It’s easy to recognize e-mail from Jeff Corwin. Look for the words “just out of the jungle.” The peripatetic, 42-year-old biologist who’s a household name (and face) among the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet demographic has been on the move since April, working on 100 Heartbeats, a nonfiction book (Rodale, 2009) and accompanying documentary for the NBC family of networks scheduled to debut simultaneously this November. A frequent D.C. visitor, Corwin will be back in town in September to emcee an annual awards gala for Defenders of Wildlife, and to launch the Jeff Corwin Junior Explorer Series. Book and documentary launches are also planned for the Smithsonian. He paused, briefly, in Indonesia to chat via Skype about the project and life on the move.
Where are you right now?
Jakarta. I got in yesterday, and today we were out on an island where the Jakarta Animal Aid Network is trying to reintroduce hawksbill turtles. The population is down to 800 animals; they’re critically endangered. The turtles themselves are killed for their meat and shells. Poachers take the eggs and sell them as an aphrodisiac.
With a hidden camera, we went to the market where the locals were selling monkeys, snakes and lizards—there was a rare macaque for sale for $50. We saw an eagle hogtied to a bicycle tire, little primate babies pulled from their mothers, with that shell-shocked, war-trauma syndrome. The guy selling turtle eggs asked me if I wanted to buy one. He said, “Eat one egg, you can have two women.” I told him I could barely take care of one!
Eventually, though, we had to leave the market, even with a hidden camera. People began to recognize me.
How does the hawksbill turtle fit into the bigger picture?
This is for the documentary, and it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done with regard to wildlife. I was inspired by an article Edward O. Wilson wrote for Time about vanishing species, and he used the phrase “100 heartbeats” to describe species with 100 life forms or less left on earth—in other words, 100 heartbeats away from extinction. I read it and thought what a powerful documentary this idea would make.
The appeal is wonderfully broad.
Exactly. It’s thrilling to have the documentary air on the NBC family of networks, because it will be seen by a wider audience. These projects are probably the most important accomplishments of my career. The book’s mission is to explore the plight of our planet’s most endangered species and the heroes of conservation desperately fighting to save them from extinction. Many of the stories in the book are personal, and for me, there’s nothing more powerful than witnessing the recovery of a species or, tragically, our failure to save one. Still, there’s hope. Because this one species, ours, knows better.
What other stories are you telling?
Tomorrow I’m heading to Sumatra to help Ian Singleton, a top orangutan conservationist, liberate some animals from a jungle area threatened by bulldozers. Then I’m going to try to infiltrate, with hidden cameras, a pulp company that’s destroying Indonesia’s forests. Then there’s a stint in Greece and Morocco for a new series I’m doing on the Food Network.
You? The Food Network?
My secret passion is food and wine, especially renewable foods. It all started when the Food Network sent me to Thailand for a special. I wanted to find out, in the age of fast food, what it’s like if you don’t have a refrigerator. I wanted to visit communities where food is the glue that binds a culture. I’ve already been to Mexico for the series, traveling with the Zapoteca. I learned how to make traditional chocolate; I ate wasp stew and escamole—an ant larvae that’s the ultimate peasant food.
While in Greece I’m going to live in a fishing village in Crete with a family for two weeks, and eat octopus, urchins and snails. Then I’m going to live with a Bedouin family in Morocco. The show’s called Extreme Cuisine. It debuts in September.
Then back to 100 Heartbeats?
Yes. I’ll be in Brazil to touch base with the golden lion tamarind; the Democratic Republic of Congo to uncover the black-market meat trade of primates; and then India to complete a tiger story. We’ll wrap up with a story in Australia. We also followed two American stories, the California condor and the red wolf in North Carolina.
Sometimes the adventures are close?
Definitely. Lots of people may know the condor story, but how many know that 90 years ago, the red wolf meandered from Pennsylvania to Texas and was declared extinct in the early 1980s? But somehow, there was a small recovery. They found 47 pure red wolves and only 11 pairs that could breed. Now, there are 100 living in the wild.
We were down there with the underappreciated heroes of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and we were there to help relocate pups and help the females to breed. One day one of the rangers called and said, “I have something to show you.” So we crawled through this bramble of poison oak, nettles and briars on our bellies—but through all the ugliness were three 1-week-old pups. We measured them and put microchips in them to be identified.
Sometimes success is in baby steps. It’s an incredible payoff against insurmountable odds. It’s what the book and documentary are all about. Potential success.
What turns a New England kid into a world-traveling biologist and naturalist?
I grew up in a suburb south of Boston, not very close to nature, but I always hungered for it. I’d find a creek to explore or a woodpile to pick through. One day when I was about 6 years old, I was doing just that, picking through a woodpile, and I spotted something legless and scaly—a snake. I’d never seen one. Remember, now there’s lots of wildlife programming. Back then, almost none.
I grabbed onto this snake, and it reached back and grabbed onto me. Literally! They had to pry it off my arms. But now I knew where it lived, and we had a truce, so I’d just visit and watch it. I started doing sketches, all those things that inspire a kid toward being a naturalist.
A golf course figures into your story?
It does. My father, a police officer who worked 70 hours a week, would sneak me into a golf course we couldn’t afford. But not to golf—to look for frogs.
I think about that legacy all the time, because my two daughters are the inspiration for 100 Heartbeats. They’re going to inherit a world that’s less biologically rich than the one I inherited. One day my daughter was watching a show I’d done, and she saw this frog she really liked. “Dad, what’s that?” she said. I told her it was a harlequin frog that I’d filmed in Panama. She said, “When we go there, can you show it to me?” And I said to her, “I can’t. It’s extinct in the wild.”
I’ve had the privilege of traveling the world, telling stories about wildlife. I’ve worked my way into a place I dreamed of as a child. But last night, I was so exhausted, trying to fall asleep—my daughter just had eye surgery—and I felt like a bad dad, being so far away from her and my family. I put my head on my pillow and said to myself, “You can’t be there, but you’re kind of being there, for them, on this project.”
I’m the juxtaposition. Being there, not being home, being homesick. But I’ve worked my whole career to tell this story. It’s a rare opportunity.