Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has gotten involved in some new Amazon business. Not the e-commerce giant, but the lush rainforest and its activist, Paul Rosolie. According to Rosolie, the conservationist was blocked from using the word “Amazon” in Google Ads while promoting his conservation efforts because Bezos’ company bears the name. The founder of Junglekeepers.org did what any social media activist would do and took to Instagram, pleading with the tech tycoon, the world’s third-richest man, to find a way out. Not only did Bezos, who sits atop a $275 billion fortune, reach out directly, he also helped clear up the matter in time.
Speaking about doing his bit for the largest rainforest on the planet, the wildlife personality wrote, “Dear @jeffbezos and laurensanchezbezos right now ‘Amazon.com’ has the rights to the word AMAZON to the extent that my team and I (the people of the Amazon rainforest… can’t use the term! Junglekeepers.org is close to making history and saving the wildest place on earth. But we are being hemmed on the internet because Google ads words hits us with copyright violation if we try to advertise what we are doing.”
The 62-year-old responded like a practical, result-oriented boss, “This makes no sense. Having the team reach out to help,” Bezos replied via his personal Instagram account. The longtime conservationist, who has written books, spoken at the United Nations, built a massive online following, and become one of those rare environmental figures who can move between hardcore fieldwork and viral internet attention, added one more thing to his repertoire by getting the attention of Bezos Earth Fund founder Jeff Bezos.
Of course, there are similarities, as both are connected in different ways to healing the world and protecting it. But more important than getting Bezos’ attention is the cause Rosolie is championing. Rosolie and Junglekeepers are working to protect the Las Piedras watershed in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, an area under pressure from roads, illegal logging, poaching, land grabs, and gold mining. The Madre de Dios and Las Piedras region is also one of the most biodiverse and most threatened parts of the Amazon, which raises the stakes even further. Their strategy includes buying or securing threatened land, training and employing local and Indigenous rangers, patrolling concessions, maintaining trails, and more. For this, the organization has raised $11,766,803 toward a $34,000,000 goal, while protecting 138,000 acres and seeking to protect another 170,000 acres.
That is what makes the entire episode so ironic. Rosolie had to fight to use the word ‘Amazon’ online in order to help save the actual Amazon. With some welcome attention from Bezos, who pledged to donate $10 billion to climate causes by 2030, there is a chance this goal gets accomplished sooner rather than later. For now, there is no direct donation from Jeff Bezos personally to Paul Rosolie or Junglekeepers, though the Bezos Earth Fund itself is active in rainforest and nature philanthropy. At the moment, the environmentalist seems simply happy to have received help from the people who own Amazon the company, not Amazon the rainforest.
Rosolie enthusiastically stated, “@jeffbezos that’s awesome! Man, we are so close to saving the crown jewel of the Amazon Rainforest, on so many levels this is incredible. Thanks for taking the time to respond and even more so for helping us to clear the way to save tens of millions of wild heartbeats and crucial ecosystem! You the man! THANK YOU!!”
