Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Charles Munn's
Speaker 1: quest to save the Amazon rests on a simple premise.
Speaker 1: If people have a peak experience in nature, they'll be
Speaker 1: more invested in protecting it. Over the past four decades,
Speaker 1: the conservation biologist has helped to preserve over twelve million
Speaker 1: acres of rainforest in South America, home to what he
Speaker 1: describes as the most biologically diverse protected areas on Earth.
Speaker 1: And I've been there. I went to Peru with Charles
Speaker 1: Mount in two thousand to shoot a documentary for T
Speaker 1: n T, directed by the Great Robert Drew. Months tours
Speaker 1: are memorable, but the byproducts are better local jobs, community engagement,
Speaker 1: and a surge in the value of the rainforest. Still,
Speaker 1: for the son of a legendary Palm beach family, it's
Speaker 1: a delicate balance between access and exploitation, one he prepared
Speaker 1: for in a different type of jungle. I was working
Speaker 1: for the Bronx Zoo or the Field Division of the
Speaker 1: Bronx Zoo, which is the headquarters are really what calls
Speaker 1: itself the Wildlife Conservation Society before the New York Well
Speaker 1: it was it was the New York Zoological Society originally
Speaker 1: and has several zoos and the aquarium and the Central
Speaker 1: Park Zoo, the Bronx Zoo. The International Division does conservation
Speaker 1: field work research on rare species, wildlife species, and mostly
Speaker 1: the tropics and and some also temperate latitudes China, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of countries around the world, usually
Speaker 1: seventy countries they work in doing field conservation. So they're
Speaker 1: one of the biggest conservation groups in the world that
Speaker 1: headquartered in the Bronx Well, they're their headquarters of the
Speaker 1: Bronx OOO. Yes, indeed, And how long have you been
Speaker 1: working with them At the point that I met you,
Speaker 1: I've been working for them for sixteen years. At that point,
Speaker 1: I was working in the Amazon the whole time. My
Speaker 1: specialty was the Amazon and other parts of tropical South America.
Speaker 1: And you grew up in suburban d C. In Baltimore area,
Speaker 1: the Baltimore area. You lived on a piece of property
Speaker 1: that was adjacent to some reserve that you became well,
Speaker 1: I have a small conservation easement that I protected, um
Speaker 1: fifty acres from development. It was going to be turned
Speaker 1: into twenty or thirty houses, and I was able to
Speaker 1: buy it when I was young and protected. And it
Speaker 1: has a oak trees and other large asciduous trees that
Speaker 1: are more than three ft thick, and so there is
Speaker 1: I think it's the tallest, biggest forest. It's not a
Speaker 1: big forest, but it's a fifty acres. But I think
Speaker 1: of the biggest trees within a half an hour of
Speaker 1: the Amtrak line between New York and Washington, I think
Speaker 1: I think they're bigger than in any of the protected
Speaker 1: areas of the Maryland state, or Pennsylvania or New York.
Speaker 1: What was it about you when you were that age
Speaker 1: that you decided you wanted to take money of yours
Speaker 1: and buy land and preserve How old were you when
Speaker 1: you executed that deal. Let's see, I think it must
Speaker 1: have been sixteen or seventeen. I had to convince my
Speaker 1: trustee to dip into what was going to be resources,
Speaker 1: which I wasn't supposed to be able to do, but
Speaker 1: since it was not a bad thing to do, he
Speaker 1: eventually agree. Because I was already fanatical about protecting nature.
Speaker 1: What do you think it was mean most sixteen year olds,
Speaker 1: I think, isn't saying, oh, let's go by this fifty
Speaker 1: acres of land with these wonderful trees adjacent to the
Speaker 1: Amtrak line and preserve it. Why were you hitting in
Speaker 1: that direction? I just think I had been hypnotized by
Speaker 1: some very beautiful songbirds when I was nine year old boy,
Speaker 1: and truly, yeah, they just captivated me. And I always
Speaker 1: felt since then that if I could, if other people
Speaker 1: could see the birds as and other beautiful animals as
Speaker 1: well as I did, they would also fall in love
Speaker 1: with them and want to protect the habitat. So it's
Speaker 1: as simple as that. Tell us about Chandler Robbins Well,
Speaker 1: Shannon Robbins is appropriately named rob He was a great
Speaker 1: ornithologist who were one of the best bird guides in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. And he was worked for
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government as a field biologist as a
Speaker 1: bird scientist for them in Laurel, Maryland. When I was
Speaker 1: a young boy, he was our idol because he would
Speaker 1: come up to the Maryland Ornithological Society meeting is every
Speaker 1: May in Ocean City and he would be like the
Speaker 1: God when he would appear, so I'd go out birding
Speaker 1: with him, you know, try to tag along with him
Speaker 1: and other serious older birders and see if I could
Speaker 1: learn something. But but where does this birding begin? Where
Speaker 1: does your passion for this begin? Well, it's the white
Speaker 1: throated sparrow and the myrtle warbler in breeding plumage. Specifically,
Speaker 1: if you see either of those in breeding plumage up close,
Speaker 1: it will change your life forever. And you were how
Speaker 1: old when they change your life? And nine and you're
Speaker 1: sitting in the backyard of your home, your family's home. Actually,
Speaker 1: the white throated sparrow was at the neighbor's bird feeder
Speaker 1: because on the wintertime they have a boring plumage and
Speaker 1: then they switched to their breeding plumage. And that's pretty spectacular.
Speaker 1: And merble warbler comes through in May every year and
Speaker 1: it flies up through New York and Central Park and
Speaker 1: you probably may tenth or so. And uh, that was
Speaker 1: just an amazing bird. And I had no idea that
Speaker 1: was not just one kind of warble. There were like
Speaker 1: forty kinds of warblers you can see in one morning,
Speaker 1: all heading up to Canada to breed in the summer.
Speaker 1: So I was amazed all these beautiful butterflies, almost of
Speaker 1: the bird world were coming through Maryland and going through
Speaker 1: New York up to Canada. I didn't even know they
Speaker 1: were there until my my stepbrother actually turned me onto this.
Speaker 1: He's he was a burger. He was in a in
Speaker 1: a circle of serious burners, one of whom was one
Speaker 1: of the biggest bird listers in the world, the case
Speaker 1: Inner brothers. Actually both of the Casener brothers. So the
Speaker 1: Casner's brothers were from Baltimore, and there some of the
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I think there are maybe in the
Speaker 1: top ten of the most bird species seen in their
Speaker 1: lives in the world. One of them works for the
Speaker 1: State Department only went it works, I think from Acormick Spices,
Speaker 1: so they can travel the world. Each have their excuse
Speaker 1: to travel the world so they can bird more. And
Speaker 1: your your stepbrother was how much older than you? He
Speaker 1: was two years older than me. He's eleven. Yeah, describe
Speaker 1: described me the mon household at the eleven year old
Speaker 1: boy and the nine year old boy are so passionate
Speaker 1: about birding. Well, he was in this circle drawn. My
Speaker 1: stepbrother was in this circle with the Casener brothers. And
Speaker 1: they were so fanatical. So he was fanatical because he
Speaker 1: was in the same school with them. And then he
Speaker 1: started showing me these things that, wow, what these things
Speaker 1: are around here? I'll come over. No one ever told
Speaker 1: me before. Were you raised by people that were fond
Speaker 1: of this? Not particularly? I mean my mother liked like nature.
Speaker 1: My father died when I was three. So were you
Speaker 1: raised by a stepfather? Yes, indeed, And was he a naturalist? Well,
Speaker 1: he liked nature also, but it was really a drum
Speaker 1: and the Casener brothers, that whole, that whole circle that
Speaker 1: I sort of got involved with, and and that that
Speaker 1: they turned me on too birding. It wasn't either of
Speaker 1: my parents particularly or No. When you finish school as
Speaker 1: a as a young man and you're about to go
Speaker 1: to college, what what what becomes the path to you? Then?
Speaker 1: What do you decide you want to do? I only
Speaker 1: applied to to colleges and I got into both, and
Speaker 1: I chose the one that had better bird watching, which
Speaker 1: was which was Princeton out there and Hope both junction
Speaker 1: in that area there was better bird washing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. The The Institute for Advanced Study has a
Speaker 1: beautiful forest right next to the Princeton University. R. Einstein
Speaker 1: used to walk and stuff to think about relativity and whatnot,
Speaker 1: other flying things and and so you went there and
Speaker 1: got a degree in biology. I did. And then after that,
Speaker 1: what did you do? I wanted to continue working on
Speaker 1: bird science, and I went to Oxford, got a master's there,
Speaker 1: came back to Princeton in a PhD. Always in the Amazon,
Speaker 1: and I got stuck with the Amazon. I got the
Speaker 1: Amazon bug, you might say, a lot in the good way.
Speaker 1: I became obsessed with with working in Amazon farm. Did
Speaker 1: you first go there in seventy six, twenty one? I
Speaker 1: guess I went with graduate students from Princeton. I was
Speaker 1: a senior undergraduate and with John Turberg, who was the
Speaker 1: professor that we all idolized, who was working in the
Speaker 1: proving Amazon. So I was able to tag along with
Speaker 1: him as a senior undergraduate. Your twenty one and you're
Speaker 1: with Terborg in the Amazon, exactly proving Amazon is that
Speaker 1: the place to go if you want to study birds
Speaker 1: is the as opposed to the Brazil. Let's see, the
Speaker 1: Amazon basin is the Amazon rainforest is the size of
Speaker 1: the forty eight states. It has been cut, but seventy
Speaker 1: eight percent is still standing. That's a lot of forest,
Speaker 1: and so Brazil has the bulk of it. But after
Speaker 1: Brazil it's Peru. Peru has two California is worth of rainforest.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of rainforests, and so it is some
Speaker 1: of the highest quality rainforest in terms of species diversity
Speaker 1: and being pristine. A lot of the uncontacted Indian tribes
Speaker 1: left in the Amazon are in the pruving Amazon rather
Speaker 1: than Brazil. Your work down there becomes what, well, it's
Speaker 1: a if you give a mouse a cookie, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a one thing leads to another, sort of inexorably.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in birds, and working in the
Speaker 1: Amazon is the one of the most amazing things you
Speaker 1: can do if you're a bird scientist, because the bird
Speaker 1: diversity there is much higher than than anywhere else in
Speaker 1: the world. You'll have five hundred species of birds in
Speaker 1: just a few square miles. They're only ten thousand in
Speaker 1: the whole planet. And then one park I've worked in
Speaker 1: has a thousand species of birds. The entire US and
Speaker 1: Canada has an eight hundred and fifty. So this one
Speaker 1: park about the size of Massachusetts has a thousand, has
Speaker 1: ten percent of all the bird species in the world.
Speaker 1: So once you're working there, you become spoiled. If you're
Speaker 1: an ornithologist or bird scientists, you really want to continue
Speaker 1: working in such a pretty much. And I was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to work on mixed species flocks. What does that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: they are of the five bird species, three and thirty
Speaker 1: live in the forest. Others live in lakes and river
Speaker 1: banks and things. The threety that live in the forest
Speaker 1: a third of them, more than a hundred species live
Speaker 1: in mixed species flocks. So it's a very strange and
Speaker 1: amazing thing to see. You can have seventy species of
Speaker 1: birds in one flock at the same time, so and
Speaker 1: it's and the best bird watching in those flocks in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day. So it's like contrao. You
Speaker 1: have to get up early a dawned to see the birds. Well,
Speaker 1: in the case of the flocks, the best flocks to
Speaker 1: bird watcher in the middle of the day and the Amazon,
Speaker 1: you should be word watching the middle of the day
Speaker 1: and have a late morning snack and a and a
Speaker 1: mid afternoon snack. You should actually bird watch all through
Speaker 1: the middle of the day. What's the area in the
Speaker 1: United States and even just the forty eight if you will,
Speaker 1: that has the most diversity of bird species. The part
Speaker 1: of the US that has the most diversity of bird
Speaker 1: species would be Texas and California. And they're amazing, uh
Speaker 1: circles of crack birders in both states and they always
Speaker 1: try to beat each other in the an annual counts
Speaker 1: Christmas counts and try to see who wins. I think
Speaker 1: it usually some of the Texas birding groups tend to win.
Speaker 1: Which is the most number of birds you can see
Speaker 1: in one day, So Texas is typically the winner. When
Speaker 1: I met you in UM two thousand, my then wife
Speaker 1: and I flew from New York to Miami and then
Speaker 1: on to Peru and Puerto Maldonado, which I'm told has
Speaker 1: changed dramatically. Well it's gotten a lot bigger. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then we went a very long journey on the boat
Speaker 1: up the river. We get to this place. Had you
Speaker 1: ever been there before? Had you worked with those people before? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that was a frequented That was a research
Speaker 1: site that I stumbled upon thanks to some tips from
Speaker 1: a local Bolivian Indian actually who was living in that
Speaker 1: part of the Amazon. He was living Olivia has a
Speaker 1: lot of Amazon forest too. They have about one and
Speaker 1: a half California's worth, whereas Peru only has to California's worth.
Speaker 1: So he took me off about that clay lick where
Speaker 1: we watched macaws and parrots eating, and Uh, I thought
Speaker 1: he was kidding me. But when I started, you know,
Speaker 1: ask him difficult questions, he could answer them really quickly,
Speaker 1: and so I said, well, he's onto something. So I
Speaker 1: went up and looked at that area. So I found
Speaker 1: that area a few years earlier thanks to local informants,
Speaker 1: which is the way we get everything done, is by
Speaker 1: relying on local people to give us great information that
Speaker 1: they don't even know. Is that interesting? So when we
Speaker 1: went there, I mean, the film is what it is.
Speaker 1: Bob Drew, the famous documentarian and his wife Anne, we
Speaker 1: make a movie about the illegal market in exotic birds
Speaker 1: from that area. And how would you compare now what's
Speaker 1: going on in that department to what we experienced seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago. Is it's still a huge problem. Actually that
Speaker 1: part of the proving Amazon The problem was already declining
Speaker 1: when when we visited, because in part because of your visit,
Speaker 1: uh and brought attention to the area, and so there
Speaker 1: was more resources than more. More travelers visited the area.
Speaker 1: So the major concentrations of macaws and parrots at the
Speaker 1: clay licks, we're all protected at that point by new parks,
Speaker 1: and so really that black market bird trade out of
Speaker 1: southern Peru basically had stopped. It was more of a
Speaker 1: question of central and northern Amazon and Peru because they
Speaker 1: improving Amazon is so enormous. So actually things have gotten
Speaker 1: much much better since you visited. What was the smuggling
Speaker 1: like back then? They would bring those birds into the country.
Speaker 1: How well, In fact, the major smuggling of parrots would
Speaker 1: have been more out of Mexico and Central American countries
Speaker 1: up through the border into the U s sneaking them
Speaker 1: into the US. The smuggling of parrots wasn't so much
Speaker 1: from South America to the US. There was a legal
Speaker 1: export from some countries, not from Peru, which they BOLIVI
Speaker 1: you next door until the nineteen eighties and the two
Speaker 1: the US passed a law outlawing the importation of wild
Speaker 1: caught exotic birds, and the New York's oological side he
Speaker 1: played a role in that, so did I and helping
Speaker 1: pass the national law because there are already some state
Speaker 1: laws prohibiting exotic bird importation, so that that put an
Speaker 1: end to a lot of the trapping because people couldn't
Speaker 1: sell it to the US anymore. We actually we're greener
Speaker 1: than the European Union. The European Union took many years
Speaker 1: before they finally shut down the sort of nasty, cruel
Speaker 1: bird trade. When people would bring them in, how would
Speaker 1: they bring them in, Well, they would typically sneak them
Speaker 1: in drugged so that they wouldn't be squawking and wiggling
Speaker 1: and drawing attention to themselves. So they would they would
Speaker 1: have them in suitcases or in a little a little
Speaker 1: plastic PBC pipes that would be hidden, maybe in parts
Speaker 1: of a car if you're driving across the border. One
Speaker 1: guy who was smuggling ridiculously rare, very valuable mccaus out
Speaker 1: of Bolivia. He was uh and Paraguay. In fact, he
Speaker 1: was sticking them in his hand luggage. He worked for
Speaker 1: Paraguay and National Airlines as a cabin steward, so he
Speaker 1: was sneaking them in his carry on dry and then
Speaker 1: selling them to woke up one day, well actually his
Speaker 1: his buyer, as it were, the person that was hiring
Speaker 1: him to transport them as a mule to Europe. Because
Speaker 1: he would fly them to Europe. He was caught, he
Speaker 1: was busted in the late eighties and then so that
Speaker 1: that made it difficult for that to continue. So actually
Speaker 1: the bird smuggling is declined a lot. Really, it's as
Speaker 1: good news. You have kids, I do, And how old
Speaker 1: are your kids now? Thirty three and twenty nine and
Speaker 1: twenty and to seventeen year old twins? No, indeed five
Speaker 1: kids indeed, or any of them in the family business
Speaker 1: so to speak. Well, I would say yes, two or
Speaker 1: three of them were really serious about going into the
Speaker 1: family business. One of them is studying at Cornell Hotel School.
Speaker 1: Because we're involved in creating green jobs through eco tourism,
Speaker 1: which is a form of service industry, like the float tells.
Speaker 1: So when I leave, um, you know, when we're done
Speaker 1: with the with the television show, what do you do
Speaker 1: after that? When do you start getting into the eco
Speaker 1: You weren't in the eco tour was in business then?
Speaker 1: Were we were using the argument of eco tourism development
Speaker 1: as the excuse for trying to convince politicians it was
Speaker 1: worth creating these parks. In the case of Tamba Pata.
Speaker 1: It's good that we talked about Tamba Pata specifically. Uh,
Speaker 1: that Connecticut sized park now has about a half a
Speaker 1: million bed nights of foreign visitors per year, and it's
Speaker 1: the best land use economically of that area, which is
Speaker 1: pretty remote and hard to get to. Turns out to
Speaker 1: be eco tourism, and so we were right, and the
Speaker 1: wildlife has recovered and there are thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: jobs now related to this, and so that actually is
Speaker 1: a bulwark against the mining that's a little bit further
Speaker 1: west to keep the mining mess from flowing over into
Speaker 1: this area. So that's a big success, and you saw
Speaker 1: it when it was kind of in the early stages.
Speaker 1: What do you think people in this country can do
Speaker 1: who want to have any kind of participation in the
Speaker 1: solution here? Well, I think I think there's been quite
Speaker 1: a bit of success um in the last say five
Speaker 1: or ten years in convincing large retails. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly if it's Home Depot and Lows or a number
Speaker 1: of them, I think have taken a pledge to only
Speaker 1: sell wood from sustainable sources that actually can be traced
Speaker 1: to be sustainable as opposed to being laundered, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that initiative came from the World
Speaker 1: Widlife Fund. They convinced industry to police itself, to make
Speaker 1: it easier for you. Believe they are. I think they
Speaker 1: are for you and I to do the right thing,
Speaker 1: to buy something that's sustainable now producing trees and fibers.
Speaker 1: One thing that's very important in the Amazon. I'm a
Speaker 1: big believer in creating parks and and Indian reserves and
Speaker 1: and and protecting them to the tourism. So that's also
Speaker 1: part of it. It's not the only thing. But I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't realize that there are
Speaker 1: seventy four airports in the Amazon that have regular jet flights.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will guess their five or ten
Speaker 1: even that they'll think that's high, but in fact it's
Speaker 1: seventy four. If seventy percent of the Amazon is still
Speaker 1: in forest, more than half of that is in protected areas.
Speaker 1: It's probably thirty times or fifty times more protected areas
Speaker 1: by percentage than the US has, And that's extraordinary. And
Speaker 1: about half of that protect the area is owned by
Speaker 1: Indians or maybe in biological reserves. You can get to
Speaker 1: these protected areas within a half a day from one
Speaker 1: of these seventy four airports, and so eco tourism has
Speaker 1: to be part of the mix because you only need
Speaker 1: to have one lodge in partnership, even with Indians, local Indians,
Speaker 1: at the mouth of a river of a million acre
Speaker 1: rainforest park. And yet that one small lodge can have
Speaker 1: turnover maybe one or two million dollars a year, and
Speaker 1: it protects a million acres behind it because it keeps
Speaker 1: people from getting in behind it. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a very inexpensive way to protect enormous pieces of forest.
Speaker 1: And anything you can do that can slow down deforestation
Speaker 1: will help slow down climate change because burning rainforest, especially
Speaker 1: in Brazil and some other countries but Indonesia, was about
Speaker 1: equivalent to the carbon released by the entire transport sector
Speaker 1: in the entire world. It's about of all carbon releases
Speaker 1: from burning rainforest. Anything you can do to slow that
Speaker 1: is useful. So that's why I try to create parks
Speaker 1: and try to create green jobs related to protecting the parks.
Speaker 1: And you would you say from your experience or the
Speaker 1: primary activities that are occurring that they're burning this rain forest, logging,
Speaker 1: beef cattle. I mean a certain amount of logging, when
Speaker 1: done properly, is not very destructive. If you're taking five
Speaker 1: six seven species of trees, it doesn't tend to be
Speaker 1: too destructive, especially if you minimize the number of logging
Speaker 1: tracks or for for the heavy equipment, and you fell
Speaker 1: the tree in exactly the right atraction, you've cut the
Speaker 1: vines attached to it, that doesn't bring down a bunch
Speaker 1: of other trees next to it. So things like that
Speaker 1: can reduce the impact of logging enormously. But as soon
Speaker 1: as you start to do twelve fifteen, eighteen species of trees,
Speaker 1: you're destroying so much of the canopy that you're really
Speaker 1: opening up the forest of desiccation and it becomes like
Speaker 1: a tinder box. You can actually catch fire in the
Speaker 1: dry season. What else are they doing there? Cut down well,
Speaker 1: the when a lot of forest is cleared for cattle
Speaker 1: ranching initially and also sometimes for for soy farming, And
Speaker 1: it's quite big, and there has been an enormous that
Speaker 1: the good news has been enormous drop in the deforestation
Speaker 1: rate in the Brazilian Amazon, especially the peak year was
Speaker 1: two thousand five two thousand six, and it's gone down
Speaker 1: by more than half the deforestation rate in Brazil has
Speaker 1: gone way way down. You attribute that to what it's
Speaker 1: been better policing by the Brazilian government. Frankly, I mean
Speaker 1: it's enormous areas to police. They have very few wardens
Speaker 1: or or agents who can check this. They actually collaborate
Speaker 1: with the US Space Agency and they get real life
Speaker 1: images of new fires, and so they can send agents
Speaker 1: right there. Instead of trying to comb over an area
Speaker 1: the size of the US. You send an agent right
Speaker 1: to where you see the fire from the satellite, and
Speaker 1: you can find someone some rancher who is cutting down
Speaker 1: much much more forest than he's allowed. He's allowed to
Speaker 1: cut down a little bit, but he's not allowed to
Speaker 1: cut down anything like the amount that he tries to.
Speaker 1: So now they leve the enormous finds on these ranchers
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll typically back off from doing that. Coming up,
Speaker 1: Charles Mann on his unrivaled jaguar guarantee. South America's eco
Speaker 1: tourism industry may help shield the region's wildlife from extinction,
Speaker 1: but on the continent where the safari originated, poacher's still abound.
Speaker 1: You know, I could describe it that if God forbid,
Speaker 1: what was happening to elephants were happening to people. We
Speaker 1: would call it a massive genocide. They're being exterminated for
Speaker 1: ivory on a mass level, correct using the latest technology,
Speaker 1: net's weapons, cell phones, sat phones, vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and
Speaker 1: the ease by which massive amounts of ivory can be
Speaker 1: illegally shipped to markets has never been greater. To hear
Speaker 1: more about Richard Riggero's story, go to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing these days. Charles Mann is a legend
Speaker 1: name one of the leading experts on wildlife tourism by
Speaker 1: Condie Nast Traveler, featured in National Geographic Newsweek and Time.
Speaker 1: But even before the world was watching, Man was working
Speaker 1: on his mission to save the rainforest, which began fittingly
Speaker 1: by connecting with the people who live in it. Well,
Speaker 1: I used to help Ruvians and Bolivians and Ecuadorians and
Speaker 1: Brazilians get involved in ecuotourism to protect parks. So that's
Speaker 1: back since nineteen eighty. I mean I've been I've been
Speaker 1: using that as the argument. I only got more involved
Speaker 1: in actually trying to create sustainable systems with local partners.
Speaker 1: UH in the nineties and in the last say fifteen years,
Speaker 1: so it had to actually get more involved and try
Speaker 1: to actually organize trips to send people to see jaguars.
Speaker 1: For instance, we we guarantee people will see jaguars and
Speaker 1: the typically see them for hours a day hunting right
Speaker 1: in front of you. It's amazing. So to tell me
Speaker 1: who's the average client you have with the what part
Speaker 1: of the world, if any is completely mixed or they're
Speaker 1: parts of the world more crave the Briton experience. The
Speaker 1: British are absolutely nature crazed. There's no culture that loves
Speaker 1: their nature and their wildlife more than the Brits. And
Speaker 1: so they are an enormous segment outside segment compared to
Speaker 1: their population. Whether there's sixty million people in UK and
Speaker 1: they must represent you know, a thirty or forty percent
Speaker 1: of all guests coming to see jaguars and giant otters
Speaker 1: and and there, and also the large birds. They love
Speaker 1: their birds like no other culture in the world. Really,
Speaker 1: did you have to customize your flotels? Well, we had
Speaker 1: to design the first ever flotel that had rooms as
Speaker 1: big as a hotel room. So I think our our
Speaker 1: flowtel rooms are jaguar suites, and I think they're the
Speaker 1: largest standard rooms on any ship in fresh water, maybe
Speaker 1: even in saltwater in the world. It's like an ocean liner,
Speaker 1: except it sits in one place, right in the middle
Speaker 1: of the jaguars, so the jaguars walk by. In fact,
Speaker 1: do you have with jaguar window on one side and
Speaker 1: a much bigger picture window on the other side. We
Speaker 1: have a jaguar indow on the on the side closer
Speaker 1: to the forest, because there's a jaguar alarm. If the
Speaker 1: jaguar walks by, you look through the window and see
Speaker 1: it walk right by your cabin. Any danger. They don't
Speaker 1: seem to find anything interesting on the floating hotel, No,
Speaker 1: they not a problem. Well, there's nothing. There's no snacks there.
Speaker 1: And then they're busy trying to hunt alligators and that's
Speaker 1: their primary source of food. Alligators and enormous guinea pigs.
Speaker 1: They're the hundred and twenty pound guinea pigs. They're called
Speaker 1: cuppy barrows. They love cuppy bars and they eat the caymans.
Speaker 1: Actually they're called caymans. And when they eat the caymans,
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen horrific videos of snakes devouring quilled
Speaker 1: animals and passing this through their system. Then eventually they
Speaker 1: die because they cut the steak open. See the quills
Speaker 1: sticking through their degestive tract. But when you when these animals,
Speaker 1: what do they do? They split up them open. They
Speaker 1: cut them open some now and then eat the inside.
Speaker 1: They don't eat the skin of the cayman. Uh. They
Speaker 1: eat almost everything. The jaguar has the most powerful bite
Speaker 1: of any cat in the world. So the tiger and
Speaker 1: the lion is bigger than a jaguar. But these big
Speaker 1: jaguars in this area, they grow much bigger than the
Speaker 1: ones in the Amazon because they eat so well their
Speaker 1: whole life. The genes are the same, but they grow
Speaker 1: to enormous. They grow to their maximum size to they
Speaker 1: eat perfectly their whole lives. The males are three and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds. That's a pretty big cat. That's bigger than
Speaker 1: a that's the size of a female lion. More or
Speaker 1: less so, they and they have much harder bite. They
Speaker 1: have bigger jaw muscles than either lions or tigers, and
Speaker 1: they can crush the back of the skull of a
Speaker 1: full grown cow or of a alligator cayman like this.
Speaker 1: So once they've crushed the back of the skull, they've
Speaker 1: basically killed the cayman. They've paralyzed it. But then it's
Speaker 1: gonna die immediately at me by by cutting the spinal cords.
Speaker 1: It's basically hasn't died in the first two seconds. It's
Speaker 1: still alive, but it's paralyzed. And then and they'll they'll eat,
Speaker 1: they'll eat the thing for several days in a row.
Speaker 1: They'll eat for three or four or five days in
Speaker 1: a row, and you just sit there with their distended belly.
Speaker 1: Because they meant so much. The leat almost everything. They
Speaker 1: they can show up the bones, they can chew up
Speaker 1: the skin, they their their their jaw strength is incredible.
Speaker 1: It's just like a really good taffy to them. It's
Speaker 1: just a really strong pretty much. And the funny thing
Speaker 1: is one some jaguars that we were studying tracking them,
Speaker 1: they would they would walk next to a field with
Speaker 1: young calves, you know, baby cows, and the other side
Speaker 1: of the fence there was some a little there was
Speaker 1: a little pig sie with some little piglets that were
Speaker 1: kind of seen bite size, and these jaguars day after day,
Speaker 1: night after night, would walk between the calves and the
Speaker 1: little piglets and ignore them, walk down to the river
Speaker 1: and jump on these things that are, you know, these
Speaker 1: caymans that are basically like dinosaurs. They just had been
Speaker 1: taught by their mothers. They had been taught by their
Speaker 1: mothers to eat caymans, and so they kind of ignored
Speaker 1: these things that would be much easier to eat and
Speaker 1: much easier to kill. It waswhere and that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we're not too scared of them, because their
Speaker 1: mother didn't. You eat what your mother gave you as
Speaker 1: a kid, that's what you love to eat. And that's
Speaker 1: why the jagguars don't show interest in us, because their
Speaker 1: mothers didn't teach them to eat us. Because they don't
Speaker 1: know if we taste good, they don't know if we're dangerous.
Speaker 1: If they're two of us, they don't know what the
Speaker 1: second human will do, you know, And so that jaggars
Speaker 1: are not crazy, you know, crazy predators who just kill senselessly.
Speaker 1: If they make one wrong move, they can break their ankle,
Speaker 1: let's say, and then they'll die of starvation. And that's
Speaker 1: what we see the jaguars did. They jumped down eight
Speaker 1: or ten feet onto these big caymans that are like
Speaker 1: nine ft long, that way more than the cat. And
Speaker 1: if they if they twist their ankle or break their
Speaker 1: their ankle, that happen their wrist. Yeah, you'll see every
Speaker 1: year or two you'll see one of the fifty jaguars
Speaker 1: that we know well that will let you watch them
Speaker 1: in real time all through the day. You'll see them
Speaker 1: with a really really bad limp. I mean they can
Speaker 1: barely even walk. And in that situation they often recover.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how tough they are. But that's the moment.
Speaker 1: That's one of the ones. I'm sure they I'm sure
Speaker 1: they starve, you know, they go into the bushes and
Speaker 1: probably hide and starve. Yeah, do you still have a
Speaker 1: home in the US at all? I do. I have
Speaker 1: a home in Baltimore Native Area neck next to that
Speaker 1: forest with the big trees. And how much time are
Speaker 1: you in the US? Every year? Every year it varies
Speaker 1: a little, uh several months. I try to catch the
Speaker 1: spring migration here in the eastern US in April and May.
Speaker 1: But the big season for the jaguars is really is
Speaker 1: really June, July, August, September, October November sweltering hot, or
Speaker 1: it's a bit cooler there in the southern hemisphere. June
Speaker 1: and July it can be quite cool, quite nice that way.
Speaker 1: September October gets quite hot. October a few rains started
Speaker 1: a little bit more, and just enough rain starts in
Speaker 1: early November that it cools off. So my favorite time
Speaker 1: of the year to do jager watching is actually early
Speaker 1: in November. But because some guide books say November is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the rainy season in the Puntenale, people
Speaker 1: go the rainy season, Well, that's actually raining season is
Speaker 1: a blessing because it's so hot sometimes in October you're
Speaker 1: just praying for some rain. Do you think that some
Speaker 1: of what you've learned and some of what you've created
Speaker 1: and supported down there that could be applied to here
Speaker 1: at home as well. Well. I'm interested in the in
Speaker 1: the cougars or mountain lions that exist in Florida. There
Speaker 1: are several hundred of them. They call them the Florida panther.
Speaker 1: That's a local name for them. There are several hundreds
Speaker 1: of them, and you don't see them, but I think
Speaker 1: with the right techniques you can see them. And it's
Speaker 1: probably the most graceful of all. The one of the
Speaker 1: most graceful cats is is the is the puma or
Speaker 1: mountain lion when it's when it's hunt. So if you
Speaker 1: and I decide to open up the flotel business that's
Speaker 1: in the Effort Glades, there's the white tailed deer. They're
Speaker 1: eating lots and lots of white tailed deer. And of
Speaker 1: course in the U we're safe, absolutely well. I don't
Speaker 1: know once again, any large cat as a human alone,
Speaker 1: don't trust any large cat if you're alone and don't
Speaker 1: turn your back on it. Cats don't like to attack
Speaker 1: if there's several of you because they don't know what
Speaker 1: the second humans capable of. They don't have direct experience
Speaker 1: with how dangerous we are or are not, because most
Speaker 1: of the time, unless we have a gun, we're not
Speaker 1: toy dangerous for a large cat. I think the wolves
Speaker 1: in Yellowstone would be interesting because I don't know the
Speaker 1: wolf tourism. I'm not quite sure how it works, but
Speaker 1: I understand there are a lot of people who love
Speaker 1: the wolf tourism, you know, travelers who want to see
Speaker 1: the wolves badly. I guess it's in the western edge
Speaker 1: of the National Park. And then there, and then the
Speaker 1: ranchers near the party hate the wolves, and I think
Speaker 1: the wolf hunting has been reopened in that area. So
Speaker 1: that's an interesting situation where I'd like to see. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about how the wolf concert ration
Speaker 1: could could create green jobs there and help protect wolves.
Speaker 1: There was a New York Times story about how boring
Speaker 1: ecotourism is in the Amazon. That was a very unfortunate story,
Speaker 1: But the writer was a TV producer for one of
Speaker 1: the major networks who went to the Amazon and came
Speaker 1: back and said, I didn't see anything, basically, and that's
Speaker 1: because he the Amazon is complicated. You have to know
Speaker 1: where the fruit tree is that has all the action.
Speaker 1: If you don't go to that fruit tree, you may
Speaker 1: not see a lot in the rest of the forest,
Speaker 1: but that fruit tree is stuffed full of monkeys and birds,
Speaker 1: and it's just amazing. There's no substitute for knowing exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on tree by tree in the forest, and
Speaker 1: a square mile of typical Amazon forest, it's unhunted and
Speaker 1: has all the original animals. Only two or three trees
Speaker 1: are stuff full of animals that day. But you need
Speaker 1: to know which trees those are. You have to be
Speaker 1: at those trees at the right time, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a great time. You'll get the impression that they're
Speaker 1: more animals in the forest, and there actually are because
Speaker 1: they're all concentrated in one tree. You know, there's still
Speaker 1: any uncontacted Indians down there. As far as there are
Speaker 1: un contacted Indians and Brazil than Peru, we're both. There
Speaker 1: are some pockets, especially in Peru and Brazil in Venezuela
Speaker 1: where they're uncontacted tribes. That doesn't mean that they don't
Speaker 1: know that the outside world exists. That means that they're
Speaker 1: choosing to live out of contact, and they are out
Speaker 1: of contact, but it's not that they have no idea
Speaker 1: that there's something else. There's there's other stuff out there.
Speaker 1: They choose to avoid it because they all know from
Speaker 1: tradition that it's dangerous, because it typically is dangerous when
Speaker 1: they come in contact with western civilization. We worked a
Speaker 1: lot with Indians who we helped TITLE while I was
Speaker 1: working for WCS. We raised a million dollars for land
Speaker 1: titling of Indians to create a big buffer zones around
Speaker 1: the national parks, and that was quite effective and many
Speaker 1: of the Indians that we worked with were some of
Speaker 1: our best executives and informants and gave us new ideas
Speaker 1: about how to make the rain for us more interesting.
Speaker 1: One of them, who had been working with me on Macause, said, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: you want to come to my house a couple hours away,
Speaker 1: and I've got a macau there. And I said, oh,
Speaker 1: you mean you took you're working with maccause of me
Speaker 1: and you you kind of treat out and took the
Speaker 1: baby Macause at pet. That's no good. He says, no,
Speaker 1: you don't quite understand. Come to my house and I'll
Speaker 1: show you. So we drove a couple of hours by
Speaker 1: river to his house and it was the end of
Speaker 1: the day and he said, they'll probably show up any minute.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you mean they'll show up any minute?
Speaker 1: And suddenly these giants, you know, the Scarlett Macause, flew
Speaker 1: out of the forest and landed right next to the house.
Speaker 1: I said, what's going on? And then they give them snacks.
Speaker 1: They gave them some corn from their corn field, and
Speaker 1: the and the Macause eight and then they flew away.
Speaker 1: Said no, no, there are those are pet Macause. We
Speaker 1: never clipped their wings, so they just come and go
Speaker 1: they'll come and get snack. They'll top off the tank
Speaker 1: a couple of times a day. They're eating in the forest.
Speaker 1: They're wild macause, but they come back to get snacks
Speaker 1: from us. I said, you're kidding, really, you mean because
Speaker 1: the second baby, and they have two babies, the second
Speaker 1: macause starves to death. Normally, that's part of macau biology.
Speaker 1: They want to raise one healthy one and the second
Speaker 1: ones in insurance policy in case the first ones are done,
Speaker 1: so the second one almost always starves. I said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we raise the second one in a field
Speaker 1: lab and release it. It will come back to get
Speaker 1: snacks for the rest of its life. And you know,
Speaker 1: ALEC and and UH and National geographic photographers and and guests,
Speaker 1: we'll all get amazing photos of wild macause that are
Speaker 1: like dual citizens. They'll come in and visit us and
Speaker 1: then leave again. You saw some of those birds. I
Speaker 1: think one of them was telling you were a great actor.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it was bobbing its head, you know,
Speaker 1: And yes, indeed it was. It was doing lines from
Speaker 1: all my greatest films. Now, how much more do you
Speaker 1: see yourself doing this kind of thing? I mean, isn't
Speaker 1: there a part of you that wants to kick back
Speaker 1: and finish the whole thing, or have a nice autumn
Speaker 1: of your years where it all started on your five
Speaker 1: acre ancestral home in Baltimore, bordering the fifty acres that
Speaker 1: you secured with your selling all your Halloween candy. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to be a little bit less involved with
Speaker 1: worrying about whether we have enough ripe tomatoes in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: I'd like to be a little less involved in making
Speaker 1: sure that every single transfer from an airport to hotel
Speaker 1: goes properly. I like to be less involved in the
Speaker 1: day to day operations and more involved with thinking about
Speaker 1: things like the Florida panther. You know, we know that
Speaker 1: we have techniques that can be applied, that have legs
Speaker 1: that can be used over and over again. There's no
Speaker 1: reason to have to rediscover the wheel. We know how
Speaker 1: to make McCaw's ridiculously fun and attractive and it's easy.
Speaker 1: And yet even when the country of Costa Rica we
Speaker 1: propose that they have what I call assisted fledging, the
Speaker 1: second baby is gonna starve anyway, Take it from the nest,
Speaker 1: feed it in a field lab, and release it and
Speaker 1: we'll come back and guess we'll get pictures of Scarlett
Speaker 1: Macause next to in national parks or next to national
Speaker 1: parks in Costa Rica. And they have a million tourists
Speaker 1: and fewer the one percent got a good photo of
Speaker 1: a Scarlett Macau at the moment. But if they did
Speaker 1: what I said, they'd have ncent that people would getting
Speaker 1: good photos of Scarlet ut Macause. And that would mean
Speaker 1: people might spend an extra night in the country. And
Speaker 1: a million people spending an extra night. You can do
Speaker 1: the math. So and yet Costa Rica doesn't doesn't take
Speaker 1: that suggestion seriously. I suggested that to them twenty years
Speaker 1: ago because Costa ricause renown. Now there's an eco tourism spot. Well,
Speaker 1: they just outlawed all all feeding of wild animals. You
Speaker 1: can't even feed a bird in your backyard in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I think it's purest
Speaker 1: biologists who have the training that I have, but who
Speaker 1: don't understand that if we don't, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a there's a continuum of you know, putting an
Speaker 1: animal in a cage and making it suffer, and having
Speaker 1: a wild animal that you give a snack and there's
Speaker 1: everything in between. You can know wild animals. You don't
Speaker 1: touch at all. Wild animals, you give them a little
Speaker 1: snack to make them easier to see. If you can
Speaker 1: protect a forest by giving a few wild animals a
Speaker 1: little bit of a snack that doesn't hurt them, and
Speaker 1: you can protect a million acres of forest by doing that.
Speaker 1: I much prefer that than torching the place into carbon,
Speaker 1: which is what happens literally. I think biologies have to
Speaker 1: be more dynamic about using their knowledge of animal biology
Speaker 1: and animal behavior to make animals more accessible and more visible.
Speaker 1: I challenge my friends, and people are gonna be mad
Speaker 1: at me for saying this, but I challenge my friends
Speaker 1: who go to Costa Rica literally to come back with
Speaker 1: trophy photos of wildlife. And they come back with precious
Speaker 1: little in the way of trophy photos of wildlife that
Speaker 1: could compete with what they saw in Kenyer or in
Speaker 1: South Africa. And that's because the animals are there. But
Speaker 1: you have to be able to get close enough to them.
Speaker 1: Because the animals are smaller and they're not dangerous, and
Speaker 1: they're more colorful, but you need to be able to
Speaker 1: get close to them. And one of the ways you
Speaker 1: do that is by giving them a structured snack that
Speaker 1: is harmless. Yeah, and so I mean you can feed
Speaker 1: animals the wrong way, and I'm opposed to that, but
Speaker 1: you can also do something intelligent and make some animals
Speaker 1: more visible than they would be otherwise. You can see
Speaker 1: amazing birds. And I actually asked the coustoar because anyone
Speaker 1: in the room there were a lot of scientists in
Speaker 1: the room at the last meeting where they said no,
Speaker 1: they're not going to allow assisted fledging of macause. Has
Speaker 1: anyone been to Sydney or Melbourne where cockatoos are backyard feederbirds?
Speaker 1: I said, you should have a hundred thousand Scarlett Macause
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica, not sixteen hundred like they have. No
Speaker 1: every home in the lowlands in Costa Rica should have
Speaker 1: Scarlett macauss backyard feederbirds. What's wrong with that model? And
Speaker 1: there is nothing wrong with that model, but they actually
Speaker 1: instead of heading in that direction doing test, they've actually
Speaker 1: gone in the opposite direction. What part beyond the South
Speaker 1: American rainforest? What are other places you crave? I want
Speaker 1: to go to Antarctica, yeah, and I haven't been to
Speaker 1: the Galapagus yet, which is embarrassing. No, no, I would
Speaker 1: expect you for many summers there. Well, they already know
Speaker 1: what they're doing with eco tourism and conservation. They don't
Speaker 1: need any tips from any consulting. No, no, they don't
Speaker 1: need any tips from me. But I maintain that we
Speaker 1: have better wildlife viewing in the Puntinel in Brazil than
Speaker 1: even than they have. We have a lot of large mammals, otters, jaguars,
Speaker 1: a lot of large birds, uh copy bars, the world's
Speaker 1: largest rodent, as I said, the giant guinea pig, these
Speaker 1: big big alligators, and the caymans, and so I think
Speaker 1: I may we have four species of monkeys see them ridiculously. Well,
Speaker 1: we have the largest parrot in the world, the highest
Speaker 1: of malcaul there. So I maintain that we have something
Speaker 1: similar to or even in some ways better than the
Speaker 1: glap the glab because has no large there's no hunting.
Speaker 1: The animals just aren't there. Other very interesting and there's
Speaker 1: no question about it. But you're talking about they don't
Speaker 1: have colorful, big mammalian predators like that. So the reason
Speaker 1: you're you, as you said before, the reason that your
Speaker 1: situation there is as vivid as it is and is
Speaker 1: is conducive to the secut tours. Something is the lack
Speaker 1: of hunting correct, it's because the country, Brazil outlawed sports
Speaker 1: hunting in nineteen sixty seven, and that's amazing. I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure what they were thinking. But in fact it's
Speaker 1: been amazing for my work because I've seen the quality
Speaker 1: of wildlife viewing in Brazil increase so much in the
Speaker 1: last thirty year is I just can't believe it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of places in the world are declining, the
Speaker 1: wildlife is declining, but in Brazil it's a wildlife bonanza.
Speaker 1: Now you can see pink dolphins ridiculously tame right outside
Speaker 1: of the city of Manouse. You can fly to Manouse,
Speaker 1: you know, American airlines in five hours from Miami and
Speaker 1: have pink dolphins right around your legs. They don't care.
Speaker 1: And so Brazil has amazing stuff that I would never
Speaker 1: have predicted that, for instance, that I could see jaguars
Speaker 1: on demand. I would never have guessed that was possible.
Speaker 1: And I spent years in the rainforest. I saw jaguars
Speaker 1: in the Amazon rainforest. In the Amazon, they're in the
Speaker 1: forest hunting wild pigs, and so you don't see them
Speaker 1: on the river bank, but in the punt thenale. They're
Speaker 1: hunting the copy bars and the caymans on the river bank,
Speaker 1: which is where those things live, and that's why you
Speaker 1: see them. You know. I have a story that I
Speaker 1: don't think I told you. Did I tell you what
Speaker 1: was happening in that blind while we were waiting for
Speaker 1: them Acause to come down? Please, I'm on tenter hooks.
Speaker 1: So it was there was a cameraman. One end of
Speaker 1: the blind was only what big enough for four or
Speaker 1: five people? Yes, And so I had my colleague proving
Speaker 1: colleague at ward and Nikander was in the blind with me.
Speaker 1: He was sitting next to me, and you were just
Speaker 1: beyond him, and then I think Kim was just beyond him.
Speaker 1: And then the cameraman was sitting somewhere in there, and
Speaker 1: we were we were waiting for the Macause to come
Speaker 1: down to eat clay, and there was a raging flood
Speaker 1: next to us. It was January. That was a crazy
Speaker 1: time to go. It's a difficult time for this to work.
Speaker 1: So the rain let up and the flood was coming
Speaker 1: up and it was starting to come into the blind.
Speaker 1: It was actually starting starting to wash away the blind
Speaker 1: while we were sitting there. Did you notice that I
Speaker 1: was so engross Well, there were large tree trunks going by,
Speaker 1: I said, about ten miles an hour, and one of them,
Speaker 1: one of them had hit the edge of the blind
Speaker 1: that would have been the end. And there were rocks
Speaker 1: coming down this hundred foot high clay wall not far
Speaker 1: from you and Kim, you know these rocks coming down
Speaker 1: the side of your head coming down, and they were
Speaker 1: smashing into the water. Did you notice that that I heard?
Speaker 1: I heard like a little plunk, I heard one. Remember,
Speaker 1: I heard a sound that I thought it was something
Speaker 1: had fallen down in the range, because I know what
Speaker 1: happens those banks. Sometimes the whole bank collapses. But there's
Speaker 1: a third thing that was happening all at the same time.
Speaker 1: We're all waiting for the macause at the end to
Speaker 1: come down or not. And that is that it were
Speaker 1: a n can to sort of did his eyebrows and
Speaker 1: looked over in the corner and sort of indicate I
Speaker 1: should look down there. And I looked down there and
Speaker 1: there was a venomous snake had come into the blind,
Speaker 1: something that people are terrified snakes in the rainforest, But
Speaker 1: there was a venomous snake a small one, but it
Speaker 1: was always about six seven inches maybe maybe a foot long.
Speaker 1: I had crawled because the flood was coming up, and
Speaker 1: it had scared this fair delane snake into the blind.
Speaker 1: And so this fair de long of snake was sort
Speaker 1: of making its way over towards the two of you,
Speaker 1: you and Kim, and I said, dude wardo in Spanish
Speaker 1: and whispered to him. I said, keep them busy by
Speaker 1: whispering to him, and tell him a few stories. And
Speaker 1: so he was telling you a couple of stories, and
Speaker 1: you were listening to his little stories. And as he
Speaker 1: was talking quietly, and I had a little stick in
Speaker 1: my hand, and I put a stick on the head
Speaker 1: of the snake, and I kept watching you, God, hang
Speaker 1: on a second, and uh and uh and and so
Speaker 1: and I sort of smiling listening to the story. But
Speaker 1: meanwhile the snakes wriggling while I had it pinned down
Speaker 1: near its head. And then I had a Swiss army
Speaker 1: knife and I cut the snake's head off. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to say, I mean, I'm afraid I couldn't deal with
Speaker 1: that snake in another way at that moment. It was
Speaker 1: a small snake. But maybe you I'm gonna get in
Speaker 1: trouble now. But so I didn't tell you that, and
Speaker 1: this is the first time you heard that. My god,
Speaker 1: everyone's terrified they're going to see a snake when they
Speaker 1: go to the rainforest, and you know, actually come in
Speaker 1: my bedroom when I was in then, you know. But
Speaker 1: I mean, so here we had the raging flood with
Speaker 1: the huge logs going by a venomous snake and these
Speaker 1: big boulders coming down the hillside, and you guys were
Speaker 1: I think somewhat oblivious, and then the macause came down
Speaker 1: and we filmed it and all worked well. You know
Speaker 1: what's great about going on these trips with a guy
Speaker 1: like you and naturalist who's got a PhD from Princeton
Speaker 1: and all these kind of fancy's piled higher and deeper.
Speaker 1: PhD bs MS is more of the same PhD piled
Speaker 1: higher and deeper. Well being with someone where it's piled
Speaker 1: higher and deeper. The great thing is, as I may
Speaker 1: die in the rainforest here in the blind, but at
Speaker 1: least I'll know how I died. We'll explain it's the
Speaker 1: is the log genus species. You'll see this snake that
Speaker 1: just bit you was a what's it called fair Delance,
Speaker 1: the French name for a South American and Central American
Speaker 1: pit fighter related to the rattlesnake on the copper head.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to like terrify people because I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one the few fairalnes I've ever seen. It just
Speaker 1: happened to be in the blind with you with him.
Speaker 1: In a recent interview with the Telegraph, Charles Mann captured
Speaker 1: why as a zoologist he promotes encounters with animals. Quote,
Speaker 1: there's a continuum from pets and animals and zoos to
Speaker 1: a wild animal in nature approaching you, to really wild
Speaker 1: species that are terrified of you. I'm willing to use
Speaker 1: any point on that continuum except captivity to promote forest conservation.
Speaker 1: I'd rather have the monkeys running wild, but realistically it's
Speaker 1: no longer an option. Unquote, this is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to. Here's the thing. I think our