Ten days ago, I flew through most of north and eastern Bolivia, which is the tropical area. And I flew for seven hours, zig-zagging from one town to the other, and we were flying at a height of 25,000 feet above sea level. And from there, all the way to the ground, it was just thick smoke – completely thick smoke for seven hours. The country is just being burned away. It's not only Bolivia, it's also Peru and Brazil, and I suspect Ecuador and Colombia. But, I was absolutely shocked.

I was doing the flight to do some monitoring between these towns and to study the possibilities of developing ecotourism with other communities, and I couldn't see a thing. Zero. Taking off from one of the airports, I counted how many fires I could actually see burning before we got into that thick cloud of smoke. Just on take-off, I counted 53 fires. So I am really alarmed. I mean, I have always been worried, but after that flight, I am really alarmed about what is going on in the continent. And it makes me think that if we don't get this continental mosaic of protection going, and running with true protection, the continent is going to be lost very quickly.

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