Alex Shoumatoff has been a staff writer for the New Yorker, and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Outside, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Esquire, and Onearth, and he has written more than 120 long magazine pieces. His previous books include The Mountain of Names, In Southern Light: Trekking Through Zaire and the Amazon, African Madness, and The World Is Burning. In 2001 he founded DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com to raise consciousness about the planet’s fast-disappearing biocultural diversity.