BBC—Roberto Brito learned how to use a chainsaw at the age of 11. Now he uses his intimate knowledge of the Amazon rainforest to guide tourists around in his flip-flops.
It used to be that when Roberto Brito looked at a tree, he would see a number: the amount of money he could earn from chopping it down. At first, Brito found it hard to see a beautiful tree, which he knew would produce good timber, without cutting it down. Resisting this impulse was excruciating, like quitting smoking, he says.
“I never dreamed of working in tourism,” Brito says. But as an entrepreneur, he’s able to apply his intimate knowledge of the forest to tourism instead of logging. This has transformed not only his work, but also his relationship to the forest. “I realised that eating the fruits of a tree every year is much better than cutting down the tree all at once and taking out a hundred pieces of wood.”