Welcome to the Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien podcast, where we g behind the scenes of the Arizona PBS documentary series Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien.

We'll discuss the challenges the discoveries, and the things you might not get from watching the television series alone.

I'm your host, Elise Hu, and joining me on this podcast is the veteran science journalist himself, Miles O'Brien.

On this episode we're talking about rewilding, not just protecting animal species that are left, but restoring what was lost.

Miles, thanks for joining me.

Good to be with you, Elise.

Let's start with the problem.

According to the center for Biological Diversity, we're in the midst of the Earth's sixth mass extinction crisis.

A Harvard biologist estimates that 30,000 species a year are being driven to extinction.

That's three species per hour.

Did I get that right?

It sounds right.

Oh my God.

That's right.

That's a lot of math in public for me, though, so I'm going to let that go.

All right.

So.

So I'm a history major.

Elise, give me a break.

That's a stunning rate.

And this episode is about local extinction or extirpation, meaning that the species isn't extinct worldwide, but it's no longer found in a specific area anymore.

In the case of this episod in particular, it's the Jaguars of the Iberá Wetlands in northern Argentina.

Tell us a little bit about these animals, Miles.

Well, it' hard to overstate their beauty, Elise and I had the good fortune to be in close proximity to them.

When I visited the Iber Wetlands with the folks who were involved in reintroducing them, and there was a moment where one of them is tranquilized to be prepared to be transited, and I actually got to lay my hand on this animal.

And I got to tell you, it was solid muscle and just so beautiful.

And it's important to remember that, you know, they have their own intrinsic beauty, of course, but the mor you understand about ecosystems, the more you realize the value of top predators.

There's this thing called a trophic cascade, which means when the top predators are up at the top.

And this goes for the gray wolve around Yellowstone, for example.

Everything kind of falls in line beneath it, and the whole system kind of snaps into place.

And without them, things change in ways that lead to all kinds of unintended consequences.

So it's beautiful on its own right and jaguars are worth saving just because they're amazing creatures, and we should.

But they also make an ecosystem really hum.

Let's take a look at the effort to save them with a clip from Tompkins Conservation, which you visited.

The story begin right here at a jaguar breeding facility, the first of its kind in the world.

These beautiful cat are the most prominent success story of the organization Kris Tompkins helped put on the map, Rewilding Argentina.

Okay, we decided that if we wanted to bring jaguars back here, we were going to have t breed them because we couldn't get any jaguars to start the program with.

And we made it like the Jaguar Fort Knox.

There are nine large enclosures with trees, shelter and pools.

They filled the pens with animals from zoos and rescue centers and some from the wild that could not be returned including one with three legs.

All of this insured genetic diversity.

So this is kind of the crown jewel.

What do you think it proves?

It proves that you can very likely bring a species back.

Even a top predator.

Miles, Kris Tompkins is now very well known for her work around the world.

But for those who are getting to meet her for the first time tell us a little bit about her.

A remarkable woman.

She grew up in Ventura County, California, was, you know, a surfer girl like so many o her friends and contemporaries would be in that part of the world, stumbled into meeting a rock climbing enthusiast who was starting up a business in his garage.

His name is Yvon Chouinard, and ultimately the company that he started, which she ended up becoming the CEO of was Patagonia.

And so she had great success early on in the business world in her 20s, really was a superstar as a CEO of this company, which we all know now, to be very successful and also environmentally attuned.

And through the course of thi process of running that company, she met one of Yvon's old rock climbing buddies, Doug Tompkins, who happened to have been the CEO of North Face and later Esprit.

Esprit, I should say.

And he had kind of cashed out, disillusioned with capitalism and the retail desires that he helped create, and was living off the grid in Chile, and he was flying around in a bush plane trying to find tracts of land to buy and preserve.

They met and fell in love, and the rest is history.

There's something on the order of 16 million acres that the two of them, with their team, have either bought outright or preserved and given bac to countries as national parks.

It's an amazing conservation story.

And now the organization has 29 species rewilding projects, from what we understand, and Tompkins Conservation, as well as Rewilding Argentina and the Jaguar Rivers Initiative, are all these groups that sort of work together.

How do they collaborate?

Well, it's a lot of hard work on the ground and the collaboration is involve a lot of perspiration, really.

This is really hard, expensive work.

And it's kind of an audacious idea to look at a 2 million acre landscape and say, oh, that's pretty, but wouldn't it be nicer if we had all the missing animals here?

And so in order to do that, they had to have close collaborations with other NGOs, with entities that had animals that were captive or in zoos and of course, with the governments themselves.

And you can imagine, Elise, with this couple coming down from North America, very wealthy couple, and they're buying up all kinds of land and saying to everyone, we're going to give this all back to you, the people.

There was quite a bit of skepticism.

There were all kinds of suspicion there.

Many people thought that they were working for the CIA, that they were trying to steal water, that they were going to put nuclear waste there.

On and on it went.

No one believed that that North Americans would come in and do such a thing.

So the collaboration was really hard on the ground and also just winning hearts and minds over the years in these countries where there's natural suspicion frankly, of the United States.

And let me just take a step back and ask, what were the factors that led the jaguars to go extinct in this par of Argentina in the first place?

It's a combination of fear on the part of, you know, cattlemen, you know, ranchers, because i the system isn't working well, a cow was a good thin to predate if you're a Jaguar.

So that's number one.

They also had, you know, value for their pelts, frankly, you know, and that's a bygone era.

But in that era they were they were shot with reckless abandon until they were, you know, extirpated as the term meaning locall extinct in Iberá and elsewhere in northern Argentin and needed to be reintroduced if they were going to be back there because there was no natural wild population left.

And in order to be introduced, Kris Tompkins studied the work of rewilding efforts in other parts of the world, South Africa in particular.

Can you tell us a bit about that work?

Well, the South Africans have been leaders for years and years because I think they were the firs to realize that alive, exotic, nearly extinct animals actually have value intrinsic in them in the way of tourism and people paying to go on safaris.

And so they created a whole system of, you know, taking captive animals, raising cubs or pups or whatever offspring that were not accustomed to human beings and could be reintroduced into the wild.

And there's a whole process there, because you don't want the offspring to become too familiar with humans.

That's a bad thing, because they will seek out food that way and they will end up in harm's way.

And so all those techniques were applied to the jaguars in this particular, they began with this location in Iberá where they built nine large enclosures to bring in captive animals, have them start breeding.

And when the breeding occurred, they were scrupulous to make sure human contact with those cubs was limited to nothing.

And and believe it or not, captive moms and dads will teach their cubs how to hunt even though they have been, you know served up food all their lives.

There is a genetic component to this, which I found fascinating.

So, Miles, this series obviously focuses on the most urgent challenges of our time.

I'm curious, when you were narrowing down this particular topic, what came to your mind first, the problem of local extinction or the solution of rewilding?

I was thinking about extinction as a big problem.

I had read a great book by Elizabeth Kolbert on this called The Sixth Extinction, which I recommend anyone because it really lays out the case in a way you can't really refute it, that we are living in this time, and I think intuitively know with habitat loss and everything humans do, that we are reducing wild populations all over the planet.

And, you know, if you think about it for a little while, at least, reintroducing species and saving species from extinction in some ways is a more pressing problem than climate, because in the case of climate, most everything we can do, we can roll back and get it back.

But once a species goes extinct, that's forever.

And you know, there are projects underway as we, as you read, to bring back things lik the wooly mammoth and so forth, which are extinct, bu bootstrapping on elephant genes and so forth.

But there's no real bringing back of species like that.

So extinction has a finalit that even climate doesn't bring.

And so I felt like it wa an important problem to address.

And it's, you know, when you think about it, what are the solutions.

Well, it's like climate.

There's it's such a big problem.

But in this case, in one place, they have happened upon something that will prove you can bring things back.

Does that prove we can solve this extinction crisis?

That's a much bigger question, I think.

Miles, are there other endangered species that you have come acros in reporting for this episode, or any anything left on the cutting room floor that is also promising when it comes to rewilding?

Well, mostly this piece was focused on the efforts of Rewilding Argentina.

And, you know there were several other species which they focused on because they want to create.

You know, it's kind of a, you know, a, you know, a jigsaw puzzle.

And there are a bunch of pieces missing and putting all those pieces in.

You don't just plop the jaguar in.

If the jaguar doesn't have anything to eat, then you do have a problem with the cattle ranchers.

And so the they made sure they brought back pampas deer, which are one of the prey items for jaguar, which had also been locally diminished or extirpated.

They also looked at the waterways and realized that the top predator there were these giant river otters, which were hunted to loca extinction because it was fun to shoot them, which is just like, you know hard for me to imagine, but they they would shoot them in the water.

And the reason they got sick sport out of i is that the family would come to try to com to the aid of the injured otter, and then they pluck, pluck the rest of them off.

And so they were they were also extirpated.

So each of these specie has its own unique challenges.

They had to teach macaws how to fly again, because the captive macaws, which they had, which had clipped wings, didn't have the endurance to be in the wild, to to go and fly the distances that were required to, to survive.

So they were literally they had a training camp wher they taught macaws how to fly.

So, you know, it goes on and on that kind of work, clearly it's not it's not really very scalable, is it?

When you think about that, it's nice to know that if human beings put some effort into this, there are places where we can do this, whether that's a solution to the overall problem.

I think that's probably not a realistic thought, but at the very least, it makes us think about what we're doing and what we can do if we try.

And I think what Tompkins Conservation is showing is what is possible, you know, with a lot o determination and collaboration with local NGOs.

It is tricky, though, because one of the things, you know, you have a predator, which causes great concern and I don't want to spoil the peace, but we get into the issue of what happens when there's poaching in the midst of this.

And one of the thing that Tompkins and Rewilding has focused on is trying to build economies around ecotourism.

People who would be interested in coming and seeing this wildlife and taking a picture rather than firing a shot, and that is a key part of it.

In their view.

If you don't get the human beings on board in that way, it will never succeed.

So there are still poacher in the area that are endangering the jaguar even as they're being rewilded is what you're saying.

Sad but true.

And it you know, in this case they have jaguars out in the wild with collars on them, you kno with GPS tracking and so forth.

And so they they can document how they are doing.

And so what they're able to do is provide evidence to something that probably has been occurring forever.

It's just quietly don and no one ever knows about it.

So the poaching still persists.

But according to rewilding, according to Kris Tompkins, there's a bit of a sea change that is occurring as people are becoming very proud of these parks, the tourism they create, the economic benefits are quite clear, and in this day and age, it might make more sense to shoot pictures than than shoot bullets, especially if some of these jaguars become beloved righ by the Argentinian population.

I don't want to give too much away, but the Jaguar that you talked about at the top, that you got to actually pet and touch, that was pure muscle.

It seems like so many in th general population in the public got to know who she is.

Yeah, Ac became kind of a poster child.

She was one of the first to be moved from Iberá to another wetland called El Impenetrable, which is what a great name, right?

You could get a sense of what that's like.

And she was released and things didn't go as well as hoped, we'll say.

And her story actually became a rallying cry for the effort to reduce poaching.

So there is, you know, there's a cultural and generational shift here, there's no question.

But there are also cattle ranchers out there who are not on board with this idea.

And so, from the perspectiv of rewilding and from Tompkins international perspective, it' very important to do their best to keep the humans on board with the program, maintain dialogs with neighboring cattle ranchers, because ultimately as they did around Yellowstone, these top predators will leave the boundary of these parks.

They don't they don't follow the lines.

And when that happens, there's potential trouble.

Any challenges, Miles, that you and your team faced in telling the story?

The challenge of getting to Iberáis is on its own right is it's remote.

And and the to get from Iberá to lEl Impenet even further, it was definitely a airplanes and four wheel drive an and long journey kind of event.

But once you're in those places it's certainly well worth the challenge.

The other challenge was keeping up with, you know, a dynamic story.

Over the course of tim and the turn of events for Acaí happened after we were there, and so we had to stay on top of that and do some additional shooting with Kris to to tell that stor in the way it needed to be told.

And ultimately, you know, Kris was able to put a spin of optimism on somethin that has a bit of tragedy in it.

For our last question, Miles, you alluded to this already, but are there any practical action items for our viewers and listeners, and who could they go to if they want to support this work?

Well, you know, it's not a bad idea to think about funding NGOs like this that are doing this work.

You know, Kris Tompkins and her late husband, Doug, put in a substantial amount of their own money, but they it's not a bottomless pit, and it requires foundation support and support from individuals who are interested.

And so it's worth thinking about that when you're thinking abou places and people to donate to.

If you care about these issues.

There are also NGO that are trying to reintroduce jaguars in the American Southwest.

And again, there is all kinds of controversy there.

It becomes an issue in many respects.

It gets into the issue of th border wall, among other things.

So stay attuned to these issues.

If this is something you feel is important.

As I always say to people the most important thing to do is make this part of your mindset as you go into the voting booth, because people you elect will ultimately make decisions on whether things like this can happen, perhaps in the United States as well.

Well thank you so much for taking us to that part of the world and introducing these beautiful animals up close, Miles.

I'm sure it was a wild adventure and a good time.

So thank you so much.

And that wraps up this episode.

We'll talk to you next time.

Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien as a co-productio of Mobias Media and Arizona PBS.

You can watch the show at azpbs.org/resolvetosolve this podcast is a productio of Central Sound at Arizona PBS.

Our video editors are Matthew Anderson and Macie Logan.

We get audio support from Joe Miller and Daniel Bevc.

Our producer is Anna Williams.

Executive producers Alex Kosiorek, Carol Yancho, Sco Woelfel, and Miles O'Brien.

I'm your host, Elise.

Hu.

Thanks for joining us.