Throughout 2016, Dutch birder Arjan Dwarshuis spotted 6,852 bird species around the world, breaking a record that Noah Strycker had set the year before for the highest Big Year tally ever. Dwarshuis published a book in 2019 about his Big Year in his native language, and now its English translation has been published in North America by Chelsea Green Publishing (paperback, $22.95).
The (Big) Year That Flew By is about birds and birding and Dwarshuis’ attempts to raise awareness for critically endangered species. In addition, he writes about overcoming mental challenges, extreme physical danger, environmental degradation, and human competition. On the following pages, we present an excerpt from the book about one stop during Dwarshuis’ epic year: Alta Floresta, in central Brazil, which he visited with fellow Dutch birder Ies Goedbloed. This excerpt is printed with permission from the publisher. —the Editor
When I look down from the airplane window, I notice the enormous clear-cutting. This used to be a tropical rainforest; now I can see only logging plains. It makes me sick. An area of about ten football fields of Amazon rainforest is cut down every single minute. That is thousands of square miles every year.
We are on our way to Alta Floresta, a town in the northern part of the state of Mato Grosso, which is locatedand more than 1,200-mile-long belt of deforestation now runs all the way to the state of Rondônia on the Bolivian border. This huge area is also known as the Arc of Deforestation.
