MARC VAN ROOSMALEN: A Rain-Forest Odyssey

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He spent years in Suriname, studying spider monkeys in their arboreal home. Often he survived on fruit gnawed by monkeys and then tossed away. "I was quite hungry," he recalls. "Spider monkeys are very economical eaters." On the strength of doctoral research into tropical ecology, Van Roosmalen in 1987 got a scientific post in Manaus with the Brazilian government. He is a leading advocate of a 1996 environmental-protection law that enables Brazilian non-government organizations to buy rain-forest tracts for eco-tourism and research.

Inside the rain forest, Van Roosmalen is an ethereal presence with his long, silvery-blond hair. He ghosts through the foliage, hardly stirring a leaf. There's the sudden drum of raindrops shaken off a tree high in the canopy, and Van Roosmalen trains his binoculars upward. A branch bounces, and out pops a Titi monkey with black, globed eyes and a pewter-colored beard. "It's a new species we just identified recently," he says excitedly.

As the discoverer of species, Van Roosmalen has the right to choose their scientific name. Instead he may auction off this privilege to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to protect the species in their original Brazilian habitat. Fame means less to him than saving a pure, emerald swath of the Amazon. Otherwise, he warns, "the rain forest will be destroyed before we even know what plants and animals are out there."

--By Tim McGirk/Manaus