Transcript (1.1)

I went to the mines at a really early, early age. My first memories, almost, are of the mines – which were . . . for me as a child it was fun, it was a lot of adventure, it was awesome going into the mines; going down into the different levels. There's a mine – Siglo Veinte – which is one of the biggest, in terms of dropping down, down, down, down, further into the earth.

We were mostly in the tin mining areas, and although, to this day, by popular culture, women aren't supposed to go into the mines – they were supposed to bring bad luck – there were always exceptions. We went in. But the landscape itself is really barren – really dry and barren. Even people's skins are cracked from the dryness, and the malnutrition and everything. So, my environment at that age was just really poverty, barrenness – in a way a sense of hopelessness.

Transcript (1.2)

When we went to the tropical areas for the first time, I remember we went by foot, and it was very cloudy – across the mountains. And then we started going down, and then it was very misty and cloudy. And I didn't know it then, but it was the cloud forest. And as the day started warming up, the clouds came up, and there was this amazing, amazing view at my feet. Just mountains after mountains after mountains of pure green. Just forest, forest, forest. It was breathtaking! And I can remember to this day, that moment was just key for me. It was like, "I'm never leaving this place, ever, ever! This is it. This is what I need for myself!"

Transcript (1.3)

We went through the mountainous part, through the cloud forest, and we reached the headwaters of – we reached a river, and we passed through an indigenous territory. The Indians – we had them build a raft for us. Even while they were building the raft, everything was amazing to me – just the greenery, the vegetation. It felt wonderful.

And there were lots of animals. We could hear a lot of animals. And even though I wasn't very good at seeing animals, I was seeing lots of animals. And then we went down the river in this raft with three Mosetenes. The people who traveled with us brought their bows and arrows and they were hunting all the time. Every day they would bring meat or fish. They would fish with bow and arrow too. And too me this was really magical. It was just pure magic, and I would follow them with my mouth hanging open.

Transcript (1.4)

I would cross to the other side of the river. I'd have friends cross me and agree to pick me up in the evening, and I would go and explore. I'd take whatever path I could, and just walk around and see what was at the end of the path. I met lots of families that way.

I met one family that . . . there was just something special – just this mutual feeling of really liking each other. They asked me to spend the night there, and I eventually did. And before too long, I wound up having them adopt me (laughs), and now they are my family. To this day, they are like my brothers; my nephews and nieces. I do feel that they are my family.

Transcript (2.1)

As I saw the threats, I started proposing that a park be developed in the area. And, well, I can see now, looking back, that it must have seemed pretty absurd because, certainly then, young people – well, kids – were not taken seriously at all, and you know, here was this kid who was little bizarre anyway, proposing a national park. So mostly I got laughed out of every place I went to, attempting to have this thing done.

Transcript (2.2)

Everyone who has come to the field, and who has seen our work, has come out being very, very supportive of us. And the other reason that I think we are surviving, as well as we are, is that we live there. We have nowhere else to go. And even if all the funding is gone, we are still living there and we are still going to continue to raise some crops and have enough rice and bananas to eat.

Transcript (2.3)

Some of the park is in areas that were inhabited by the pre-Colombian cultures. This is known as an Inca trail, but no one has done research – it could be pre-Inca as well. It is built with stones – there's a lot of flooding in the rainy season, you can see there is a lot of water around. And you walk on the stones and it makes travel possible throughout most of the year.

There used to be a communal maintenance of roads and transportation. It was a traditional thing, and many of the communities have left, and the organization has decreased because of political restructuring, which is imposed by the city. And so a lot of that system is breaking apart. To do the highland works, which we will be doing in the next few months, we've had to re-build the trail, and we've done some of that by recovering some of the community organization. Some of that is also by paying people to do it because it is – a lot of the time we've had to take dynamite, we've had to build hanging bridges, and communities no longer have that facility. But it's marvelous, because you go through areas where it is all, like, cobblestones, or even better.

Transcript (3.1)

Bolivia is one of the countries from which the greatest amount of mahogany has been extracted in recent years. These trucks are full of mahogany, and in one day, in one spot, I counted 60 to 65 trucks (were) hauling the mahogany out per day – lines and lines of trucks like that.

Transcript (3.2)

When you are doing the protection, you run into places where they have been hiding what they have been cutting. They see us coming, or they see that we are in the way. They stop the chainsaws and they hide what they have, and wait for us to leave to try to get it out.

Transcript (3.3)

They saw that their forests were being destroyed. They still depended on hunting for a living, and whereas before you could go in and walk in the forest for an hour and come back with something to eat, by the time I was proposing the park, it would take people sometimes a week to find something to eat.

For example, in May there is a big festivity in the town where I used to live, and the prize thing – everybody is supposed to bring back spider monkeys. That is the favorite meat. And in 1993, I was doing a census and diagnostic work in preparation for land titling, and at the community meeting I asked, "Well, how many people were able to hunt spider monkey for the feast?" And you could see everyone sort of wanted to raise their arms because, it used to be everyone, and then they hadn't. So they kind of looked around, and suddenly they realized that no one else had – in the whole community, only one person had found a spider monkey – in the entire village. So those things started to really hit home.

Transcript (3.4)

The other big problem is burning. I took photographs of this last year. This is burning in the cloud forest, which is even rarer than tropical forest – very, very scarce habitat. And last year, we found thousands of hectares being burnt.

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.

Transcript (3.4)

The other big problem is burning. I took photographs of this last year. This is burning in the cloud forest, which is even rarer than tropical forest – very, very scarce habitat. And last year, we found thousands of hectares being burnt.

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.

Transcript (4.1)

One of the things that has really impressed the communities in the indigenous territory next to Madidi is our work in protection. They are right next to us. The only thing separating us is a river – but the amount of fauna – it's night and day. Where I live we have everything. The monkeys come right up to my house every day. The smaller monkeys come every day. Spider monkeys are coming back.

The other day I spent two hours, in the stretch of maybe 200 meters, following spider monkeys. And you know, spider monkeys have almost disappeared from pretty large areas in the park, and definitely from this indigenous territory, so that has sparked the interest of the leaders in that territory, and they have been asking us to work more closely with them.

Transcript (4.2)

My house is here, and about ten meters off the edge of the cliff – you come to the edge of the cliff and you have this view of the whole valley. I think it's unusual in the tropics to have that kind of a view. It's probably not hard to find, but most people don't look for that.

When I went to live there, people thought I was absolutely, stark, raving mad. "Well, there are flat areas, you know, you could get off the boat and just walk ten meters and do your house there. Why are you doing your house way up there? You know; what's wrong with you? You must be crazy! You're not going to last there at all. You'll be coming back out in no time." And now everybody wishes they were at the house (laughs).

Transcript (4.3)

The macaws were hunted in this area. They almost became extinct. I started the strict protection eight years ago, and since then the population has not only leveled off, it is beginning to be on the increase again. And the macaws fly out of their nests, and they are below you, so you can see them in flight.

They have favorite branches, and especially when I am alone, but also when they get used to the people that I am with, they will and come and sit on a branch, like, two or three meters away, and kind of look at you. We play games. I wake up in the morning. I can already hear them calling away, and I can hear the monkeys coming. So, when the monkeys come, they come right over the house and then they jump on the roof and back to the branches. And I lie on my hammock and the monkeys come and peer at me.

Transcript (4.4)

The macaws are nesting in those cliffs. We've done a lot of research on the behavior and how the macaws are living. It's unique. Macaws normally nest on trees, not on cliffs. And here they have burrowed out their nests, and their nests – the ones I have measured – are three, and more than three, meters in length inside the cliff. It's just amazing. Beautiful, beautiful construction! And, they remind me of monasteries almost, because, it's like, there are little cells to the right and to the left, and you keep going and there are more entries. Just beautiful construction, kept wonderfully clean.

And another thing we have discovered here, which is very new, is the socialization amongst macaws – they actually help take care of each other's nests. A couple can leave and the other couple will take care of the nest.

Transcript (5.1)

You can step out on one of the little balconies and look through the telescope, right into a macaw nest. And what's really special about what we've done – which they are beginning to do in Peru with one institution (but certainly, in Bolivia, no one else is doing it), is we know how to draw the animals in. And I can guarantee – which is what we did with the National Geographic this year (we did it for the magazine and we did it for TV) – they were guaranteed that they could photograph, up close, macaws – while seeing a whole variety of birds, king vulture, harpy eagle (which are not that easy to see normally), tapir, wild boar.

And for them – and for me actually – it's the highlight too, because it's fun: the jaguar. So, if you can be patient – if you don't expect to see it today – you have a real good chance of seeing a jaguar, if you come and do some tourism with us. And I think that's what people are looking for – they are looking for that peace, that tranquility, that spiritual part – and they also want to see fauna.

Transcript (5.2)

And then we have the option of walking a lot, so you can see a lot more of the flora and the variety, and walk from one river to the other. So you sleep in this lodge today and then you walk and sleep in this lodge this evening, without having to carry your gear. We can take your gear by river, so that you can have a lot of walking without it being uncomfortable, and so you can concentrate on enjoying the place and arrive somewhere where you'll have a very comfortable bed for the evening.

We have about 35 kilometers of interpretive trails, and we want to develop the option of families who want to benefit from tourism – when they are ready for tourists, we will give them the training and we will supervise it so that the tourist has the experience of truly living with an indigenous family, and being sure that whatever they eat is not going to give them a raving case of diarrhea.

Transcript (5.3)

We are not in it to make a lot of money. We are in it to make sure that the ecotourism sustains the protection, and also that it sustains a fund for generating small projects for the local communities. And in the case of the big lodge, we are aiming to have the local communities be our 50:50 partners, so half of the income that is generated will go to protection and the other half to a fund which they will manage.

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