Dr. Charles Munn ’67 Speaks with Middle School Students for International Week

Charlie is the founder of Southwild, the first wildlife company to be owned and operated by a world-class field biologist. For over 30 years, he has enabled people to experience the wild nature of South America through conservation-based ecotourism and photo safaris. In 2013, Condé Nast Traveler chose him as one of the world’s three leading experts on wildlife tourism.

Calvert students were excited to learn about Charlie’s international work, travels, and hear more about his incredibly close encounters with wildlife.

Charlie is a field biologist who in 1984 earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in evolution and ecology.

From 1984 to 2000, he researched in the Amazon for the New York Zoological Society. His specialties were the biology of macaws and Giant Otters and the creation of new parks. From 1980 to 2000, Charlie led teams that created 15 million acres of Amazonian protected areas, an area that is equivalent in size to all the national parks of the western USA (or 15% the size of California). Burning of rainforests releases 20% of all carbon emitted into the atmosphere per year, and creating new national parks help slow deforestation, which helps slow climate change.

To help slow carbon release, in 2010, Charlie founded SouthWild, a South American travel company that has cracked the code on how to guarantee close-up viewing of Jaguars, Mountain Lions, Harpy Eagles and other top predators. The first person ever to offer a “Jaguar Guarantee,” Charlie’s pioneering work in showcasing that 350-pound cat has led to the creation of 1,000 conservation-based jobs in one small corner of the Pantanal of Brazil. Each of the 50 habituated Jaguars there now is worth $1,000,000 per year to the country of Brazil.

Charlie also discovered a new parrot species for science, went undercover in South America to break up macaw-smuggling rings, and has been featured in two cover stories in National Geographic and in Emmy-award-winning TV documentaries. In 1994, TIME Magazine named Charlie “one of the planet’s 100 young leaders for the new millennium” in a list that also included Bill Gates and Condoleezza Rice.

It was great to welcome Charlie virtually back to campus!