Living With The Feeling Of Guilt

[suchandra]

Often we find people speaking out on that they feel bad of what has been done to the Native Americans, Aboriginal people of Australia or the original inhabitants of South America. New York's global Esprit founder Doug Tompkins took the time to find out the details - what actually happens nowadays in a nation like Chile? What he found out was shocking - Chileans are unteachable when it comes to preserve nature's gift of marine wildlife and when nothing happens, actually the complete South American Rainforest would be destroyed within the next 50 years. Doug Tompkins did the only right thing - to open in Chile the world's biggest natural preserve and actually buy 75% of the land of Chile. This is mainly also being taught in the Vedas, there're civilized and uncivilized human beings. Uncivilized human beings cannot be given unchecked freedom like detected recently in South America's Amazonas River: Some 20 years earlier there were huge populations of pink River Dolphins, now scientists found out that native fishermen are actually turning these dolphins into a severely endangered species.

 

Looking for big pink: South America's river dolphins are disappearing, but Vera da Silva is out to change that - Brazilian biologist

 

INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE

 

South America's river dolphins are disappearing, but Vera da Silva is out to change that.

At about 9 a.m. in the heart of the Amazon, Brazilian biologist Vera M. F. da Silva spots the animals she's come in search of: pink river dolphins, or botos. "Look," she says, standing up in her small boat to get a better view, "there's a big male, XX. He's always here. And there's a mother and calf." On all sides of our boat dolphins are surfacing, their pink heads, long beaks and dorsal fins flashing above the lagoon's dark waters. Like whales, they eject a vaporous spray as they breathe, and they fill the air with their snorting puffs.

 

For da Silva, who heads the aquatic mammals laboratory at the Institute Nacional de Pesquias da Amazonia in Manaus, it's like being greeted by old friends. For four years she's studied this population of botos, spending two weeks of every month here in the Mamiraua Wildlife Reserve on the Japura River. "They always come to see me," she says with obvious pleasure. "I think by now they know this boat. So they come to look at us. You know: What are those humans up to?'"

Dressed simply in shorts and a long-sleeved blue shirt, da Silva sits with notebook in hand, her dark brown eyes intently scanning the lagoon for a hint of a dorsal fin. When she or her assistant, Antonio, spot one, they watch closely for natural markings or a research brand, such as the double Xs on the big male's fin. The petite, 44-year-old researcher then notes where they are, and what other animals (if any) the dolphins are traveling with.

 

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