The largest river on Earth is actually in the sky - Iseult Gillespie
The largest rainforest in the world,
the Amazon,
exists between two rivers—
but not in the way you might think.
At ground level, the Amazon River
and its tributaries weave their path.
But above the canopy,
bigger waterways are on the move.
These flying rivers are almost invisible,
but are essential to life on Earth.
As rain seeps into the soil,
trees draw water
back up through their roots
and pump it through their trunks
for nourishment.
The leaves and stems transpire,
or release,
excess water in the form of vapor.
In the Amazon,
a fully grown tree transpires between 200
and 1,000 liters of water a day.
This collective release creates
a startling phenomenon:
huge jets of rapid, humid air
that constantly flow above the canopy.
Dubbed “flying rivers”
by a Brazilian climatologist,
these aerial waterways carry
about 20 billion tons of water
through the air per day.
This is more than the Amazon River’s
daily output into the ocean.
Along the equator,
the trade winds blow from east to west.
Caught in these winds, flying rivers flow
in the same direction
before encountering the Andes.
The mountains act like a giant barrier,
causing the winds and rivers
to redirect southwards.
When flying rivers meet
the masses of cold air,
they grow heavier and release
torrents of water.
In this way, they bring rain,
cooler temperatures,
and humidity to much of South America.
But these waterways are under threat.
Clearing the Amazon
for agriculture and industry
is already causing flying rivers
to dry up,
leading to drought and hotter temperatures
across South America.
If this pattern continues,
swaths of the continent may be reduced
to desert in a matter of decades.
In response, a radical movement is working
intensely to keep the rainforest—
and the flying rivers— alive.
The northwest of the Peruvian Amazon
is the territory of the Wampís Nation,
a community of over 15,000 people
who manage over 130,000 square kilometers
of land.
These Indigenous people have lived
in the rainforest for thousands of years,
practicing sustainable hunting,
fishing, and agriculture.
For the Wampís,
protecting the rainforest has long meant
fighting invaders.
Between the 15th and 17th centuries,
Wampís people resisted
and expelled the Incas
and later the Spanish colonists
who exploited the rainforest.
Today, the Wampís Nation are still
battling extractive industries—
and the policies that sanction them.
For instance, since the 1960s,
the Peruvian government has been
licensing the Wampís’ territory
to corporations for gold mining
and oil extraction.
These activities poison the rivers,
clear thousands of trees,
and threaten the Wampís way of life.
In 2015, after years of protests
and negotiations,
the community formed the
Autonomous Territorial Government
of the Wampís Nation.
While the Wampís people remain
Peruvian citizens,
they seek recognition as a government
responsible for their own lands, forests,
and internal affairs.
In its policies, the Wampís Nation
prioritizes collective land ownership,
cultural preservation,
and conservation of animals, plants,
and natural cycles
that protect the rainforest.
This is the foundation of their
philosophy of Tarimat Pujut,
or living in harmony with nature
to ensure food, friendships,
and quality of life.
The high, humid forest
of the Wampís Nation
is crucial to the flying river cycle,
transpiring over 34 million liters
of water a day
that flow to Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
To track this output, Wampís scientists
measure rainfall, monitor the wind,
and weigh water levels in leaves and soil.
One of their climate goals is to defend
this and other natural systems,
including native soil
that acts as a carbon sink
and the forest itself as a fire barrier.
The Wampís Nation constantly battles
corporations that threaten these systems.
Between 2016 and 2018,
the community fought illegal gold mining
along the Santiago River.
They organized protests,
uncovered mercury pollution,
guarded the area,
and attacked illegal machinery for months,
eventually expelling the miners.
And in 2017, the Wampís Nation
successfully petitioned a court
to bar a private oil company
from their land.
While these are significant victories,
the Wampís Nation and other Indigenous
groups need more recognition and support.
Indigenous people and local communities
live in and manage
more than a quarter of the world’s land,
but only have legal ownership
to a small percentage of it.
And less than 1% of international climate
and forest funds
go to their crucial conservation efforts.
This is despite the fact that forests
managed by Indigenous people
have better survival rates.
The Amazon is often described with
language evocative of a giant organism—
one that grows, dies, breathes
in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.
The processes that sustain it
weave together in a complex
and often invisible web of water, air,
soil, and human activity—
both destructive and protective.
We are far from understanding it
in its entirety,
but some are closer than others.
