Paul Rosolie

You can see the sweat come off your skin and rain down and then drink it out of the river.

And you're part of the chemical physical reality there.

And so it's one of the last places that's untouched.

This changed everything because we realized that along with the butterflies and the monkeys and the jaguars and the trees and the ecosystem, there's also a human culture that will, in the next few years, cease to exist, that will be exterminated if we don't protect them.

And when you look back at what happened to indigenous cultures all over the world over the past few centuries that they've been wiped out,

we collectively now, because we know this, have a chance to undo all of the injustices that happened in the past by at least doing one right, by saying, these people want one thing, to just be left alone.

Imagine if we just protected the river, and then it's not that they're this thing that's vanishing from reality, but they get to continue living that way.

And then if they want to come out and contact us, great.

And if they want to continue living like this for the next 10,000 years, they can.

And that's what we're working with now.

It's become so much more important than just, you know, we're trying to protect the environment.

It's like, no, we're trying to protect, you know, things like Yellowstone and Yosemite and the sequoias that occur nowhere else on earth.

You protect the things that are unique and special, the crown jewels and

In both a biological way as well as an anthropocentric way, this has now become a river with global historic significance because this story is going to play out in the next 18 months.

Yeah.

And that's what makes it so beautiful is that this is one of those crown jewels.

This is one of those special places on earth where it's like a time capsule for nature, for human culture, for biodiversity, for climate services, for everything.

And then, you know, I think people get overwhelmed with where you say, okay, we have to save the environment.

We have to save the ocean.

This is one watershed.