I think we're the same
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 3: on that.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: I'm very proud.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: But, but, but, but what you're talking about in the
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: world you're describing, like I said, I've, I've dabbled. It's gorgeous.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: I think what you're doing is a great thing for
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: people to support. I wish you the best of luck.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: And again, man, everybody out there, Well, thank you. And
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: Paul Rosalie, check out the book Jungle Keeper, What It
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: Takes to Change the World.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 3: It was a New York Times bestseller. Congratulations.
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: I'm shocked by that. For a kid that didn't do
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: very well in school, that was a huge thing for me.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: But for people listening, you can come down and visit it.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: we'll give you native guides, and I mean, you should come.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 3: Dude, I'm already planning on hitting you up.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, tallest tree house in the world, and this thing,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: like I said, we can either get one big donor
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: that lets us make the national park tomorrow, or we
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: just reach so many people that we just let the
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: people do it. And so, junglekeepers.org, we get enough people,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 2: then I can stop doing this. Then I can just
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: go explore the rainforest, describe some species, and bring I
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: meant to tell you that you had this guy on
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: that I listened to when I, when I knew I
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: was going to be on your podcast, the guy was
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: doing top-down predator ecology. He sounded like a, like an
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: old timer. He's talking about like coyote population, how turkeys
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: lay eggs. And I was riveted like that stuff. I
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: just want to be out there collecting that stuff. I
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: want to be learning.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: So be a man of the woods, man. Oh yeah.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: All right. One last time. Jungle keeper by Paul Rosalie
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: and check out the organization. Jungle keepers.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 3: Junglekeepers.org?
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: Junglekeepers.org.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: All right. Help these boys out with some cash.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks, man.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Steve.