Last Chance to See

by Mark Carwardine

  Next morning we called Captain Wilson on the satellite phone, reported calm conditions, and settled down to wait for the flight back to Manaus.

  The thought of going home (or, at least, returning to the familiarity and relative comfort of the Tropical Hotel, in Manaus) made Stephen bound around the deck with renewed energy and enthusiasm. I’ve no doubt he had enjoyed our little escapade enormously, but I think four consecutive wi-fi-free nights in the jungle was just about enough.

  I have a maddeningly low boredom threshold and simply cannot leave the house without something to keep me occupied, just in case my train is delayed, I get caught in a traffic jam or the person I’m meeting happens to be late. My worst nightmare would be to get kidnapped and be forced to cope with days, weeks or (heaven forbid) months of captivity without a notepad and pen, a book, a magazine, a solar-powered laptop … anything to while away the time.

  How anyone can embark on a 12-hour long-haul flight without a bulging bag of stuff to keep them busy for at least 14 hours (allowing for delays) I’ll never know. The mere thought of doing nothing but stare out of the window makes me feel downright fidgety.

  Except in the Amazon, of course, where there are plenty of reasons to stare out of the window.

  The scale of the jungle beggars belief. Describing it as big is like describing Bill Gates as fairly well off. ‘Big’ doesn’t even register on the scale. New York is big. Wembley Stadium is big. The Amazon is absolutely bloody ginormous. As we climbed above Arauazinho not-quite-a-village, and banked towards Manaus, the forest stretched out below us, unbroken except for the occasional mighty river or creek, as far as I could see in every direction.

  It made me want to say something. My brain couldn’t possibly grapple with this staggeringly, achingly beautiful expanse of verdant green. It was exploding with superlatives that wanted to get out.

  I caught Stephen’s eye. He’d stopped learning Portuguese for a moment and, like me, was staring in disbelief out of the window.

  ‘Oh my God!’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he nodded, knowingly.

  We both felt better.

  Some of the trees were considerably taller than others. This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but jungles have a small number of very tall trees whose role in life is to tower majestically above the main canopy. They form what is known in the trade as the ‘emergent layer’ and they might as well be in the Sea of Tranquillity, they are so difficult to reach and so death-defyingly hard to study. As high as 70 metres (235 feet) above the ground, these emergents give a whole new meaning to the term ‘out on a limb’.

  The scale of the Amazon beggars belief. Describing it as big is like describing Bill Gates as fairly well off.

  Immediately below them is the thick leafy realm of the forest canopy. This is the heart of the rainforest – home to the vast majority of the Amazon’s large trees and, indeed, most of its animal and plant species. It forms a more or less continuous cover of foliage some 40 metres (130 feet) above the ground, and blocks out pretty much all the sunlight. To be precise, it blocks out 98 per cent of the sunlight (living in the gloom underneath must be like living under a particularly expansive, dark-green golfing umbrella).

  The science of navigating and studying the jungle canopy is called ‘dendronautics’. If you fancy a career change, with more day-to-day risks than coal mining, deep-sea diving or flying with the Red Arrows, this is the job for you. It’s perfect for dinner-party conversation because, joy of joys, you would be allowed to call yourself a dendronaut.

  As a dendronaut, you will be able to fire ropes into the jungle trees with a crossbow, erect elaborate cranes with rotating jibs, build precarious walkways, climb to dizzying heights using nothing but ropes and pulleys, and even fly above the forest canopy in a wonderful assortment of motorised hot-air balloons, tethered helium balloons and airships straight out of a science-fiction movie. You’ll also get to live in a real-life vertigo-inducing tree house.

  The customary storm of the day about to drop its customary load.

  Best of all, since dendronautics is still in its infancy and the jungle canopy is one of the last largely unexplored frontiers on earth, there’s a very good chance that you will come across something entirely new to science. The forest above a forest is believed to harbour literally millions of species, from lianas and bromeliads to frogs and monkeys, which are just waiting to be discovered.

  Stephen was still staring out of the window. Every so often he’d shout ‘macaw’ or ‘eagle’ or ‘oooph!’ (there was a lot of turbulence with black rain clouds gathering for the next torrential downpour) to anyone who would listen.

  I think we saw more wildlife from the plane, flying over the jungle canopy, than in four days of exploring from the Cassiquiari.

  The striking thing about wildlife-watching in the Amazon is that you don’t get to do it very often. Far from being overwhelmed by the forest’s world-renowned biodiversity – it was once described as ‘the most alive place on earth’ – much of the time we were decidedly underwhelmed by the apparent absence of anything remotely resembling an animal.

  The reason is simple: ingenuity. Competition for food is so intense that rainforest animals live in constant fear for their lives. They have to be clever and resourceful to avoid being eaten (or, at least, to avoid being reduced to gibbering nervous wrecks and dying from stress-induced heart attacks). Experts at concealment and camouflage, they simply can’t afford to be seen.

  So it was our own fault, really, that we didn’t see very much. Unlike the jungle’s super-predators, with their finely tuned senses, our pretty useless urban eyes, ears and noses were virtually incapable of spotting anything – unless it actually landed on us and bit really hard.

  What we did occasionally see were the animals that deliberately make themselves conspicuous, or simply don’t care whether they are seen or not. These showy jungle inhabitants tend to be either fast-moving, like birds, or inedible and dangerous, like poison-arrow frogs.

  Halfway into the journey, it dawned on me that we were probably flying over vast areas of forest that no one had ever walked through, let alone explored or studied.

  When Europeans first arrived in the early 16th century, the Amazon had an indigenous population of about six million people living in some 2,000 nations and tribes. Nobody can agree on exactly how many have survived the onslaught of western civilisation, but fewer than 700,000 is the most widely accepted figure.

  There are many reasons for the disappearance of so many ‘noble savages’ (as early Europeans called them), but disease is perhaps the most significant. The explorers and early settlers unknowingly brought smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, influenza and a host of other deadly illnesses with them. The Indians had no immunity and were utterly helpless. Tens of thousands perished. Ironically, many never even came into direct contact with the outside world – entire tribes were annihilated by germs that travelled faster than their European carriers.

  Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Jesuit missionaries dedicated to spreading Catholicism terrified the hapless Indians by warning that this wave of sickness and death was God’s punishment for their lack of faith.

  The number of indigenous people living in the Amazon seems to have increased slightly in recent years, perhaps because they have acquired a certain level of resistance to at least some of those diseases. Against the odds, there are still more than 200 indigenous groups in the region, talking 170 different languages and dialects, and at least 50 of them rarely or never have contact with the rest of the world.

  But the depressing reality nowadays is that there’s more chance of stumbling upon mechanical diggers and bulldozers in the Amazon than of meeting indigenous people.

  Since 1970, almost one-fifth of the entire Amazon rainforest has been destroyed. That’s equivalent to an area the size of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Germany and Denmark combined.

  You couldn’t dream up a bigger list of more da
maging activities if you tried: cattle ranching, land clearance for soya-bean plantations, small-scale subsistence agriculture, logging, and a mixed bag of commercial agriculture, mining, urbanisation and dam construction are responsible for most of the damage. Construction of the 5,000-kilometre (3,125-mile) Trans-Amazonian Highway (which bisects Amazonia and opens up vast areas of land to settlement and development) certainly hasn’t helped. Even misguided government policies, and outrageously inappropriate World Bank projects, have contributed to the environmental havoc.

  So why aren’t we all shocked and appalled and waving our arms about in despair?

  I think it’s because we tire of hearing about rainforest destruction. I remember writing articles predicting doom and gloom in the Amazon twenty years ago and I quoted similarly horrendous figures – ‘an area the size of Belgium lost every year’ springs to mind. Two decades of the same old revelations make them less shocking than they used to be. Our senses are dulled as the relentless stories of devastation become little more than background noise.

  What’s really frightening is that nothing much seems to have changed since deforestation first hit the headlines. Actually, that’s not true – it’s getting worse.

  Have all those years of campaigning, fund-raising, pleading, cajoling and cautioning by so many individuals and conservation groups made the slightest difference?

  I suppose the positive response would be to say that it must, surely, have slowed things down. But clearly it hasn’t slowed things down anywhere near enough.

  We couldn’t leave Brazil without seeing a manatee (or at least a manatee biologist), and the best place to do that happened to be a short taxi ride from the hotel. Right in the centre of Manaus.

  I remembered meeting a charming and delightful manatee biologist (how can someone who devotes their entire working life to studying manatees be anything but charming and delightful?) at the National Institute for Amazon Research. In fact, Douglas Adams and I had spent a couple of days with her, along with several orphaned manatees in her care, when we were in Manaus in the late 1980s.

  Almost one-fifth of the entire Amazon rainforest has been destroyed since 1970.

  Vera da Silva was still at the Institute (known locally as the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonas – or INPA) and was as charming and delightful as I remembered her. She was one of a handful of people responsible for discovering most of what we know about Amazonian manatees (which, as it happens, isn’t very much – but that’s not their fault).

  We agreed wholeheartedly that neither of us had changed one little bit in twenty years and walked towards a large concrete tank, complete with two enormous windows and four adult Amazonian manatees.

  They were farting and sleeping. As we approached, one of them started walking along the bottom of the tank – literally walking, using its long, stubby front flippers to pull itself along in a bouncy, slow-motion way, like an astronaut walking on the moon. We couldn’t believe our luck: an active manatee.

  Stephen stood and watched it for a few moments.

  ‘Oh my, I think I’m in love,’ he said, utterly spellbound. ‘They’ve got that slow grace that big animals, such as elephants, seem to have.’

  We stood and watched the manatees farting and pretending to be weightless, plump and graceful at the same time, and marvelled at their sheer loveableness.

  You’re probably wondering why we were so taken with these preposterous animals, and I can understand your scepticism. The problem, I think, is that Amazonian manatees don’t photograph particularly well (that’s not a criticism – I don’t photograph well, either, as my passport photograph spectacularly testifies). Look at a picture of a manatee in a book and you get the impression of an animal that only its mother, or a zoologist, could possibly find attractive.

  An Amazonian manatee gasping for breath after hearing that Mark is about to get in its tank, and another one being filmed by cameraman Will Edwards.

  But we were completely captivated. They looked so gentle, so harmless, so innocent … so sweet. I can’t believe I just said that. I never say an animal is ‘sweet’. It’s so unprofessional. In my defence, though, it was actually Stephen who said it first – more of a ‘sooooo sweeeeeeet’. And, besides, he’s absolutely right.

  We’d been filming for over an hour, trying to think of other, more colourful and imaginative words to describe our new-found friends, and were failing miserably. I think it was the heat. We were trying to do it in the relentless glare of the tropical sun.

  The day we visited the Institute was staggeringly hot and humid. Having said that, describing any particular day in Manaus as staggeringly hot and humid is a little like describing one particular sloth as exceptionally upside down. It’s rarely anything else.

  Give me sub-zero temperatures, biting winds and icicles hanging off the end of my nose any day. I find high humidity a source of unadulterated misery. For most of the trip, every morning arrived complete with a full body sweat that stayed with me for the rest of the day. After a while, I had the permanent look of a red-faced Japanese macaque in a hot spring and felt hugely embarrassed about it from the moment we set foot in Brazil to the moment we left.

  A couple of times I noticed super-cool Vera giving me a strange look as streams of perspiration trickled down my neck, off my chin, across my forehead and into my eyes like a series of dripping taps. She must have thought I’d been sweating buckets nonstop in the twenty years since we’d first met.

  But I had a crafty plan to cool off and have a really close encounter with a manatee at the same time. I was also very keen to take some underwater shots – few people have had the chance to photograph these secretive creatures. I asked Vera if I could get in the tank. She hesitated for a moment, glanced at the colossal pile of diving kit I happened to have with me, just in case, and said ‘yes’.

  I spent two glorious hours under water, with the four manatees and about four tonnes of manatee poo. I think they were excited. In fact, by the time I was ready to get out, there was so much excitement in the water I could barely see the manatees themselves.

  They were a little nervous at first (who can blame them?) but got increasingly confident and inquisitive and, by the end of my dive, were out-and-out friendly. They peered into my mask, gently touched me with their tails and even nuzzled me with their rubbery snouts. Every time I tried to photograph one, another would inevitably be watching closely from the sidelines. If they had cameras, I swear they would have been taking pictures too.

  Feeding a baby manatee with bottled milk – some people get all the best jobs.

  Gently, I ran my hand over the largest manatee’s back. He didn’t seem to mind. It was surprisingly bristly. At first glance Amazonian manatees look bald, but their bodies are sparsely covered in short, wiry hairs (about one per square centimetre: eight per square inch) that are connected to a rich network of nerves. These are believed to give them a kind of sixth sense – by detecting slight pressure changes underwater – that may explain how the animals are able to navigate in their murky riverine home without bumping into things.

  Nothing would have compared to encountering an Amazonian manatee in its natural habitat, of course, but a couple of hours in INPA’s tank was the next best thing.

  I doubt if I will ever get another chance. As manatee numbers diminish, it will get increasingly difficult to see them wild and free. Rainforest destruction, dam building and accidental drowning in commercial fishing nets have all been taking their toll. Hunting, too, has long been a major threat. More than 200,000 were killed during the period 1935–54, for their meat, oil and hides, and although hunting at commercial levels has largely stopped, many thousands have been killed in the years since.

  I couldn’t stop thinking, while making friends with ‘my’ four manatees, how their placid temperament (like that of the iconic dodo) made them all too easy to drive towards extinction.

  It’s impossible to say how many are left. Maybe 10,000; maybe more, maybe fewer. But let me
put it this way. In the 1980s, there were reports of as many as 1,000 manatees huddled together in a single river or lake. Nowadays, a gathering of half a dozen is considered quite a lot.

  I would have stayed in the tank for longer, but Vera was keen to show us her babies. Hidden away in a quiet corner of the Institute were three more tanks. These were much smaller than the main one – more like the kind of paddling pools children in Kensington or Chelsea might play in – and provided a temporary home for half a dozen orphaned manatees.

  As well as studying manatees, the staff at INPA provide round-the-clock care and attention for injured adults and orphaned calves. More and more youngsters had been arriving at this makeshift rehabilitation centre in recent years, and no one knew why. Perhaps it indicated a growing population or a greater awareness among the local people? More likely, it was an alarming sign that more adults were being killed.

  Vera pointed out some rope marks on the orphans’ tails. Young calves are curious and naïve and relatively easy to catch. Hunters tie ropes around their tails, tether them to lakeside trees, and wait while the frightened animals call out in distress. As sure as manatees are endangered, their mothers come to their rescue – and almost certain death.

  Vera asked if we’d like to feed one, with a bottle of exceptionally rich milk. Stephen was desperate to have a go, and she showed him how. He held the tiniest calf firmly under its chin, with its head just above the surface so it could breathe, and tenderly pushed a baby’s bottle between its enormous, prehensile lips.

  With a flipper resting on the great man’s arm and a line of milk dribbling down one cheek, the minuscule manatee closed its eyes and sucked and slurped really loudly. If Stephen were a manatee his eyes would have been closed, too, and I’m sure he’d have been dribbling down one cheek. The two mammals – one already endangered and the other about to be (as you will soon discover) – were in seventh heaven.