 Blackstone Audio presents The Next Species, The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man by Michael Tennyson. This book is read by Sean Renette, to Annabelle, my mother, who loved the oceans, the mountains, the deserts, the birds, the animals, and the people. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. CHIEF SEATL, 1854 We live in a zoologically impoverished world from which all the hugest and fiercest and strangest forms have recently disappeared. ALFORD RUSSELL WALLACE, 1876 PROLUK We have no idea what we're in for. It was mid-morning, June, during the tropical dry season, as the Peruvian Army Mi-17 helicopter lifted us off from a military base near the town of Ayakucho, Peru, on the western side of the Andes Mountains, and slowly ascended toward the crest of the magnificent range. The expansive dry terrain below was spotted with cactus, shrubs, and wide stretches of open space, interrupted only by small villages covered in a fine layer of the local dust. These slopes constitute the eastern boundary of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest spots on Earth. It gave no hint of the verdant rainforest that awaited us just beyond the summit of the Andes. But as the helicopter crested the mountains, the eyes of the passengers, a military crew and an international team of scientists opened wide at the sudden appearance of the headwaters of the Amazon River and the thick blanket of deep green vegetation that cloaked the mountains on this much wetter terrain. Inside the helicopter, the group of celebrated biologists, part of the Rapid Assessment Program, had been sent here by the Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Conservation International to do a quick and dirty survey of the wildlife in the tropical forest region of the Vilcabamba, one of several mountain ranges within the eastern Andes under threat by oil and mining interests. Conservation International wanted to know if the area was rich enough in the number of plants and animal species to warrant the use of the group's limited funds to save it. The more species there were, the more likely that some would survive the current environmental crisis. I sat with the scientists on uncomfortable metal benches bolted to the wall, gear piled high around us. Most Sample complete. Ready to continue?