Whose Forest? The Defenders of the Amazon

About this episode

This episode explores the personal sacrifices of five individuals dedicated to defending the Amazon rainforest.

What does it cost to defend the Amazon? Not in dollars or hectares—but years spent in exile, family members taken in the night, court rulings that win on paper and go unenforced for nearly two decades. This episode of Rewilding Amazonia follows five people who have dedicated their lives to defending the Amazon. Daniel Aristizábal, PIACI Process Director at the Amazon Conservation Team, works to protect indigenous communities that have chosen isolation from the outside world—and explains how they are now sitting on top of some of the most coveted mineral deposits on the continent. Cristina Vollmer Burelli, founder of SOSOrinoco, documents Venezuela's state-sponsored illegal mining from exile—exposing how a government became the architect of its own people's destruction. Hugo Jabini, Goldman Prize-winning Saamaka-Maroon leader from Suriname, tells the story of how his people fled slavery in 1690, built 74 communities across 1.4 million hectares of tropical forest, won a landmark ruling in the 2000s after years of legal battles—and are still waiting for full compliance 19 years later. Cesar Carrasco, Ese'eja lodge manager at Rainforest Expeditions in the Peruvian Amazon, survived…

People in this episode

Host: Brooke Mitchell

Guests: Daniel Aristizábal, Cristina Vollmer Burelli, Hugo Jabini, Cesar Carrasco, Rosa Espinoza

Topics covered

• Amazon rainforest
• indigenous rights
• environmental activism
• illegal mining
• ecological knowledge

Keywords

• Amazon
• defenders
• indigenous communities
• environmental justice
• mining
• ecological knowledge

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amazon Conservation Team, SOSOrinoco

Places: Peruvian Amazon, Amazon

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
• Rivers in the Sky: The Amazon's Tipping Point, Sentinel Dolphins & the Geothermal Deep · May 19, 2026 · 34 min
• Seeing the Invisible: Tracking Destruction, Measuring Recovery · May 12, 2026 · 31 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