Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Solvable listeners, I want to let you know
Speaker 1: that this is going to be the last episode of
Speaker 1: Solvable for the foreseeable future. Thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: each week as we've mined the brightest brains around for
Speaker 1: solutions to problems like climate change, imperialism in the arts,
Speaker 1: size discrimination, exclusivity and gaming, the nation's mental health crisis,
Speaker 1: and of course the pandemic. Now. Although the world has
Speaker 1: many more problems, this is the last will aim to
Speaker 1: solve for now. And with that, let's start the show.
Speaker 1: This is Solvable. I'm Ronald doing Junior to just listen.
Speaker 1: You're flying over a field abroccoli and there is nothing else.
Speaker 1: That massive field is the Amazon rainforest, stretching from Brazil
Speaker 1: to Bolivia, Peru, Eador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French, Guyana and Surinam,
Speaker 1: sometimes called the lungs of the Earth, or its ability
Speaker 1: to absorb massive amounts of CO two and produce oxygen.
Speaker 1: The Amazon now suffers from man made fires and deforestation.
Speaker 1: If somebody came to your backyard and started you or
Speaker 1: your block and started cutting down all the trees and
Speaker 1: bulldozing the sidewalk, I mean you'd have the cops out
Speaker 1: there in a second. We'd never allowed that. The jungle
Speaker 1: is changing as people increasingly view the Amazon as a
Speaker 1: resource for things like wood and gold, and so bit
Speaker 1: by bit, day by day, they've just been shipping away
Speaker 1: at it. People are cutting timber from rainforest, people are
Speaker 1: gold mining from rainforest. Paul Rosalie is a conservationist and author.
Speaker 1: In August twenty nineteen, he posted a video showing the
Speaker 1: results of the wildfires destroying the Amazon rainforest. At that time,
Speaker 1: it was viewed over one point four million times and
Speaker 1: received a lot of media attention. Just by people posting
Speaker 1: and resharing his video, Paul and his team got the
Speaker 1: word out about what was being lost in those fires.
Speaker 1: Give me a reason to be working in the Amazon
Speaker 1: at a purpose I was helping with something, which is
Speaker 1: something I really wanted, was to not just be you know,
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, it's a lot of fun and to
Speaker 1: take pictures. It was like, no, I'm actually helping these
Speaker 1: people to protect their land. Through his eco tourism company
Speaker 1: and his team of forest rangers, Rosalie is trying to
Speaker 1: get people to see why the rainforest exists, why it's
Speaker 1: important to our daily lives, and what can be done
Speaker 1: to preserve the thousands of animal and plant species that
Speaker 1: make the rainforest their home. A single tree can be
Speaker 1: covered in reptiles, and birds and frogs will be living
Speaker 1: on the mosses, lichens, vines, all this stuff. It's just
Speaker 1: like a skyscraper of life. The Amazon's existence is also
Speaker 1: crucial to our own existence, helping to stabilize the climate.
Speaker 1: Rosalie remains optimistic that his efforts to save the rainforest
Speaker 1: will not be in vain. Saving the Amazon rainforest is
Speaker 1: a solvable problem. Do you remember the earliest time that
Speaker 1: you fell in love with wildlife or with nature? And
Speaker 1: you tell me about how that came to be for you.
Speaker 1: So I was born in Brooklyn, and my parents wanted
Speaker 1: to get away from the city, so so they moved
Speaker 1: to like northern New Jersey, and so we had I
Speaker 1: had access to a lot of forests. People don't realize,
Speaker 1: like doing New York and New Jersey, there's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of forests there. And so my parents used to
Speaker 1: taking me on hikes. I loved like stormy summer days
Speaker 1: when the foliage is really thick. I wanted to pretend
Speaker 1: it was the jungle, and I used to love going
Speaker 1: out and looking for snakes and turtles. And then as
Speaker 1: I got older, took me to the Bronx Zoo. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like legendary. You see these animals that you
Speaker 1: know from all over the world that are so incredible.
Speaker 1: It just stuck in my head that that's something that
Speaker 1: you can do, that a person can do. And then
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager, it was like going out
Speaker 1: into the woods with like a knife and one match
Speaker 1: and my dog and I'd have to like survive for
Speaker 1: the whole weekend. So yeah, one match, add your dog
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like enough to survive for the weekend. So
Speaker 1: you dropped out of high school with your parents encouragement,
Speaker 1: Tell me tell me that story. Yeah it always people
Speaker 1: always scratch their head and I tell them that. But
Speaker 1: I was the worst student you have ever heard of. Well, no,
Speaker 1: second worst. There's always that kid that takes it to
Speaker 1: another level. Always there's always that guy. But no, I was.
Speaker 1: I think I got detention or suspended how many times
Speaker 1: through middle school and then in high school it was
Speaker 1: like I was old enough to be like getting in
Speaker 1: fights with people and just failing all my classes and
Speaker 1: miserable and depressed, I mean, you know, it sounds like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was school, but it's like when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you're in a room and they tell you you're gonna
Speaker 1: be in this room for a long time. It's January
Speaker 1: and you got months ahead of you, and next year
Speaker 1: is gonna be the same thing. And when you grow up,
Speaker 1: you're gonna sit in an office and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the same thing again. And it's just assignments and it's boring.
Speaker 1: And so I'd be like, all right, well, at least
Speaker 1: I'm going to read, and then like no, Paul gave
Speaker 1: me the book. And then I'd be like, you're not
Speaker 1: taking the book. Give us the book now, or else
Speaker 1: you're onto the principal office. We're going to call this
Speaker 1: a kid. It was My mom came to me and
Speaker 1: she was like, look, if you want drop out, and
Speaker 1: I was like what. She's like, yeah, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be a couch kid. She's like, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: go work at you know, the gas station. She's like,
Speaker 1: you got to go to college. She's like, but you
Speaker 1: can get your geed right now, which is two years
Speaker 1: of high school. And I tell this to kids like
Speaker 1: it's it's a get out of Jail free card. If
Speaker 1: you're ready to go do something, if you want to
Speaker 1: learn a trade, if you want to go exploring, whatever
Speaker 1: does you want to do. You don't need to sit
Speaker 1: for the second two years of high school. It's not
Speaker 1: made for everybody. And if you're one of those people,
Speaker 1: it's not made for you. Take this test. And I
Speaker 1: went straight to community college and then I applied to
Speaker 1: state school and I just you know, I did my
Speaker 1: undergrad and that gave me the time to start focusing
Speaker 1: on what I really wanted. And at that very very
Speaker 1: young age, at like seventeen, I was already going, Okay,
Speaker 1: well what about what am I doing here? You ended
Speaker 1: up in Peru somehow, so take me on that trip.
Speaker 1: It was actually, I think in school a teacher had
Speaker 1: made a joke about like, oh, you know this wood
Speaker 1: that they're cutting down the Amazon rainforest for and I
Speaker 1: sort of said, wait a second, this is that's a
Speaker 1: real place that theoretically I could go to. And so
Speaker 1: I like got in my head and I started doing
Speaker 1: searches on the internet, and like, you know, the first
Speaker 1: thing you look up, like go to the rainforest, you
Speaker 1: found like tours and stuff, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, you know, I want to go.
Speaker 1: I want to go and do something. I want to
Speaker 1: go be part of something, something authentic. And I found
Speaker 1: this local indigenous guy who was working with mccause, you know,
Speaker 1: the color for the big colorful parrots. And I sent
Speaker 1: out an email and I asked it that like one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty other emails too. But I waited like
Speaker 1: a month and a half, heard nothing, and then one
Speaker 1: day I got an email back and it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if you're good in the outdoors
Speaker 1: and you feel this and that, you can come. It was.
Speaker 1: It was very surreal and I had to fight that one.
Speaker 1: I had to fight with my parents with because they
Speaker 1: were like, you are too young to be getting on
Speaker 1: a plane by yourself, going to the middle of the
Speaker 1: jungle down a road completely out of contact for days
Speaker 1: and days and days and weeks and with anacondas and
Speaker 1: bushmasters and jaguars and poachers and all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that one was tough. That was a tough one
Speaker 1: to sell. And I basically had to play the you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm turning eighteen, I can do it without your things.
Speaker 1: So I'd rather do it with you, so I had to.
Speaker 1: We got into it on that one. But yeah, getting
Speaker 1: there the first time was that was an adventure. Describe
Speaker 1: how big the Amazon is and I don't know if
Speaker 1: you have any comparative terms. I can't really imagine the
Speaker 1: scope in the size the Amazon basin itself is larger
Speaker 1: than the continental US, and we Yeah, it's huge. And
Speaker 1: when you're in this forest, when you fly over it,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to be in like a small
Speaker 1: cess and of flying over we were monitoring for shorterier
Speaker 1: dogs and you we reach parts where you can't see
Speaker 1: anything but forest. It just looks like you're flying over
Speaker 1: a field a broccoli and there's nothing else. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: far as the eye can see. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: such a massive forest. And it's not just jungle. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't realize there's in the Amazon.
Speaker 1: There's grasslands, and there's wetlands, there's the pentanale, there's there's
Speaker 1: all this different other types of ecosystems there's been but
Speaker 1: bamboo forests. It floods and it recedes is it's so
Speaker 1: so much more complex than we think. That. My big
Speaker 1: thing there that that really blew my mind. Was that
Speaker 1: you show up and you see a bunch of green
Speaker 1: and these giant trees, and you're like, okay, cool. But
Speaker 1: then it takes you a few years of learning to
Speaker 1: learn how much you don't know. Because once you learn all,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say, out of out of fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: tree species, I learned, you know, thirty trees, you know,
Speaker 1: and and fifty birds and a few snakes and the Okay,
Speaker 1: so I learned those things, But I say, well, wait,
Speaker 1: the size of this jungle is so beyond our comparison
Speaker 1: that it's other than comparing it to the to the
Speaker 1: United States. I don't I can't even I can't even begin.
Speaker 1: It's just massive. Do you remember the first time you
Speaker 1: stepped in there? I imagine that's different from the New
Speaker 1: York forests. So what what was it like? You ever
Speaker 1: see the beginning of Jurassic Park? Would you see the
Speaker 1: broad of sources? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, he like grabs her
Speaker 1: face and she she stands up and like everyone gets
Speaker 1: chills when you see that. And it was like the
Speaker 1: first time I stepped off the boat and saw a giant,
Speaker 1: you know, thousand year old capoc tree and trails of
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ends and you hear two cans and there's
Speaker 1: spider monkeys. It was literally just like, this is where
Speaker 1: I am supposed to be. It felt like it felt
Speaker 1: like it felt like waking up from the matrix for
Speaker 1: the first time. I was like, oh, this is what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be. Like, this is great. The one
Speaker 1: thing that my teacher didn't know was he was scared
Speaker 1: of snakes, and I had. I had grown up like
Speaker 1: rescuing snakes. Like one time on a trail in like
Speaker 1: New York, in New Jersey, this some old guy was
Speaker 1: trying to kill a copper head and I just, you know,
Speaker 1: stepped in and like picked it up and moved it.
Speaker 1: Which by that point I'd caught hundreds of non venomous
Speaker 1: snakes and so I knew how to do it. No,
Speaker 1: thank you, Paul. This is yeah with your guy, no
Speaker 1: trying to stay away from them. I mean, I support
Speaker 1: you on that. Everybody should stay away from them. But
Speaker 1: the funny thing is a snake will never, in any
Speaker 1: circumstances um attack a person. You know, anybody that's messing
Speaker 1: with a snake. You know, you hear about people like
Speaker 1: killing rattlesnakes and stuff. It's like, well you could do
Speaker 1: that or you could just keep walking like you just
Speaker 1: you just not you know what a radical copdown. It's
Speaker 1: it's amazing and there's a lot of that in conservation um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, going to going to the jungle for the
Speaker 1: first time absolutely was a major life changing moment. That
Speaker 1: moment of seeing the jungle for the first time, that's it.
Speaker 1: That was like really the start of my actual life.
Speaker 1: As you got there and you know, you see this,
Speaker 1: you have this Jurassic Park moment. Were there? Did you
Speaker 1: have another Jurassic Park moment when you know the juggle
Speaker 1: kind of turned, don't you? Or you saw less less
Speaker 1: glamorous parts of the jungle that weren't so weren't so great,
Speaker 1: the grittier parts you know about visiting and living in
Speaker 1: the Amazon. Well, the thing is I love everything about
Speaker 1: the jungle. I mean the you know, people say, what
Speaker 1: about the piranhas, what about this? What about that? It's like, dude,
Speaker 1: piranhas are delicious, Fried piranhas are delicious. I mean anaconda's
Speaker 1: black Cayman. I've had close en concounters with jaguars. The
Speaker 1: only thing that that after I had started learning and
Speaker 1: gone on adventures and and sort of got in my
Speaker 1: jungle feet, which is something you literally had to do
Speaker 1: because the native guys they're like, look, you're too loud
Speaker 1: with boots on, take them off. So they want you
Speaker 1: to walk barefoot with the scorpions and the snakes and
Speaker 1: the spikes and the jung yads. No, thank you, this
Speaker 1: is all Ronald repellent. You're describing a place that Ronald
Speaker 1: Will Will we'll see from Afar on a tour. Wait,
Speaker 1: but your team just told me they got your plane tickets.
Speaker 1: You're coming with me next week. Yeah. My My goal
Speaker 1: to preserve the Amazon is by staying out of it.
Speaker 1: So that's you're not a lot of people that really
Speaker 1: help us protect the Amazon. I've said the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, look in in theory, I want to protect
Speaker 1: the rainforest. I don't want to set foot there. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that it exists, and hey, you know, I respect
Speaker 1: I really respect that. At least for me, there's a
Speaker 1: huge benefit of that. I enjoy it. You wanted to
Speaker 1: go yourself. How do you get other people excited about
Speaker 1: about the Amazon, about preserving it? How do you get
Speaker 1: somebody that you know that maybe apathetic or indifferent about
Speaker 1: the Amazon. How do you get them excited about your
Speaker 1: work and what it is that you're doing. The rainforests
Speaker 1: are huge global forces in the stabilization of our climate
Speaker 1: that keep tons of carbon in the ground. That's where
Speaker 1: all of our bio diversity is, huge amounts of land
Speaker 1: for indigenous people. I mean, there's there's just the crown
Speaker 1: jewel of planet Earth, and some people still don't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, But the thing is, if that's where you
Speaker 1: get to the level of like, yeah, but a bad environment,
Speaker 1: if you can't breathe the air and drink the water,
Speaker 1: it ain't good for business either. I I was on
Speaker 1: a Fox News show at some point and the guy,
Speaker 1: he was actually nice off camera. He goes, luck, he goes,
Speaker 1: I'm about to come after you. And I went, Okay,
Speaker 1: he goes, but this is a financial show. And and
Speaker 1: then they started and he goes and I got a
Speaker 1: tree hugger on here. Now, why would we want to
Speaker 1: protect the Amazon? And I was like, you got millions
Speaker 1: of starving people because there's no rainforest, and everybody up
Speaker 1: here starts choking and the weather goes all out of whack.
Speaker 1: I was like, that is not good for your third
Speaker 1: quarter or whatever it is you're worried about. And that's
Speaker 1: the truth. You know, we need a function ecosystem. You
Speaker 1: started the eco tourism company, Tamandua Expeditions, telling a little
Speaker 1: bit about how that came about. The local guy I
Speaker 1: first met. His name is Juan Julio, and he just
Speaker 1: told everybody to call him JJ because he thought that
Speaker 1: was easier for the green goes. But it stucks now
Speaker 1: we all call him JJ. Originally he was doing that.
Speaker 1: He was saying, look, you know, I'll bring people onto
Speaker 1: my land because I'm trying. He was trying to protect
Speaker 1: his land, and he said, look, we'll take you out
Speaker 1: for animals, and he worked with scientists and so like,
Speaker 1: go out in the morning and take that on my cause,
Speaker 1: and then at night I'd be free to run out
Speaker 1: and look for snakes or do whatever else I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, climb trees and stuff. Originally that was the
Speaker 1: first thing I was told, was like, do that, you know,
Speaker 1: bring people that'll help. And it also gave me a
Speaker 1: reason to be working in the Amazon. Had a purpose.
Speaker 1: I was helping with something. Our deal is that we
Speaker 1: want to take people on authentic wildlife experiences. And so
Speaker 1: that's whether that's tracking tigers in India or coming to
Speaker 1: the Amazon and taking part in conservation, it's it's always
Speaker 1: like the real deal. And then also like now that
Speaker 1: we have a ranger team and that we have all
Speaker 1: these projects running, I mean, things have grown so much
Speaker 1: that now the so much for people to see when
Speaker 1: they come. How do you think eco tourism drives conservation.
Speaker 1: I've heard people criticize ecotourism for conservation, and I think
Speaker 1: in some places there's you know, like anything. I mean
Speaker 1: in some places, I mean, water is great, you know,
Speaker 1: until it's a flood. But in the Amazon, in my region,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly beneficial. If you're a guy with some forest,
Speaker 1: or if you're an indigenous community with some forests, you
Speaker 1: might not have a way of interacting with the global economy.
Speaker 1: Even if you're an indigenous community that mostly survives off
Speaker 1: of piranha and monkeys and a few crops. At some
Speaker 1: point you're going to need gasoline for your boat motor
Speaker 1: and it's like, well you got to buy that. And
Speaker 1: then when the loggers come and try to cut down
Speaker 1: your land, it's like, well, now I need a lawyer.
Speaker 1: So you do have to interact with the global economy,
Speaker 1: and so if you want to do that, you have
Speaker 1: to earn a little cash. And it's like, well, ecotourism
Speaker 1: is a great way to do that, Paul. Can you
Speaker 1: talk me through some of the ways that people are
Speaker 1: pillaging I guess we're, lack of a better word, the rainforest. Yes,
Speaker 1: if somebody came to your backyard and started, you know,
Speaker 1: or your block and started cutting down all the trees
Speaker 1: and bulldozing the sidewalk, I mean you'd have the cops
Speaker 1: out there in a second. We'd never allow that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But when it's the middle of the Amazon, a lot
Speaker 1: of times no one's here to see it, and so
Speaker 1: bit by bit, day by day, they've just been chipping
Speaker 1: away at it. People are cutting timber from rainforests, People
Speaker 1: are gold mining from rainforests. And so in my experience,
Speaker 1: I've seen the logging industry going after giant ironwood trees.
Speaker 1: These are five hundred, six hundred, sometimes maybe thousand year
Speaker 1: old trees that are habitat for thousands of other species,
Speaker 1: and that at first even I was like, wait, thousands,
Speaker 1: but yes, it's a single tree can be covered in
Speaker 1: you know, reptiles and birds and all this other stuff.
Speaker 1: Frogs will be living on the mosses, lichens, vines, all
Speaker 1: this stuff is just like a skyscraper of life. And
Speaker 1: so when you cut that down, this is all this
Speaker 1: habitat that's gone. You started a second organization called jungle Keepers. Yes,
Speaker 1: tell me about what that does and how that fights
Speaker 1: some of the extraction that you're talking about right now.
Speaker 1: What we have is a team of eight local rangers,
Speaker 1: a fleet of boats, We have a ranger station, and
Speaker 1: we are currently protecting fifty five thousand acres along this river,
Speaker 1: so a lot of a lot of the area right
Speaker 1: around where we were starting to see that deforestation. We're
Speaker 1: sort of trying to arrest the cutting, protecting old growth
Speaker 1: forest specifically. You know, it's like we can all do something.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be you know, running with a
Speaker 1: sword on fire towards a bulldozer trying to save the
Speaker 1: rainforest and one heroic you know, last hand. So I
Speaker 1: imagine you guys aren't running at bulldozs with flaming swords.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you guys do
Speaker 1: in order to stop them, Like we're not talking about
Speaker 1: like a citizen's arrest here, but if you guys are patrolling.
Speaker 1: I imagine there's some sort of execution factor where you
Speaker 1: guys are actually stopping folks from doing the things that
Speaker 1: they're doing to extract from the rainforest. We gave them
Speaker 1: a better job. One of our most esteemed colleagues is
Speaker 1: and he drives boat for us, and he does maintenance
Speaker 1: for us. He does all this stuff. Name is Victor.
Speaker 1: He was a logger. Wow, I mean with logging. He
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, man, it's dangerous. The trees fall over
Speaker 1: and there's snakes and all the stuff, and you gotta
Speaker 1: be out there cutting and it's weeks on end away
Speaker 1: from your family. And I was like, what if you
Speaker 1: came to us because you're like an expert on the
Speaker 1: river now right, And he's like, yeah, I know, this
Speaker 1: river like came back of my hand. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so what if you drive travelers up and down and
Speaker 1: help us out with what we do? And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: what else? And I was like, well that's really it.
Speaker 1: And he's like, so I get good food, a clean bed,
Speaker 1: I get to hang out with people that I've never
Speaker 1: met before. And he was like, and you're gonna pay
Speaker 1: me more? And I was like yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1: what is logging pain? And he's like fifty souls to day.
Speaker 1: I was like, bro, let's make it a hundred. I mean,
Speaker 1: but really no, it's so cheap. It's so cheap. They're
Speaker 1: working for a wage that is keeping them poor and starving.
Speaker 1: And it's like when we started tim and do it,
Speaker 1: one of the things we said was, if we're going
Speaker 1: to bring people that have the resources to travel, yeah,
Speaker 1: make sure that the local team is paid in such
Speaker 1: a way that they're not just getting paid like a
Speaker 1: like a day wage, that they're professionals at what they do.
Speaker 1: And well, like, are you guys just the jobs creating
Speaker 1: organization or do you guys ever find yourself in situations
Speaker 1: where you have to do maybe like documentation and prosecuting
Speaker 1: And you know, what does patrolling look like for you?
Speaker 1: Because I imagine you guys don't have you know, a
Speaker 1: big backing like organization. You're not necessarily the FBI of
Speaker 1: the rainforest. So how do you get you know, the
Speaker 1: type of you know, the type of executive branch stopping
Speaker 1: power to actually get in there and um and and
Speaker 1: and and stop you know, stop the extractions. And you're right,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about this one thing about how we've been
Speaker 1: able to convert so many people. But you can't do
Speaker 1: that for everybody. We can't just make you know, five
Speaker 1: thousand jobs. You can't do that. So yeah, on a
Speaker 1: normal day, our rangers are patrolling and monitoring wildlife, so
Speaker 1: they're they're checking, you know, where the spider monkeys are,
Speaker 1: do you see jaguar tracks. Enforcement is something we do
Speaker 1: periodically where it's like, when we need enforcement, we collaborate
Speaker 1: with the police. And then because it's keru, a lot
Speaker 1: of times we have to actually pay the police to
Speaker 1: come out and do their job out there. But in
Speaker 1: order to get the police out there, they don't have
Speaker 1: them too, they don't have the resources to do what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Then when we say, hey, can you guys
Speaker 1: take a three day trip out with us into the bush,
Speaker 1: They're like yes, but it's got to be like, you know, gasoline,
Speaker 1: you got to handle our bedding, food, There's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of things to basically we have to plan like
Speaker 1: a wilderness expedition for them. And it's funny. I went
Speaker 1: with friends the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens not that long ago,
Speaker 1: and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens are currently fighting a developer
Speaker 1: that wants to put up a building that will shield
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens from all their sunlight. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: reinforest where it's like, we gotta get everybody to know
Speaker 1: about it. First, we got to start up, we gotta
Speaker 1: have you know, fundraising and storytelling campaign, and we got
Speaker 1: to get people upset about this and not knowing about this,
Speaker 1: and then we have to hire lawyers. And we found
Speaker 1: after COVID that there were like I think it was
Speaker 1: seventeen football fields cut right in one of the core
Speaker 1: areas that we're protecting, and it was like, who are
Speaker 1: these people? If we had to do some drone flights
Speaker 1: over then we had to take that information back to
Speaker 1: the city, show the law enforcement try and get them
Speaker 1: out there. But then the people had heard us coming
Speaker 1: and they ran away, so there's no one to arrest.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's absolutely brutal work, but that is
Speaker 1: day to day, that is what we're doing. We are
Speaker 1: just putting out little fires, trying to trying to protect
Speaker 1: this one river because that is right now. That's what
Speaker 1: we can do. Tell me what listeners can do if
Speaker 1: they want to help with conservation or learn more about
Speaker 1: your work. Thousands of people donate small amounts, even like
Speaker 1: five dollars, two dollars, I mean, there's also people that
Speaker 1: do a thousand dollars. But whatever it is, it helps
Speaker 1: to go straight to paying our rangers, getting gasoline for
Speaker 1: our boats, scientific equipment, camera traps. It's the most direct
Speaker 1: way to protect the Amazon. And then of course there's
Speaker 1: all the other things like you know, being a responsible consumer,
Speaker 1: not eating fast food beef. I mean, beef is one
Speaker 1: of the largest contributors to deforestation in the Amazon because
Speaker 1: they go and they cut down huge areas for cattle
Speaker 1: farming and it just destroying the Amazon. So there's there's
Speaker 1: also just at this point like getting sharing stuff like
Speaker 1: on social media, the fact that people share, the fact
Speaker 1: that when the fires came out that people shared that video,
Speaker 1: got it to the news, got it to people that
Speaker 1: now are big time plunders and actually put some serious
Speaker 1: fuel behind this work and make us able to do
Speaker 1: this work. So it really is like it is a
Speaker 1: solvable thing. It is, you know, in conservation. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, what we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: not cut down a tree. You know, giraffes aren't going
Speaker 1: to go extinct on their own. It's only if we
Speaker 1: kill them. So like, this is a very solvable problem.
Speaker 1: We just need humans to focus for a second. So
Speaker 1: really keeping it as part of the dialogue, helping good
Speaker 1: conservation organizations all over the world traveling the eco tourism
Speaker 1: thing still works. Support you know, whether it's Costa Rica
Speaker 1: or Africa or Peru. Come see the work we're doing.
Speaker 1: Get out there. Thanks for being on the show. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you. This has been great and I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Avenue. You've really brought the rain for us
Speaker 1: to life for me. I appreciate it man. And just this,
Speaker 1: you know, sharing the news and people being able to
Speaker 1: hear this, that's important. That's how we do this, that's
Speaker 1: how we get it done. So thank you for helping
Speaker 1: us protect the forest. Really appreciate it. Good talking with
Speaker 1: you man. Absolutely keep the snakes away from me. Paul
Speaker 1: Rosley is a conservationist, author and award winning filmmaker. He's
Speaker 1: the co founder of Tom and Dua Expeditions and Jungle Keepers.
Speaker 1: You can find links to those organizations and the information
Speaker 1: about the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in our show notes. Solvable
Speaker 1: is produced by Jocelyn Frank, Research by David Jah, Booking
Speaker 1: by Lisa Dunn, Editing help from Kishell Williams. Our managing
Speaker 1: producer is Sashimathias, and our executive producer is Mia LaBelle.
Speaker 1: From all of us on the Solvable team and the
Speaker 1: Pushkin family, we hope you learned ideas and strategies that
Speaker 1: you'll use to make your community and the world better places.
Speaker 1: I'm Ronald Young, Junior. Thanks for listening.