What a place.
Do you like it?
Yeah, I like it more than like,
it’s really
feels like somewhere
where you need to be careful
with every step,
just in case you wipe out a plant,
previously unknown to science.
You’ve found something?
It´s very tiny.
Let me go here.
What is?.
Here, next to the rock.
Oh my goodness.
It is a tiny, tiny frog.
Yeah, it is like,
smaller than your thumb.
A weird species.
A weird species yeah.
And only found here in Atapui.
Is he going to jump if I…
No,
actually,
they don’t jump.
They walk very slow.
They don’t swim
and they don’t have tadpoles.
Is it really a frog, then?
No. Like this is a toad actually.
It’s not a frog.
It’s a toad,
the size of my thumbnail.
It´s curious that
each Tapui has its own species.
So…
So now you’re able to pick it up?
And this one
from this Tapui has a belly
look, little yellow belly.
So this is almost up here.
It’s a little bit like the Galapagos
Islands.
It’s been cut off
from the rest of the planet for ages.
And life has developed
and evolved in different ways.
Yeah, exactly.
And that’s one of our concerns,
that they are here before the dinosaurs,
but now people coming here
may bring a fungus that is spreading
all around the world and is killing frogs.
And that’s why I’m using globes
because of the frog
frog killing fungus,
which also affects toads
as well, right.
As this disease is only here,
if the fungus come here to the Tapui,
maybe this species can disappear.
So they evolved before us.
They’ve survived much longer than us,
and they are now
in a very short space of time,
completely threatened by us. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Look at this.
This is toilet paper.
What the hell is that doing here?
Tourist.
What have you seen now?
It’s, invasive plants.
And invasive plant?
It’s very interesting,
because if you look at it,
it’s slightly suffocating and smothering
the other plants.
It doesn’t belong to here.
Also, with the global warming,
many seeds and grain up here because they find
they have good temperature.
So to try and keep
this place pristine and free of any seeds
I might unwittingly introduce
into the environment,
I havej been given a sealable potty.
I’m off to do my business.
If only there was a rock
I could hide behind.
Up here among the clouds,
Ruraima felt a world away
from the planet and problems below.
There should be few places on Earth
more remote and isolated
than a nearly 2 billion year old rock.
2 miles above sea level,
but I was discovering that
our reach and impact is everywhere.
Even life on the Tapui´s
is affected by the march of the humans.
