Its trees clean the air. As a desert, the Amazon basin would be almost worthless, and everyone, everywhere, would suffer. The children know today that they have to protect the forest. The only problem is, the people that live in the forest, they come from many generations here, and they still have the mentality that the forest is here to be conquered, everything is here to be taken. It's here, so we can take.
Nature is going to be here forever, they think.
They never realize that in a few years they won't hunt any more, they won't find anything any more. They do not see it. Eduardo and Zacharias distributed thin poles cut from tree branches and passed out plastic cups filled with cold roast beef to bait the hooks. He showed us how to swish and slap the fishing poles so the piranhas would hear the splashing and assume something tasty had fallen into the lake. Three hours of splashing and laughing and amateur angling ensued, while the guides smoked their hand-rolled cigarettes and occasionally pitched in to help one of us land the bigger fish.