Original subtitles

Deep in the Amazon,

there’s a place where dolphins fly through trees.

I'm amazed about how it's possible these animals,

these incredible creatures are here in the jungle.

A place where bears live in the clouds.

The Andean bear is like the engineer of the cloud forest.

A place where turtles have guardian angels.

It is a place that

has caught me in such a way that

I can't imagine it will let me go.

And the trees,

they soak up 20 billion tons of water every day

to create rivers in the sky.

That water is what connects it all.

-We're talking about the largest river of the world.

It's not just water in rivers.

It's water in the glaciers, in the atmosphere,

in the clouds.

The Amazon is changing in real-time,

and there’s so much we don’t know.

-There are a lot of threats here in the Amazon, but still,

there are some people trying to make the difference.

In an unprecedented two-year expedition,

National Geographic is bringing together a passionate

group of scientists to follow the water,

as they explore the magnificent ecosystems within.

From the tops of the Andes, across 4,000 miles,

to the Atlantic Ocean, and beyond.

-Science enables us to see into the future.

To ensure that it’s still standing

for the next generation.

-It matters what we do.

When you think of the Amazon,

these 20,000-foot peaks may not come to mind,

but this is where it all begins.

-We actually are in the Amazon Basin.

We're right on the edge,

right on the eastern side of the Andes.

This is an important water tower.

The snow and ice that you see here

eventually is going to make its way down into the Amazon.

But the glaciers here are disappearing,

and we don’t know how quickly.

That’s what National Geographic Explorer Baker Perry

is here to find out.

-I’m leading this expedition to install a weather station

near the summit of Ausangate.

Having lived in the Andes when he was younger,

this is a sort of homecoming for Baker.

Just in my lifetime,

I've seen tremendous changes happening in the Amazon

with ongoing deforestation.

And what we're trying to understand is

how glaciers are responding.

-We have a very, very limited understanding of the weather

or climate at the tops of these Andean mountains.

So Baker, Tom,

and their team of local guides and experts

set out to tackle one of the highest peaks

in the Amazon Basin.

These enormous glaciers store water

for communities downstream.

As the climate's warming,

that kind of reliable source of fresh water is in danger.

That water is intricately tied to the water

cycling through all of Amazonia.

The water molecules that fall as snow

on the Andean peaks are coming from evaporation from these

mighty trees in the Amazon.

Flowing up through the trees,

it releases into the atmosphere.

Then it's going to condense out, form a cloud.

And that cloud is gonna be moved by the winds

into the Andes,

where it's going to eventually fall as snow.

When one part is altered,

the entire system reacts.

If you cut down trees in the rainforest,

the amount of snowfall that occurs here drops.

A weather station will provide insight

into how much these glaciers are shrinking.

But first, they need to get there.

Ausangate is not an easy mountain.

It's a huge effort to get weather equipment up to these elevations.

That's why it hasn't really been done before.

Good luck up there. Thank you.

The physical challenges on

these expeditions are real.

The hardest part of climbing is

the lack of oxygen.

It's about half past two in the morning,

looking forward to sunrise in about three and a half hours.

-We have one little section to go up here.

And then another fixed line going up there.

If they succeed,

the data from atop Ausangate will be invaluable

to the millions of people who depend on it.

-In the last 10 years, water is decreasing every year,

every year is less, less, less water.

For Quechuan biologist

Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya, this loss is personal.

She grew up in the high Andes,

where the glacier has always protected the people.

-The glacier is a key part of our culture.

As a child, her grandmother would

tell stories about a mythical bear.

This character called the Ukuku is the

semi-god between a bear and a human.

They go to the Ausangate to carry blocks of ice to the

communities as a sign they’re going to have more water.

The Ukuku story has played out for centuries

in the Qoyllur Rit’l festival.

My grandmother used to tell me that the ice

was very nearby.

But now, with climate change, the snow is far away.

They are not able to bring this ice cube anymore.

Ukukus are more than a myth.

-Ukuku means the Andean bear in Quechuan, yeah.

For Ruth, the real thing is just as mysterious.

We are trying to understand the secret life

of the Andean bear.

A creature we know little about,

except that it’s vital for forests in the clouds

that sit below Ausangate.

Glaciers may be the water tower for the Amazon Basin,

but Andean cloud forests are the rain machine.

They act like a sponge,

soaking up moisture and releasing it downstream.

I always liked to climb trees.

It's a different perspective being in the canopy.

It's a different world, completely different world.

Both the forest and bears are threatened,

and they need each other to thrive.

As voracious plant eaters,

bears spread seeds wherever they go.

They are very good tree climbers.

They spend most of their time actually in the trees.

Camera traps will track their movements to help

Ruth understand their effect on the forest.

-All good.

Let's see what the camera trap captures.

The Andean bears is very hard to study,

especially in this kind of terrain.

In order to get this information,

we need to also hike a lot.

It’s time to check the cameras,

all 75 of them.

We leave these camera traps for the whole year,

but we are doing the monitoring every two months.

-Oh, no bears.

While the bears avoid the spotlight,

others aren’t so shy.

- Is it a lone little fox? - Yes.

-What do you see?

-A puma.

-Oh wow, a big one!

To follow their trail,

Ruth brings along her top tracker.

-Ukuku!

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

As the bears are moving,

they are helping to disperse many of these tree species.

They eat the seed and they, they poo...

So this poo has the seeds and has

the nutrients to, to grow.

-This is vaccinium.

It is a wild blueberry.

And this is one of the bears’ favorite fruits.

The feces we just found

contained fruits of this kind.

We have a camera trap 10 meters from here.

Let’s just hope the camera worked.

-Bear!

Bear, bear!

A little one!

When we see a bear like this, we all are happy, very happy.

While the cameras reveal bear behavior,

to really understand how they move,

they need to get closer.

The first time we capture our first bear,

I couldn't describe the feeling I, I have.

I don’t know, like my brother, like my elder brother.

I feel like part of my family.

It's just incredible creature.

GPS collars track their every move.

And for the first time, a National Geographic Critter-Cam

goes on walkabout with a bear named Sunchu.

We can see from the perspective of the bear

how it's moving around.

We are following the journey and we're learning a lot.

It turns out Sunchu,

and the other 40-plus bears she’s identified so far,

are covering a larger and higher range than expected.

-You see some clusters.

This means they spend quite a lot of time in

this part of the forest.

Her findings are extraordinary.

As the climate warms and the bears move higher,

they’ll bring seeds with them,

helping forests regrow at cooler elevations.

-Now we are thinking how the bears are gonna help

many of these tree species adapt to the new environment.

They just may be the key to ensuring

the cloud forest survives.

So it can keep the water moving

down the Andes and into the headwaters,

where it begins to transform into something recognizable.

-It's not just one river.

You have thousands of small rivers just flowing

to the big Amazon.

Making up 20% of the freshwater

for the entire planet.

-The Amazon is the heart of the planet,

and all these rivers are the veins of this heart.

One magical creature considers the

whole river system home.

-Dolphins don’t recognize borders.

They basically move free on the rivers.

So does Fernando Trujillo,

who moved to the Colombian Amazon

to dedicate his life to them.

When I just came here,

it was difficult to find the dolphins because

I didn't have a trained eye.

And this was full of life, but I couldn't see the life.

So it took time until I start to understand

a little bit the river.

After 35 years,

Fernando’s vision is clear,

protect the animal keeping the equilibrium of this system.

Dolphins are the jaguars in the water.

They are the top predators.

They are able to move in the main rivers, lakes,

flooded forests, everywhere.

That equilibrium is under constant assault

and pink dolphin populations

are decreasing in record numbers.

-The deforestation is there,

there are burnings, there are pollution.

And there’s drought.

-More than 100 dolphins were found dead in a lake

in the Amazon over seven days.

The main suspicion is that the deaths are related to

drought and the high water temperature.

The Amazon saw its worst drought on record in 2023.

Low water levels trap more heat from the sun,

spiking temperatures.

For the first time, we have a

kind of phenomenon where a lot of dolphins

were dying very quickly.

We lost 70 dolphins in just one day.

Millions of fish have died.

Fernando’s working with local teams

to conserve these dolphins any way they can.

By tagging them,

they hope to identify feeding and nursing areas

and expand protections.

-And who better than them to show us?

Go, go, go, go!

- Go, go! Left. - Left.

-In the capture of dolphins you have to move

faster than in fishing.

Because when you spread the net, fish fall in it by themselves.

On the other hand, the dolphin must be encircled

in order to capture it.

-Now we captured three dolphins,

they are inside the big net.

- On three, understand? One, two, three.

One, two, three, up!

-When I am near a dolphin,

I feel that my heart is totally filled.

Like I have a purpose in life.

During a capture,

veterinarian María Jimena Valderrama

monitors the dolphin's health.

-Let’s keep quiet. This is a pregnant female.

Quiet please, everybody.

It's in some way invasive.

We are taking out of the water an aquatic animal.

-There we are taking its heart rate and respiratory rate.

- Breathe!

-If I see that the animal is too stressed,

I think it's always best to release the animal.

Because the main thing for us is its well-being.

-This is a female, a big one, two meters, 20.

It's already pregnant.

A dolphin can have one calf every four or five years and

their pregnancy is 13 months.

So in a lifetime they, they can have like

four or five calves.

So it's very important for this animal to try to conserve.

Any animal, they count.

-I’m in charge of taking both blood and tissue samples.

We tag it quickly.

With anesthesia, we make sure that the animal doesn’t feel

any pain during

installation of the satellite transmitter.

- You, go there.

The tagging became a very powerful tool to understand

what areas are really important for

the conservation of the dolphins.

Fernando’s finding that males have

large home ranges.

The males move away looking for

other groups of females.

But females stay in areas where they

always have access to food.

This puts them in direct conflict with humans.

-Sometimes, the fishermen say,

look the dolphins are stealing our fish.

They go to our nets and take the fish from our nets.

-These dolphins have learned to associate fishing activities

with a free meal.

Marine biologist and photographer

Thomas Peschak joins the expedition near the Negro River

to get a look at this behavior

from the dolphins’ perspective.

-The direct conflict can end with a dolphin death,

or it can damage the net from fishermen.

But there’s a possible solution.

The pingers are acoustic deflectors,

it’s a way to put noise on the nets

to avoid the dolphins approach the net.

Pingers have worked in the ocean,

but they’ve never been tested in the Amazon.

So we are testing here for the

first time with Mariana.

-We are working with the community inside Acajatuba Lake,

and we have two fishermen supporting us

doing the pilot tests.

These give us some learning about how dolphins are

motivated to catch the fish in the net.

They perceive the sound, and back away.

Right after that, they try again.

They persist and get the fish.

The pingers likely didn’t work because the

dolphins in this lake are used to people.

So testing continues.

I am hopeful because if it works,

it's mutual benefit for conservation and people.

-Knowing how they behave,

knowing how they steal a fish,

might actually help better employ these pingers to

deter these dolphins from stealing fish.

As a National Geographic photographer,

Thomas’s ultimate goal is to help create the will

to protect the Amazon and all its creatures.

We need beautiful pictures underwater

to connect the people with the dolphins.

Diving with these dolphins is truly magical.

There are individuals that are incredibly shy.

There are individuals that are bold.

And there are curious ones.

Every year, during the rainy season,

an incredible phenomenon occurs throughout the Amazon.

The rivers flood into the surrounding forests,

up to 12 miles past the riverbanks and

nearly 50 feet deep.

-Everything has evolved to follow that pulse,

it's like a heartbeat.

The forest, the animals,

the people that live here,

they're all living to the pulse of flood and dry.

Including the dolphins.

Flexible flippers and unfused vertebrae give them

seemingly magical powers.

-They can literally fly between the trees.

That's amazing.

They rely on these trees to feed

their fishy prey.

When the forest floods,

fish can access fruits and seeds on the branches.

There is always this connection between systems

that is very important to maintaining biodiversity,

and things working as they should.

But for how much longer?

When threats like deforestation and warming temperatures

disrupt the Amazon’s ability to create its own rainfall,

the entire system reacts, including the flood pulse.

-If you change the availability of water, just a little bit,

the ecosystem is not used to that.

And it's gonna start behaving differently.

How the trees will react is a mystery

Thiago Silva and his team head to Brazil's

flooded forests to solve.

We're here to understand how trees can cope

with months and months of flooding

and how climate change could affect the future

of these wetland forests.

-We don't know about the physiological properties

of these trees.

So we don't know exactly how they will cope.

They work in the dead of night,

collecting samples while the plants are resting.

-The idea is to get the fully exposed branches

so where the sun is illuminating all of these

branches during the day,

and then he has to climb very high and to get these

very big branches for us to sample.

So it's quite an adventure.

Julia is investigating traits,

like vessel size, telling her how each tree

will respond to wetter or drier conditions.

Thiago is using cutting-edge technology

to map the bigger picture.

What fascinates me about plants is how they

run this whole mechanism of maintaining

the environment ecosystem,

while the animals,

most of the time they're just the, the actors, right?

But the plants, they really set the scene.

Now, for the first time,

Thiago’s bringing that scene to the rest of the world.

He’s using LIDAR to create a 3-D,

360-degree snapshot.

-I like plants equipped with technology.

This is a terrestrial laser scanner.

It will send a beam of lasers in a cone

all around this rotating head.

The idea here is to overfly with the drone and

get the 3D model from the top of the canopy.

One thing that we expect to be able to do

is to have a virtual environment

where anyone can go inside the forest.

And then see how the water levels could rise,

and you can almost physically experience what it means

to have 10 meters of water flooding a forest.

Thiago and Julia's findings will give

a glimpse into the future,

predicting which trees may not survive and what that means

for the creatures who depend on them.

I want to understand enough of the system

to be able to prepare for that the best we can.

And make sure that we don't lose everything

that those forests have to offer.

It’s not just the animals who rely

on these forests,

but 40 million people throughout the Amazon.

The vast majority of the population lives

just by the river.

They depend on the rivers for transportation.

They depend on this forest for the fish.

They depend on it for the timber itself.

So everybody depends on the Amazon to live.

And the people who live in the middle of it

are the key to protecting it.

-The river is our livelihood,

but I think that if we didn't have the river,

a large part of humanity wouldn't exist.

The fight to save this river economy

drives another team of Explorers deep into the Juruá,

a tributary of the Amazon,

to work alongside local communities.

-We see this relationship as complementary,

within that system,

because people don’t just live in the forest,

they are part of it.

-The ultimate goal of our project

is to try to understand how we can align

the protection of biodiversity with people's well-being.

The team collaborates with locals

to protect the giant river turtle

and increase numbers of arapaima,

known locally as pirarucu.

Both are important for local food security,

but also have high commercial value.

-Uncontrolled exploitation of this resource

ended up greatly reducing populations.

-For me, pirarucu is an Amazonian superstar.

It’s bigger than me.

It weighs more than me.

It’s the largest freshwater scaled fish in the world.

But by the late ‘90s,

it was nearly fished to extinction.

So researchers and local fishermen joined forces to

create a sustainable fishing plan based on a quota system.

-The protection of aquatic environments,

in which you protect the pirarucu,

is like keeping a bank account.

João and the team have been helping to

implement that plan here in the Juruá for 15 years.

-If it weren’t for them, maybe we wouldn't be

where we are now.

It’s an incredible success story.

The pirarucu population has increased by 600%.

-We usually call the pirarucu the "fish of change"

because it has brought several social and economic changes

to these communities.

Now, they’re taking that success one step further.

-Using the GPS tag on Pirarucu, it's a really challenging task

because it was never done before.

It was only possible because we worked together

with local fishermen.

So, they have this historical knowledge

interacting with this species.

-They are fundamental in the process of understanding

the best spot to place the device.

If it works, real-time data tracking

their range may lead to additional protection,

and ultimately, more fish.

-If we increase our authorized quota number,

we will have greater income in the pockets

of each pirarucu handler.

Further down the Juruá River,

João and Andressa join forces with other locals

in their fight to protect one of the Amazon’s iconic species.

-We monitor the beach at night,

with a flashlight and a gun.

I do six hours and my son does six hours.

If we aren't there monitoring,

poachers will surely come.

Every year, female turtles emerge

on the riverbanks to nest.

They go into a trance-like state while laying eggs,

making everyone, mom included, vulnerable.

Despite their protected status,

river turtles and their eggs are a delicacy in high demand.

-For a large turtle in Carauari,

they're asking for 400, 500 reais.

So they will watch me here in Tabuleiro do Manariã,

for three, four, five days.

The poachers are relentless,

destroying 99% of nests on unguarded beaches.

-Almost all the turtles that are laying their eggs

in an unprotected beach

are having their nests predated by humans.

For nearly 30 years,

Bomba and his family have lived across from

the turtle nesting beach,

or Tabuleiro, they protect.

-We know that if we didn't do this type of monitoring,

the teenagers who are growing up now,

they wouldn't see any of this.

-Bomba was one of the first beach guardians

and today he's a very strong representative

of all of the beach protectors.

-What motivates me to continue is

seeing dad taking care of them every year.

He inspires me.

-They work at night, he and João Pedro.

When it's six in the morning

sometimes seven o'clock,

I go see what has come out on the tabuleiro.

What Chica finds is that their hard work

is paying off.

On protected beaches, poaching rates drop to just 2%.

-That to me is the greatest joy I have.

Numbers have increased a lot.

- Good morning, Mister Bomba! All good?

- Good morning! All good, and you?

But unlike the fishermen,

beach guardians don’t profit from what they protect.

To keep the program going, they need help.

-A problem we face with the protection of beaches

is that we still haven't managed to get good pay

for the beach protectors.

Their payment is a monthly food basket,

and only for the months they work,

from nesting to hatching.

-This is something that, if we stop and think about,

it isn't enough even for us to buy shoes,

let alone keep a home.

So they’re fully dependent on fundraising.

-One of the goals we have is precisely to raise resources

that allow this beach protection program to extend

indefinitely.

-I know that if we leave this place,

poachers will destroy everything.

So we fight for it.

The fight for a healthy Amazon impacts us all.

The forests here alone store so much carbon,

they help protect the entire planet.

-Every forest, every tree has a, a role in that

because they remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Angelo Bernardino wants to know how much.

He heads to the mouth of the river,

where the water that started in the glaciers

empties into the Atlantic,

at the rate of 84 Olympic swimming pools

every second.

-So, this should be fantastic!

Here, lives a coastal forest unlike

anything they’ve ever seen.

-This is a mixed mangrove forest,

so it's going to be really neat to see what's going on in there.

Let's go!

Angelo’s studying the Amazon mangroves

for the first time.

-I think mangroves here in Brazil are such a, a,

an iconic place.

They’re really important to protect the coast and

as a life-supporting system.

Most mangroves grow in salt or brackish water.

Not these.

-We are right here at the ocean,

and we are measuring the salinity,

and the salinity is zero, it's freshwater.

Forcing these mangroves to adapt.

This might be a very unique forest on the coast of

the Amazon, we've never seen this before.

-There it is!

They’re taking samples to find out just

how much carbon is stored here.

-What do you think?

-I’d reckon it’s about 400 years' worth of

sediment deposition here.

-Nice.

-What's really important, guys, is to twist all the time,

so hopefully you get your soil sample out.

Look at that. That's beautiful.

We’ve got it. We got our two-meter core.

But what's incredible is how much carbon we can still see

even at two meters in depth.

You can even see old leaves that are thousands of years old

that have been preserved in the soils.

Amazon rainforests sequester

120 billion tons of carbon.

It turns out these mangroves contain even more.

Amazon mangroves hold three to four times more carbon

than the same area in the Amazon upland forests.

We can use this natural function of mangroves

in the Amazon River mouth

towards mitigation of climate change.

They are sustaining life by just being there,

by just being preserved.

The Amazon’s global impact doesn’t stop here,

and neither does the Amazon.

The plume of fresh water and sediment that pours from the

Amazon into the ocean

reaches as far as the Caribbean Islands.

-So you can actually detect the freshwater of the Amazon

as far north as Puerto Rico.

All that freshwater

carries an infusion of nutrients,

whose impact on the marine ecosystem

is yet to be fully understood.

-We are now in Tobago, in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Tom and Angelo team up to see it first-hand.

-Are we all ready?

A lot of the marine life that we see here may be

directly dependent on the food that is delivered by

the Amazon River plume.

And that translates into a completely

different marine ecosystem.

Here, you have reefs that are dominated by sponges.

Even like blue sponges.

I’ve never seen blue sponges in my life.

The sponge is actually uniquely responsible

for taking the riches the Amazon River bestows on

the Caribbean and transforming it into

compounds that all the other species in the food web

can actually access as well.

-We are only scratching the surface in terms of

understanding the far reaches of the Amazon River plume.

When it comes to the Amazon,

one thing is clear.

Everything is connected,

from sponges in the Caribbean,

all the way back to its icy origin in the Andes.

-We’re good.

-Okay, we've powered it up. The battery's charging.

Awesome job.

This weather station is the, the highest in Peru and the highest

in the tropical Andes.

And ultimately will improve climate projections

into the future.

We're in a position that we know that the

decisions we take in the next decade or so will determine

what the face of the Earth looks like

for thousands of years to come.

What we do in the next few years really matters.

So everybody can keep enjoying this beautiful,

amazing place that is our home, no? Our planet.

Entonces estamos Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia,

Colombia, Ecuador, India,

Nepal, y Venezuela. Perfecto.

-1, 2, 3. River dolphins!

-The answers about how to conserve the Amazon,

how to best use natural resources are here,

with these people, in these places.

We're not going to bring it here,

we're going to build it here.

- Raise your arm and says "it's so-and-so."

It’s not only about science.

It’s also about solutions.

Also about working with local communities,

and also about hope.