This book is a memoir of my experiences as an ecologist working in tropical landscapes around the globe. Though much of my career was spent in developed countries and in the Arctic, it was while working and living in tropical regions that I encountered some of the most urgent environmental and social issues presently confronting the Earth and its inhabitants. In remote tropical locations, I gained fresh insights from indigenous peoples and was able to implement unconventional strategies to effect positive change. That’s what this book is about, and that is why its scope is limited to the tropics.

Each chapter is a narrative about a particular natural ecosystem and the people whose lives and culture are embedded in it. Thus, it is also about human dignity and human tragedies, savagery and compassion, resilience and hope. It is neither a feel-good piece of nature writing nor an anti-environmentalist diatribe. It is intended to be an entertaining and readable mixture of natural science, anthropology, travel, and personal growth. But first, a little background.

In my youth, I collected snakes, turtles, frogs, and salamanders; set up my first balanced aquarium; and devoured books about wildlife and wild places. In college, my love of nature guided me into courses on botany, zoology, geology, and other natural sciences. I majored in biology in graduate school and became an ecologist—a scientifically trained naturalist.

A few years after receiving my PhD, I ran into one of my former professors at a biology conference. We hadn’t seen each other since my graduation, and he asked me what I was doing now. When I told him I was working as an ecologist at an environmental services firm in Pittsburgh, his response was immediate.

“So you went for the money, eh!”

My jaw dropped, then closed. I turned my back on him and walked away. We never spoke again. My impulsive response now seems unduly harsh, but I was not prepared for this snap judgment of my motives by my former mentor and colleague. It hurt. Deeply.

Our meeting came at a time of growing awareness of human impacts on air, water, forests, and wildlife that, in turn, spawned laws requiring environmental protection. In response, a new profession—applied ecology—had quickly arisen. I saw this as a positive development, but many of my associates, including my former professor, viewed this development with suspicion. They understood the role of biologists in academia and in government agencies tasked with managing natural resources, but they feared that environmental practitioners hired as consultants by industries and governments would abandon scientific ethics and become primarily concerned with making money—that they would become mercenaries.

I, however, was thrilled that there was now a profession that provided me with opportunities to apply my ecological training to the preservation and restoration of healthy ecosystems. I saw my role as no more mercenary than that of medical doctors applying science to maintain human health and heal the sick. Louis Pasteur understood this when he said that there are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

In a career spanning four decades, I have been variously tasked with assessing ecological impacts of river basin development projects in East and West Africa, evaluating the effects of oil and gas development on biodiversity in the Amazon, leading an ecological assessment of the expansion of the Panama Canal, performing ecological assessments of mining in Papua New Guinea and in the Congo River Basin, and developing mitigation projects for impacts of natural resource development around the world. The culmination of my overseas work was managing a multinational team to develop a plan to establish a protected area—a first step to creating a new national park—at Subic Bay, Philippines.

Because most projects required working closely with people of other cultures in remote circumstances, I operated well outside of the “travel bubble” created for casual visitors on packaged tours. I treasured opportunities to meet and work with indigenous people, living and laboring with them to assess and protect the ecosystems on which their lives depended. They taught me to see the world from the perspective of humans embedded in, and largely dependent on, their local environment. Some called themselves “the real people” and that is how I came to view them. I was often humbled by what I learned from illiterate (but not ignorant) people with whom I had the privilege of working. Though I only glimpsed their world, we routinely formed bonds of friendship and mutual respect that transcended language and myriad other cultural differences.

Events described in these chapters were often humorous, mostly enjoyable, and invariably enlightening. In the course of my work, I faced poisonous snakes in Africa and the Philippines, spent a night hunting for crocodiles with a poacher in West Africa, evaded the charge of an irate elephant in East Africa, interviewed pygmy hunters in the Congo Basin about the vanishing wildlife in their forest, wandered through the Amazon rain forest with Quichua and Machiguenga guides while assessing human impacts on rain forest biodiversity, and more.

Edward Abbey once wrote that in writing, fidelity to facts leads eventually to the poetry of truth. I agree. A faithful recounting of actual events best illustrates the ambiguity of situations and issues generally portrayed by the media as distorted (and frequently biased) oversimplifications of complex reality. I have therefore endeavored to minimize preachy pontifications and to present a variety of perspectives, based on my personal experience with events taking place in far-flung locations. Acknowledging the possibility of memory drift, I’ve relied heavily on the field journal that I have kept for more than half a century.

My primary motivation for writing this book was to provide context for transformations now taking place in the natural world. I did this from the unique perspective of someone who has worked mostly for corporations and governments, and with individuals ranging from career bureaucrats to elders of indigenous societies. I wanted to share what I learned because there is an urgent need to understand these changes, their causes, and the many intentional and unintended consequences of human developments in natural ecosystems. Several decades of personal experience have shown me that politicians, corporations, and the mainstream news media have done a generally poor job of addressing that need.

A secondary motivation was to encourage academic and research scientists to devote increased efforts to environmental problem-solving. The planet is in crisis; the need is urgent. Perhaps more than any other profession, those of us who call ourselves ecologists have a moral responsibility to apply what we know to sustain the structure, function, and other essential characteristics of the natural systems on which all life depends.