Whitley Award-winning Conservationist of Rare & Endangered Species
Executive Director & Co-Founder of Sociedade Chauá

Most of my family are cowboys and farmers. And I was like eight or nine years old. My grandmother was getting sick, and she always had a lot of plants at home in pots, and she asked me to help her to water the plants. And it was quite a good experience because when you start to like plants, it becomes like a viral thing. After some time I was growing my own plants, and I was very interested in doing her garden. And I would go to the forest and collect plants to grow at home like orchids that were beginning my first nursery. And it's a crazy love that grows when you start to understand how plants grow, and how the ecosystem functions. And how beautiful and amazing all this is. And we as humans are part of it, and I've always loved animals as well, but plants are my passion. And, of course, my, daughter's name is Flora. My wife, she's also a botanist, and she loves plants as well. So we live in the countryside where the farm has all kinds of plants. And I think one of the things that made me love and try to preserve and conserve the ecosystems and species is when you understand how slowly a plant or tree grows, and how much it takes to keep them healthy. And the interactions between the animals and plants, the pollinators and the dispersers within the ecosystem, it's something that everybody should know and see.