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