Who Really Lives in the Amazon? | Documentary

The Amazon covers more than five million square kilometers, holds around one in ten of all known species, and its rivers carry roughly a fifth of all the fresh water that flows into the world's oceans. Yet more than forty million people call it home, in cities, river villages, and deep in the forest. In 2024 its great rivers fell to record lows. Then, in 2026, satellite alerts of forest clearing in Brazil fell to their lowest in more than a decade. In this Amazon documentary we follow the flying rivers in the sky, meet the river people and the Indigenous guardians of the forest, uncover the lost cities revealed by laser scanning, and see how açaí and the giant pirarucu feed millions. We look at the roads, fires and illegal gold mining pushing the forest toward a tipping point, the droughts of 2023 to 2026, and the first real signs of hope. Chapters 0:00 The largest rainforest on Earth 1:26 A river in the sky 3:28 Every hectare holds secrets 4:30 Forty-seven million people 6:56 The first people 8:02 The lost cities 9:50 Living from the forest 11:52 The great clearing 13:42 Gold, mercury and murder 14:58 When the rivers ran dry 16:50 A turning point? 18:00 The guardians 19:12 The future of the forest 20:48 Next episode: Sinking Cities Welcome to Unlikely Planet: documentaries about the places on Earth where life should not exist, and how it thrives anyway. Subscribe for two new journeys every week: Wednesday and Sunday. Have you ever been to the Amazon? Tell us in the comments. Sources (selection) INPE (PRODES / DETER) · MapBiomas · RAISG · WWF · IBGE · Rostain et al. (2024), Science · Prümers et al. (2022), Nature · Levis et al. (2017), Science · Schmidt et al. (2023), Science Advances · Lovejoy & Nobre (2018), Science Advances · Fiocruz (2024) · Serviço Geológico do Brasil · Mongabay · TFFF Credits Music & sound effects: original, generated with ElevenLabs (Eleven Music / Sound Effects) Teaser music: "Thunderbird" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Maps & satellite imagery: NASA Worldview / GIBS (Landsat WELD, MODIS, VIIRS, Blue Marble, GHRSST) · Borders: Natural Earth Stock footage: Pexels & Pixabay Images & footage (author, license; public-domain/CC0 not listed): Dan Riskin (CC BY 4.0) · Bilby (CC BY 3.0) · Planet Labs, Inc. (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Portal da Copa (CC BY 3.0 br) · Cayambe (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Google Earth Timelapse (Google, Landsat, Copernicus) (CC BY 4.0) · Agencia CNT de Notícias (CC BY 2.0) · União da Juventude Mestiça (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Sayori Minato (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Renilson Silva (CC BY-SA 3.0) · MPMrocha (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Jéssica Karoline Alves Portugal (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Cmacauley (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Sam valadi (CC BY 2.0) · Agência Amazônia Real (CC BY 2.0) · Kleiber Sequeira (CC BY-SA 3.0) · RodrigoCruzatti (CC BY 4.0) · Ibama from Brasil (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Marinha do Brasil (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Amazônia Real from Manaus AM, Brasil (CC BY 2.0) · Nao Iizuka from Tokyo, Japan (CC BY 2.0) · Pedro Biondi/ABr (CC BY 3.0 br) · Lucia Barreiros da Silva (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Giles Laurent (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Richard N Horne (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Holger Casselmann (CC BY-SA 3.0) · James Martins (CC BY 3.0) · Marajonida (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Vieiraproductions (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Cliff (CC BY 2.0) · Judison Godinho de Sousa (CC BY 4.0) · Alexandre Inagaki (CC BY 2.0) Licenses: CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY 3.0 br https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... #amazon #rainforest #documentary #unlikelyplanet #brazil