Seeing the Invisible: Tracking Destruction, Measuring Recovery

About this episode

This episode explores innovative methods of monitoring environmental destruction and recovery in the Amazon rainforest.

The Amazon is one of the most remote places on Earth—and one of the most watched. In this episode of Rewilding Amazonia, I follow the people who have built new eyes to see what's happening inside a forest too vast, dangerous, and politically complicated for traditional monitoring to reach. Brian Hettler, Director of Mapping at the Amazon Conservation Team, has spent fourteen years using high-resolution satellite imagery to track illegal mining barges pushing into protected indigenous territories on the Colombian-Brazilian border, and to help communities legally prove their presence on lands they risk losing not through violence, but through paperwork. Cristina Vollmer Burelli of SOSOrinoco built an anonymous open-source intelligence network of journalists, scientists, and indigenous witnesses to document over 1,000 hectares of illegal gold mines inside Venezuela's Canaima National Park—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—when physical access was impossible and speaking out could get you killed. And Brazilian entomologist Leo Lanna of Projeto Mantis has spent a decade discovering that praying mantis community diversity is one of the most accurate indicators of Amazon forest health…

People in this episode

Host: Brooke Mitchell

Guests: Brian Hettler, Cristina Vollmer Burelli, Leo Lanna

Topics covered

• Amazon conservation
• illegal mining
• satellite imagery
• indigenous rights
• biodiversity
• forest health

Keywords

• Amazon
• illegal mining
• satellite imagery
• biodiversity
• forest health
• indigenous territories
• reforestation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amazon Conservation Team, SOSOrinoco, Projeto Mantis

Places: Amazon, Colombian-Brazilian border, Venezuela, Canaima National Park, UNESCO World Heritage Site

More episodes of Rewildology

• The Long Game: Forging the Amazon's Next Chapter · June 9, 2026 · 33 min
• The New Economy: Making the Amazon Forest Worth More Standing · June 2, 2026 · 37 min
• Whose Forest? The Defenders of the Amazon · May 26, 2026 · 42 min
• Rivers in the Sky: The Amazon's Tipping Point, Sentinel Dolphins & the Geothermal Deep · May 19, 2026 · 34 min
• The Severed Lifeline: Rebuilding a Fragmented Amazon · May 5, 2026 · 33 min
• The Ghost Forest: Bringing Wildlife Back from the Brink · April 28, 2026 · 34 min