Rewildology

In June 1992, 179 nations made two pledges that still shape every international conservation agreement today, and thirty years later, the world's most important climate conference was held inside a tropical rainforest. What happens in those halls matters—but so does everything that happens after.

James Deutsch, CEO of Rainforest Trust, breaks down how a half-billion-dollar pledge helped catalyze the 30x30 target, why the Tropical Forests Forever Facility could fix a structural flaw in carbon finance, and where he sees the next window for real conservation progress.

Constanza Prieto Figelist, Legal Director for Latin America at the Earth Law Center, explains how a Peruvian court recognized the Marañón River as a subject of rights, and why four articles in Ecuador's constitution have stopped more destructive projects than years of protest ever could.

Catarina Nefertari of Amazônia de Pé was on the ground in Belém when COP30 arrived, and has spent years closing the distance between communities most affected by Amazon destruction and the rooms where decisions about its future are made.

This is the series finale of Rewilding Amazonia. The Amazon's next chapter is still being forged.

If this series changed how you see the Amazon, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
0:29 Rio 1992 & the road to COP30
1:45 James Deutsch (Rainforest Trust)
4:03 The 30x30 pledge
5:07 How private conservation finance works
7:13 COP30 outcomes & the T Triple F
9:37 US funding withdrawal
11:23 Indigenous land rights
12:42 Constanza Prieto (Earth Law Center)
15:54 Criminalizing indigenous defenders
17:52 Rights of Nature & the Marañón River case
21:48 Catarina (Amazônia de Pé)
23:27 Brazil's fossil fuel dilemma
24:32 What COP30 delivered
28:25 Series closing: 22 voices, 6 countries
31:00 Call to action & outro

SUPPORT
This episode is supported by Rainforest Trust—protecting tropical forests and endangered wildlife since 1988. Through local partnerships, community engagement, and donor support, they've safeguarded over 66 million acres in almost 70 countries. Learn more at rainforesttrust.org.

CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

What does it take to make the Amazon worth more standing than gone? Not in theory—but in practice, on the ground, with real communities, real businesses, and real money. This episode of Rewilding Amazonia follows three people who have built economic models that answer that question from completely different angles.

Eduardo Nycander founded Rainforest Expeditions in Peru's Tambopata region in 1989—a community ecotourism joint venture with the Ese'eja people that has proven a healthy forest is worth more per hectare than any alternative land use. 

Drago Bozovich's company manages 183,000 hectares of FSC-certified forest in Madre de Dios, harvesting less than one tree per hectare every twenty years while running Brazil nut operations that provide year-round employment—and his company’s forests now have jaguar densities higher than Manu National Park. 

Isabel Felandro of Cool Earth is tackling a different problem: the communities with no product to sell and no income stable enough to resist the pressure to destroy what they have. Her answer is unconditional cash transfers—and the first conservation basic income pilot in the Peruvian Amazon is already showing results.

The economic case for the standing forest isn't idealism. It's evidence. If this episode changed how you think about conservation, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction: Dawn on the river
1:44 Eduardo Nycander: 35 years in the Amazon
3:53 Rainforest Expeditions: Building the business
6:02 Partnership with the Ese'Eja community of Infierno
8:41 Spreading the economic benefit
9:57 The macaw nesting crisis
12:39 Eduardo's legacy & training the wider region
14:08 Drago Bozovich: Three generations of Amazon forestry
15:43 FSC-certified sustainable harvesting explained
17:56 20 years later: The forest comes back
19:55 Brazil nuts & year-round employment
21:03 Jaguars denser than national parks
22:18 Isabel Felandro: From Cambridge to the field
25:05 Cool Earth's model: Direct cash to communities
26:22 The climate finance gap
28:09 Conservation basic income pilot
30:33 Early results: Less stress, more conservation
33:24 Economic stability & indigenous land defenders
35:20 Advocacy & the shift in climate finance
37:01 Conclusion: The economic case for the standing forest

CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

What does it cost to defend the Amazon? Not in dollars or hectares—but years spent in exile, family members taken in the night, court rulings that win on paper and go unenforced for nearly two decades. This episode of Rewilding Amazonia follows five people who have dedicated their lives to defending the Amazon.

Daniel Aristizábal, PIACI Process Director at the Amazon Conservation Team, works to protect indigenous communities that have chosen isolation from the outside world—and explains how they are now sitting on top of some of the most coveted mineral deposits on the continent.

Cristina Vollmer Burelli, founder of SOSOrinoco, documents Venezuela's state-sponsored illegal mining from exile—exposing how a government became the architect of its own people's destruction.

Hugo Jabini, Goldman Prize-winning Saamaka-Maroon leader from Suriname, tells the story of how his people fled slavery in 1690, built 74 communities across 1.4 million hectares of tropical forest, won a landmark ruling in the 2000s after years of legal battles—and are still waiting for full compliance 19 years later. 

Cesar Carrasco, Ese'eja lodge manager at Rainforest Expeditions in the Peruvian Amazon, survived the gold mines at 17 and spent three decades helping his community build an economic foundation that didn’t depend on extraction.

The episode closes with Rosa Espinoza—the chemical biologist and science communicator who grew up steeped in traditional ecological knowledge—and her belief that the deepest form of conservation is learning to live beautifully alongside nature.

If this story moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who cares about the Amazon.

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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Support and Content Warning
00:42 Papaya Farm Front
02:09 Isolation as Choice
03:36 Quarantine and Territory
05:39 Policy Wins Under Fire
07:19 Green Minerals Dilemma
09:12 Venezuela Mining State
14:04 Gold Economy Trap
19:48 Suriname Logging Shock
21:27 Saamaka Rights Fight
27:39 Exile and COP30
31:27 Peru Mining and Mercury
35:40 Tourism and Culture
37:57 Live Beautifully Closing

SUPPORT
This episode is supported by Cool Earth, a charity that gives cash and data directly to Indigenous communities to protect rainforest and fight the climate crisis. Learn more at coolearth.org.

CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

The Amazon isn't just a forest. It's three interconnected systems that have taken forty million years to build, and all of them are under pressure. In this episode of Rewilding Amazonia, I set out to understand how the Amazon functions—not as a place on a map, but as a living system where atmosphere, water, and deep earth are in constant conversation.

Dr. Carlos Nobre, the Brazilian climate scientist who coined the concept of the Amazon's tipping point, explains how the forest engineers its own rainfall through "flying rivers"—invisible atmospheric currents carrying moisture across an entire continent—and what happens to the global climate if we push past the 20% deforestation threshold he first identified in 1988.

Jimena Valderrama, National Geographic Explorer and scientist with Colombia's Omacha Foundation, uses the health of Amazon river dolphins as a diagnostic tool for the health of the Amazon’s river systems. What her team is finding in their blood, including mercury levels seventy times the permitted limit, tells a troubling story about what’s entering the water.

And geothermal scientist Andres Ruzo takes us to the Boiling River, a thermal river running at 87 degrees Celsius and 700 kilometers from the nearest active volcano, sitting atop a geothermal world that remained hidden from scientists until recently.

This episode is about understanding the Amazon as a system: because the more you understand how these layers talk to each other, the clearer it becomes what's at stake when they start to break down, and what it means to protect them while we still can.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Amazon Tipping Point
00:43 Three Interconnected Layers
01:59 Geology Shapes Rainfall
03:20 Flying Rivers Explained
05:55 Carbon and Collapse Risk
06:18 Tipping Thresholds Today
09:38 Avoiding the Point
10:14 River World and Dolphins
13:34 Dolphins as Health Mirrors
15:06 Mercury and Mining
17:52 Sentinel Species Wins
20:15 Geothermal Underworld
22:37 Legend of Boiling River
25:07 Discovery and Protection
28:34 Extremophiles and Biotech
30:58 El Dorado City of Life
33:17 Final Takeaways and Next

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CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

The Amazon is one of the most remote places on Earth—and one of the most watched. In this episode of Rewilding Amazonia, I follow the people who have built new eyes to see what's happening inside a forest too vast, dangerous, and politically complicated for traditional monitoring to reach.

Brian Hettler, Director of Mapping at the Amazon Conservation Team, has spent fourteen years using high-resolution satellite imagery to track illegal mining barges pushing into protected indigenous territories on the Colombian-Brazilian border, and to help communities legally prove their presence on lands they risk losing not through violence, but through paperwork.

Cristina Vollmer Burelli of SOSOrinoco built an anonymous open-source intelligence network of journalists, scientists, and indigenous witnesses to document over 1,000 hectares of illegal gold mines inside Venezuela's Canaima National Park—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—when physical access was impossible and speaking out could get you killed.

And Brazilian entomologist Leo Lanna of Projeto Mantis has spent a decade discovering that praying mantis community diversity is one of the most accurate indicators of Amazon forest health available, and that the "invisible islands" these insects occupy have profound implications for how we approach reforestation.

This episode is about visibility: what it means to be able to document almost everything happening in the Amazon—and what it will take to get the world to act on what we're seeing. 

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Guard Post Porto Franco Post Burns
01:37 Watching the Amazon from Space
03:09 Mapping And Titling
05:04 How River Mining Works
07:36 Turning Images Into Action
08:31 Hope In New Clearings
09:39 Venezuela Park Exposé
12:48 Anonymous Network
14:32 AI Needs Human Eyes
16:20 Borders And Balloon Effect
18:41 Meet The Mantis Scientist
20:36 Insects As Forest Signals
22:30 Invisible Islands Insight
25:07 Night Forest And UV
27:48 What Gives Hope
29:23 You Cant Protect Unseen
29:49 Next Episode Tease

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CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

In this episode of Rewilding Amazonia, I follow the broken edges of the forest—the roads cutting through Indigenous territories, the degraded corridors between ecosystems, the unprotected landscapes sitting just outside national park boundaries—and the people stitching it back together.

Juliana Martins, a road ecologist and PhD candidate at Imperial College London, has spent years working alongside the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous community in the Brazilian Amazon, whose nightly closure of the BR-174 highway has produced the longest-running citizen science roadkill monitoring project in road ecology history and measurably higher wildlife diversity inside their territory than outside it.

Ben Valks of the Black Jaguar Foundation is six years into one of the largest rewilding projects on earth: a 2,600-kilometer biodiversity corridor reconnecting the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado savanna through a 17-step restoration approach, farmer by farmer, across a landscape the size of the distance from Boston to Miami.

And Bruno Paladines of Nature and Culture International helped unite six Ecuadorian provinces and Indigenous nationalities under a single conservation agreement, the Amazonian Platform, to protect 60,000 square kilometers of intact, connected forest that had no formal protection at all.

This episode is about landscape scale: what it takes to stop a forest from falling apart, and what becomes possible when the people who have always belonged to the land are finally given the tools to protect it.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Spider Monkey Wakeup
01:38 Roads And Fragmentation
02:21 Road Ecology Explained
04:12 Highway Through Indigenous Land
06:47 Night Closures Save Wildlife
08:48 Canopy Bridges Solution
10:05 Rethinking Road Building
12:46 Mega Corridor Restoration
17:00 How Black Jaguar Restores
18:06 Winning Farmers Trust
20:03 Wildlife Returns Fast
21:08 Protecting the Ecuador Amazon
24:25 Amazonian Platform Strategy
26:26 Future Fund Governance
28:23 Unified Voice At COP
29:47 Jaguar Refuge Buffer Zone
31:46 Connectivity And Next Steps

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CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

What is required to bring wildlife back to the Amazon, and can species that have vanished from depleted forests return? In this episode of Rewilding Amazonia, I investigate the crisis of defaunation: the slow, invisible emptying of the Amazon's wildlife that leaves forests standing but ecologically hollow. Scientists estimate that between 350,000 and 1.25 million animals are trafficked in Peru alone every year, with official figures capturing as little as three percent of the actual trade.

Through conversations with three people working at very different points in the same crisis, I follow the full arc of wildlife recovery: from Magali Salinas of Amazon Shelter in Puerto Maldonado, who has spent twenty years rescuing and rehabilitating trafficked animals and releasing them into private forestry concessions when protected reserves can't be trusted, to Mario Haberfeld of Onçafari, whose team achieved the first ever successful rewilding of captive-raised jaguars in Brazil's Pantanal and has since expanded that work into the Amazon, to Brian Griffiths of One Planet and Georgetown University, whose research with the Maijuna Indigenous community in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon reveals why community-controlled wildlife management may be one of the most powerful—and most underutilized—conservation tools available.

Together, their work points toward an answer that is already underway, being built piece by piece in rescue centers, rewilding enclosures, and Indigenous territories across the Amazon basin. 

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Ghost Forests Mystery
00:45 Jaguars Return Home
01:48 Amazon Shelter Origins
03:50 Trafficking By Numbers
05:47 Rehab And Release
08:31 Monkey Comes Back
11:24 Why Jaguars Matter
12:49 Mario Conservation Vision
14:44 Ecotourism Jaguar Boom
15:35 Rewilding Breakthrough
17:51 Amazon Rewilding Expansion
21:02 Hunting As Conservation
23:22 Loggers And Starvation
25:25 Managed Harvest Science
28:01 Economics Of Saying No
29:46 Barriers And Big Picture
32:37 Hope And Next Steps

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CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

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I started this investigation with two questions: What does it actually take to rewild the Amazon, and who are the people dedicating their lives to protecting this globally significant biome? What I discovered traces back centuries—from ancient Indigenous civilizations that managed the forest for 11,000 years to the catastrophic diseases that killed 90% of the Amazon's population after European contact. This episode follows a repeating pattern: extraction booms that devastate ecosystems, followed by conservation promises that fail to stop the next wave of destruction. Through conversations with wildlife rescuers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders across five Amazon countries, I reveal why decades of protected areas and international agreements haven't slowed deforestation—and introduce the people working to break the cycle. With the Amazon at 17% deforestation and scientists warning that 20-25% loss could trigger irreversible collapse into savanna, this series is about the people refusing to let the world's largest rainforest reach its tipping point. 

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Illegal Mining Reality
01:05 Podcast Mission Setup
01:45 Amazon Touches Everything
02:47 COP30 Sparks Investigation
04:26 What Is The Amazon
05:18 Contact And Catastrophe
07:21 Why Conquest Failed
10:31 Rubber Boom Slavery
14:06 Fur Boom Mass Killing
16:29 Highway And Dictatorship
19:06 Chico Mendes Martyrdom
20:19 Paper Protections Rise
21:46 Narcos And Criminal Rule
23:44 Tipping Point And Hope
24:57 Next Episode Tease

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CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters. Thanks for listening!

What does it actually take to rewild the Amazon, and who are the people making it happen? Rewilding Amazonia is an eight-part investigative documentary podcast series that goes beyond the headlines to find the scientists, tribal leaders, land defenders, and community organizers across six countries who are doing the work regardless of the threats. The story is more complicated—and more extraordinary—than you might imagine. Episodes drop every Tuesday beginning April 28, 2026.

CREDITS
Executive Producer & Host: Brooke Mitchell
Associate Producer & Music Composer: Brad Parsons

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DISCLAIMER
The views expressed by guests are their own and don't necessarily represent those of Rewildology or its host. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, science evolves and details may change—always do your own research and consult primary sources where it matters.

When Lewis and Clark traveled the Missouri River in the early 1800s, they encountered bison herds stretching to the horizon, grizzly bears roaming the plains, and wildlife in numbers that seemed endless—but just 100 years later, it was nearly all gone. In this episode, Brooke sits down with Dr. Danny Kinka, Director of Rewilding at American Prairie, to explore the science behind the largest landscape rewilding project in the continental United States. American Prairie is working to restore 5,000 square miles of Montana's Great Plains by restoring keystone species like bison and creating the conditions for wildlife like beaver, prairie dogs, and eventually large carnivores to naturally return and thrive. They discuss why bison grazing is essential to grassland diversity, how prairie dogs are the unsung heroes of the plains, why American Prairie isn't ready for wolves yet but grizzly bears are a different story, the complexities of conservation in working ranch landscapes, community relations, and what you can do to support wildlife restoration wherever you live in the world. This is the science of rewilding, Montana's Great Plains comeback, and the tangible hope happening on the ground right now.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 The Return of Wildness in Central Montana
00:22 Introduction to Rewildology and today’s guest
01:51 Meet Dr. Daniel Kinka: From Psychology to Rewilding
03:17 The Historical Transformation of the Great Plains
07:27 The Ecological Impact of Wildlife Loss
12:12 American Prairie: Mission and Goals
16:53 Rewilding Strategies and Challenges
26:57 The Role of Large Carnivores in Rewilding
33:15 Current Status and Future of American Prairie
35:57 Functional Recovery of the Ecosystem
36:08 Rewilding Progress and Challenges
37:37 Wildlife Restoration and Management
38:07 Community and Economic Impact
40:40 Public Support and Skepticism
50:54 Global Significance of Rewilding
57:08 Personal Reflections and Hope
01:00:38 How to Support Rewilding Efforts
01:07:28 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

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