Over the past decade, I have traveled with Glenn to some of the world's biodiversity hot spots and other endangered regions where CI is working - from the Pantanal wetlands in southwestern Brazil to the Atlantic rain forest on Brazil's coast, from the Guyana Shield forest wilderness in southern Venezuela to the Rio Tambopata macaw research station in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, from the exotic-sounding highland of Shangri-La in Chinese-controlled Tibet to the tropical forests of Sumatra and the coral-ringed islands off Bali, in Indonesia. For me, these trips have been master classes in biodiversity, as were my own travels to the Masai Mara in Kenya and the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania and the vast Empty Quarter of the Saudi Arabian Desert and - before I had kids - a rappelling trip inside die salt domes of the Dead Sea.
In many ways, though, the first trip Glenn and I ever took taught me everything I needed to know about the biodiversity challenge we are facing. In 1998 we went to Brazil, and the trip began with the most unusual interview - location wise - that I have ever conducted. It was with Nilson de Barros, then superintendent for the environment for the Brazilian state Mato Grosso do Sul, who insisted that we conduct our talk in the middle of the Rio Negro. Mato Grosso do Sul is at the heart of the Pantanal region, along the border between Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.
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