Word: roosmalen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...black earth elsewhere in the Amazon. Mixed into this loamish soil was evidence of prehistoric man: charcoal, occasional stone axheads made from meteorites, and a lump of manioc bread preserved in natural tree gum. "If we can find out how these so-called primitives made this soil," reckons Van Roosmalen, "we can use it as an alternative to destructive slash-and-burn agriculture." Unfortunately, since the river tribes that knew the secret were all wiped out by European raiding parties 500 years ago, the scientist must start from scratch...
Besides his monkey business, Van Roosmalen specializes in medicinal plants (he even apprenticed to a shaman of the Kamayura tribe) and in rain-forest conservation. He knew he wanted to do fieldwork when he studied primates in Holland. There Van Roosmalen clashed with his university professors over the value of observing lab monkeys. "It was like putting a child in a cage and drawing conclusions about all Homo sapiens," he huffs...
...spent years in Suriname, studying spider monkeys in their arboreal home. Often he survived on fruit gnawed by monkeys and then tossed away. "I was quite hungry," he recalls. "Spider monkeys are very economical eaters." On the strength of doctoral research into tropical ecology, Van Roosmalen in 1987 got a scientific post in Manaus with the Brazilian government. He is a leading advocate of a 1996 environmental-protection law that enables Brazilian non-government organizations to buy rain-forest tracts for eco-tourism and research...
Inside the rain forest, Van Roosmalen is an ethereal presence with his long, silvery-blond hair. He ghosts through the foliage, hardly stirring a leaf. There's the sudden drum of raindrops shaken off a tree high in the canopy, and Van Roosmalen trains his binoculars upward. A branch bounces, and out pops a Titi monkey with black, globed eyes and a pewter-colored beard. "It's a new species we just identified recently," he says excitedly...
...discoverer of species, Van Roosmalen has the right to choose their scientific name. Instead he may auction off this privilege to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to protect the species in their original Brazilian habitat. Fame means less to him than saving a pure, emerald swath of the Amazon. Otherwise, he warns, "the rain forest will be destroyed before we even know what plants and animals are out there...