A "magnificent, empowering" (Bill McKibben) memoir about a woman spearheading a global initiative to heal the world's rain forests and the communities who depend on them.
When Kinari Webb first traveled to Indonesian Borneo at 21 to study orangutans, she was both awestruck by the beauty of her surroundings and heartbroken by the rain forest destruction she witnessed. As she got to know the local communities, she realized that their need to pay for expensive health care led directly to the rampant logging, which in turn imperiled their health and safety even further. Webb realized her true calling was at the intersection of medicine and conservation.
After graduating with honors from the Yale School of Medicine, Webb returned to Borneo, listening to local communities about their solutions for how to both protect the rain forests and improve their lives. Founding two nonprofits, Health in Harmony in the US and ASRI in Indonesia, Webb and her local and international teams partnered with rainforest communities, building a clinic, developing regenerative economies, providing educational opportunities, and dramatically transforming the region. But just when everything was going right, Webb was stung by a deadly box jellyfish and would spend the next four years fighting for her life, a fight that would lead her to rethink everything. Was she ready to expand her work to a global scale and take climate change head-on?
Full of hope and optimism, Webb takes us on an exhilarating, galvanizing journey across the world, sharing her passion for the natural world and for humanity. In our current moment of crisis, Guardians of the Trees is an essential road map for moving forward and the inspiring story of one woman's quest to heal the world.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books
"A wonderful book." (Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & U.N. Messenger of Peace)