Guardians of the Amazon

Deep in the Araribóia Indigenous Land, a small group of Guajajara have taken the defense of the forest into their own hands. They call themselves the Guardians of the Forest, and they run secret night patrols through the rainforest, tracking armed logging camps and cattle ranchers pushing illegally onto their land. They are up against a powerful illegal logging industry, and they patrol anyway.

Guardians of the Amazon embeds with them as they hunt the loggers stripping one of the last great stretches of rainforest. Deforestation is surging, corruption runs through the institutions meant to stop it, and the people who defend the forest are being killed for it. At the center is Laercio Guajajara, one of the group's leaders, and Paulo Guajajara, a fellow Guardian whose death marks the cost of this fight.

Correspondent Dan Harris and his team traveled into the territory to report alongside the Guardians, capturing both the danger of the work and the reason for it: an indigenous group defending their land, and with it a piece of the planet the world cannot afford to lose. The Amazon is nearing a tipping point, and the difference between what is saved and what is lost is measured patrol by patrol.