ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE/World, Three Stories from a Small Planet.
First, in Brazil?
TOM LEWIS, CEO, NYMEX Green Exchange: Within a decade, that part of the market could be $3 trillion.
ANNOUNCER: Trading pollution for trees.
MICHAEL MORRIS, CEO, American Electric Power: If you think about biodiversity, it just makes sense.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, in a joint project with the Center for Investigative Reporting, correspondent Mark Schapiro investigates the coming international market in carbon?
MARK SCHAPIRO, Reporter: How much carbon would you think is in this tree right here?
ANNOUNCER: ?and its impact on the ground.
EDUARDO BRAGA, Governor, Amazonas State: Give up all your jobs, all your economic base because we need to save the trees?
ANNOUNCER: Then, in Guatemala, a town's economic lifeline is severed.
MARK SCHAPIRO: The raid in Postville, Iowa, would become the biggest in U.S. history.
ANNOUNCER: And its the impact was felt on both sides of the border.
STORE OWNER: You take 400-plus jobs out of a town of 2000 people, it hurts.
ANNOUNCER: And finally, in Uganda, new, dangerous viruses that can jump back and forth between humans and the great apes.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA, Wildlife Veterinarian: You can't protect the gorillas if you don't think about the people living around the park who have very little health care.
Brazil: The Carbon Hunters
Reported by Mark Schapiro
MARK SCHAPIRO, Reporter: [voice-over] Time is a fiction, they say. In this remote corner of Brazil's Atlantic Coast, an ancient forest seemingly unspoiled by modern life, beyond the reach of men, machines and markets. But look closer and you'll see that something very different is happening here.
I'm tracking a group of hunters. They're after something that has become one of the hottest commodities in recent years and they think they can capture it with just a tape measure and a pen.
MAN WITH TAPE MEASURE: [subtitles] 44.3.
MARK SCHAPIRO: The men don't want the trees, they want what is stored inside, carbon dioxide.
[on camera] So how much carbon would you think is in this tree right here?
RICARDO DA BRITEZ, Forest Scientist: [subtitles] I think it probably contains between 90 to 100 kilos of carbon.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [voice-over] Ricardo da Britez is the chief forest scientist in this reserve. He oversees the carbon counting here. His measurements are being followed closely by people around the world trying to figure out how to buy and sell this carbon on the international market.
[on camera] If carbon is basically selling on the market? what does it cost now, about $10 a ton?
RICARDO DA BRITEZ: Yes.
MARK SCHAPIRO: So basically, this tree is worth?
RICARDO DA BRITEZ: One dollar.
MARK SCHAPIRO: One dollar. One dollar in the carbon market.
[voice-over] One dollar for one tree. The math seemed simple. But then I wondered, who gets the dollar?
[on camera] So tell me, then the particular carbon in this tree belongs to?
RICARDO DA BRITEZ: [subtitles] The credits from that carbon belong to General Motors.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [voice-over] General Motors? How did an American company end up owning the carbon in these trees? It all started in 1991.
NEWSCASTER: [Brazilian TV, subtitles] Kilometers and kilometers of mangrove, the largest concentration of animal and plant life per square meter.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Conservation groups identified this area, known as Guaraquecaba, as one of the most threatened eco-hotspots in the world. Even Al Gore visited, triggering international attention.
NEWSCASTER: [subtitles] The American group that wants to help buy land in Guaraquecaba is this one here, the Nature Conservancy.
MARK SCHAPIRO: The Nature Conservancy tried for years to raise funds, but the big money didn't start pouring into the region until fears began to rise about climate change, and a new reason to save the trees, carbon, brought in three large American companies.
RICARDO DA BRITEZ: [subtitles] The companies were interested in carbon credits. Each company supported a different project. The first one was supported by American Electric Power.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Da Britez explained how in 2000, American Electric Power, the utility giant, bought into an area the size of Manhattan. Then came the car company General Motors, and finally, Chevron oil. The three companies invested a total of $18 million to preserve this forest.
The Nature Conservancy brokered the deal through a Brazilian environmental group called SPVS, founded by this man, Clovis Borges.
CLOVIS BORGES, Executive Director, SPVS: We will purchase part of the land of the region and preserve these areas. And the carbon provided, or the carbon credits that could be provided ? it's not a guarantee ? will be the results that this company can have.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [on camera] Meaning they own the carbon credits.
CLOVIS BORGES: They own carbon credits.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [voice-over] But what is a carbon credit? And why are so many people so interested in buying and selling something that didn't even exist five years ago? It's a question I've been investigating. Before I left for Brazil, I met with veteran Wall Street executive Tom Lewis.
TOM LEWIS, CEO, NYMEX Green Exchange: People often ask the question, ``What is the difference between carbon and other commodities?'' And in many cases, it's exactly the same as another commodity. It trades precisely in the same way. Globally, it's considered about a $300 billion market today. But the expectation is that within a decade, that market could be between $2 trillion and $3 trillion.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Where would all that money come from? Climate legislation before Congress would for the first time force big polluters to reduce their emissions, or purchase offsets.
[www.pbs.org: Timeline of climate legislation]
One of the nation's biggest emitters is AEP.
MICHAEL MORRIS, CEO, American Electric Power: The theory that we have is straightforward. You give me a carbon credit, and I'll pass that along to my customers.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Mike Morris is CEO of American Electric Power, the largest operator of coal-fired power plants in the country. He told us that investing in cleaner technology is expensive and takes time, and the only way he would be able to meet emission targets would be to purchase carbon credits.
MICHAEL MORRIS: We'll purchase credits. We'll be in the credit market, along with many, many other people. And so we need the kinds of things that will create credits in the most cost-effective way.
MARK SCHAPIRO: And the cheapest and most readily available offsets on the market are forests.
[www.pbs.org: Mapping forest projects worldwide]
Most of us, if asked, would say it sounds like a great plan, save a tree and soak up the carbon. But most of us don't live here. And this man does. He's a farmer who lives between the GM and American Electric Power reserves.
[on camera] What an operation. Incredible? a huge tree he's been breaking down in about three-and-a-half minutes.
FARMER: [subtitles] Now it's ready to eat.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [voice-over] For this farmer, the forest is far more than a carbon sink. This endangered heart of palm provides food for his family.
FARMER: [subtitles] To eat? This is enough for five people.
MARK SCHAPIRO: But since the reserve was created 10 years ago, he hasn't been able to get access to the land where he and his family once found sustenance.
FARMER: [subtitles] The land isn't even theirs, it's ours. We're workers who live from the forest. They don't want human beings in the forest.
MARK SCHAPIRO: With all these new assets on the line, forest enforcement in Guaraquecaba has been stepped up. This branch of the state military, called the Green Police or Forca Verde, was established decades ago to protect against environmental crimes. Now, due to the avid American interest in the carbon, their mission has taken on a new focus, protecting the forest from the people who live there.
ANTONIO ALVES: [subtitles] They circled around here. They took out their gun and kicked in the door. I was there and came out, and the guy had a gun pointed at my chest.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Antonio Alves's land borders the GM reserve and he has had multiple run-ins with the Green Police. On one occasion he told us that his roof was leaking and he couldn't afford the materials to fix it. So he went out to find wood in the forest where he lives.
ANTONIO ALVES: [subtitles] And then two police officers showed up. One puts a gun right here. I looked at him and turned off my chainsaw. They handcuffed me right there. There is a law that you can't chop down a tree. It's not legal. But if you're not clear-cutting a forest, just cutting three or four trees to build a house, I don't think it's a crime. They think it is.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Alves spent 11 days in jail for his crime and has since moved away because of continued harassment by the Green Police. It's a complaint that's increased since the carbon reserves were established.
The Nature Conservancy declined to speak with us on camera. In public statements, they point to the jobs they've created in the reserve and their reforestation of degraded lands. They make no mention of those being displaced from the forest.
The Nature Conservancy's local partner, Clovis Borges, doesn't apologize for what they've accomplished here.
CLOVIS BORGES, Executive Director, SPVS: During our 17 years in Guaraquecaba, we were accused from everything. I think this is part of the process. What we are doing is try to demonstrate that we really were able to develop one project that can link the carbon with conservation. Maybe we are not right, but we are trying to deal with something very tough, and we don't have enough time because destruction of nature is happening everywhere very quickly.
MARK SCHAPIRO: The stakes here in Brazil are clear everywhere you go. Deforestation has made Brazil into the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitter. For years, they looked the other way. But now Brazil is facing the problem head on. We went to the front line of deforestation with a team of federal agents.
[on camera] The police ahead of us have heard that the guys we're going after may be coming down this road to escape as we're going towards them.
RADIO: [subtitles] It looks like there's a truck up ahead.
MARK SCHAPIRO: [voice-over] There they were, illegal loggers? truck after truck loaded with logs, all day and into the night. And this was just one road in one corner of the Amazon, but it was a scene likely playing itself out across the country.
In the light of day, the agents took stock of their catch. The scene was familiar. They were measuring the trees, but the numbers here told a very different story. This federal agent told us how much this tree is worth on the black market.
FEDERAL AGENT: [subtitles] A tree like this, the logger will sell it to a mill for $1,000.
MARK SCHAPIRO: One thousand dollars. In other words, a tree worth $1 on the carbon market could be worth a thousand times that to an illegal sawmill. Reversing these economics, the U.N. estimates, will take an immediate global investment of $25 billion. But who will pay for it? And who will get the money?
For centuries, foreigners have been coming to Brazil to extract its riches, and many started here in the port city of Manaus. It's a booming free-for-all at the gateway to the Amazon. And now the local governor is turning the tables.
EDUARDO BRAGA, Governor, Amazonas State: If you come to an Amazon and ask him, ``Well, give up all your jobs, all your economic base, because we need to save the trees,'' they're going to say, ``No, I need to feed my kids.''
MARK SCHAPIRO: Governor Eduardo Braga is a savvy politician and he's getting political traction by asserting control over his state's forests.
Gov. EDUARDO BRAGA: [at rally, subtitles] Taking care of our forest is fundamental for our future generations. Our people are the guardians of the forest, and we need to be recognized and paid for the environmental benefits that the forest creates for developed countries.
What we understand in Brazil is that the forest belongs to our people, but this forest is providing environmental service worldwide. So we must recognize that and we must pay the people who take care of these trees.
MARK SCHAPIRO: And that's exactly what Braga says he is doing. He invited us deep into the heart of the Amazon to see for ourselves. Here in the remote Juma Reserve, residents are actually paid not to cut down their trees and any carbon credits generated from this preservation are supposed to come back to the community.
Residents are trained to earn money from living trees, like sustainably harvesting rain forest nuts. They harvest acai, the Brazilian superfood. Their nursery produces essential elements for the perfume Chanel #5. They built a new school, the only one for miles. And where did they get the money to do all this?
[Marriott Hotels video]
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: When you stay at our hotel?
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: When you stay at our hotel?
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: You're burning energy, and it affects the climate.
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: Offset it!
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: Offset it!
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: Offset it!
MARK SCHAPIRO: Braga made a deal with the Marriott hotel chain, who gave $2 million to kick this project off the ground.
HOTEL EMPLOYEE: We've partnered with the Brazilian state of Amazonas and help set up a foundation.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Braga has been courting corporate sponsors to fund more than a dozen reserves here in the Amazon. Juma is considered to be the model, an experiment with a new strategy to protect the trees and pay the people. Families receive $25 dollars every month through a program called Bolsa Floresta.
The money is accessible at any ATM. The problem is getting to one. The closest ATM requires a two-day round-trip journey by boat. And it's expensive. They will have spent half the stipend on travel by the time they get home.
DALVINA ALMEIDA: [subtitles] It's not enough. That's the only problem. We don't have enough income to live.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Dalvina Almeida and her husband are farmers, and they say the Bolsa Floresta program that was supposed to be putting more money in their pockets has put them out of work.
DALVINA'S HUSBAND: [subtitles] We used to plant a lot. When this became a reserve, they told us we could no longer plant in the forest. Everyone signed up for Bolsa Floresta, but Bolsa Floresta can't sustain my family.
MARK SCHAPIRO: The head of Braga's program admits that it will take years for Juma to truly become sustainable. Some Brazilians dispute the very idea of relying on corporations to save the forest.
MARINA SILVA, Senator, Acre State: [subtitles] How can we preserve the forest and at the same time preserve your right to feed your children, send them to school, to live in dignity in the place that you've chosen to live?
MARK SCHAPIRO: Marina Silva is a senator from Braga's neighboring state. She grew up in the Amazon and is celebrated for slowing Brazil's rates of deforestation. She says that America needs to reduce its own emissions first, before Brazilian forests are put on the table.
MARINA SILVA: [subtitles] Otherwise, we are going to transfer the problem one more time to developing countries, and the developed countries are going to continue their same practices. The problem is not going to stop.
MARK SCHAPIRO: But carbon credits remain the key ingredient in the American strategy. At Copenhagen, the U.S. government pledged $1 billion to help bring the world's trees into the carbon market. And anticipating a new energy bill in Congress, multi-nationals continue to buy up forests to offset their emissions, a deal that major environmental groups argue is the way to get industry on board the legislation, calling it a ``win-win,'' good for business and good for the environment.
MICHAEL MORRIS, CEO, American Electric Power: You know, you always hear this classic ``win-win'' line, and I've never really bought much into the? you know, you win, I win. How can that be? But at the end of the day, if you think about biodiversity and you think about the capacity of forests to do the things that they do, and you know that they're a very effective carbon sink, it just makes sense. And protecting the current and remaining forests of the world and the deforestation effort we think makes a great deal of sense.
MARINA SILVA: [subtitles] We can't treat this problem like it's a business, a commercial relationship between countries. To talk about dealing with this issue just from the perspective of carbon credits is to skirt the responsibility we have to deal with the dangers our planet is facing.
MARK SCHAPIRO: Before I left the Amazon, I came upon one more place where the tensions in the forest were coming to a head. It was a scene that contained all the elements of this complicated story. These are illegal charcoal kilns.
[on camera] What this is doing is burning down the Amazon to create charcoal that ultimately ends up in a steel factory. And that steel factory makes automobile doors and many other items that start their journey right here.
[voice-over] We watched as the agents cracked down on the carvoeiros, or charcoal people, and the old and new carbon economies collided.
MAN: [subtitles] If you leave the charcoal, I'll destroy the kilns. I have kids to raise. How am I going to live? I'm going to have to rob people.
WOMAN: [subtitles] Go home.
MARK SCHAPIRO: It's a scene likely to be repeated, people struggling for survival and a forest that needs protection.
ANNOUNCER: Later tonight, in Uganda, we go to the hot zone of infectious disease?
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA, Wildlife Veterinarian: There is no buffer zone.
ANNOUNCER: ?where gorillas may be the next victims.
But first, in Guatemala, the ripple effect of an immigration crackdown.
POSTVILLE RESIDENT: The whole economy just went downhill. Everything is tough for everybody around here.
Guatemala: In the Shadow of the Raid
Reported by Greg Brosnan and
Jennifer Szymaszek
GREG BROSNAN, Reporter: [voice-over] Here in the highlands of Guatemala, the beauty of the countryside is deceptive. Life in these villages is a struggle. Abject poverty drives most of the younger men and women to travel to the United States illegally in search of work. But many return empty-handed.
At this back entrance to the Guatemala City airport, nearly every day families come from all over the country to wait for relatives who have just been deported by U.S. immigration officials. In the past year alone, some 30,000 deportees from the United States stepped through this gate, most of them penniless and in debt.
In the fall of 2008, William Toj was one of these returning deportees. He and many others from his village of El Rosario had been caught by immigration officials. They had been working at a meat-packing plant in the American heartland.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] We're home.
JACINTO TOJ, Father: [subtitles] You made it back, son.
GREG BROSNAN: William had only been in America for two months. He was arrested on the first day he began working illegally at the plant. The friends and family who turned out to console him knew their own sons and daughters were not far behind.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] Twenty minutes after the raid, everyone here knew we'd been caught. They say people here cried as much as in Postville.
GREG BROSNAN: William returned to his parents' house.
ANGELA TOJ, Mother: [subtitles] I have cancer. That's why they left. Now I need another operation. We need money. They have to remove this.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] It was all for nothing. I just got my family more in debt.
GREG BROSNAN: William was 30 years old with four children when he made the trip to the United States. But then came the raid. It was May 12, 2008, when federal agents stormed the Agriprocessors plant, the country's largest kosher meatpacker. The raid in Postville, Iowa, would become the biggest in U.S. history. Nearly 400 workers were arrested.
The government charged Agriprocessors and its manager, Sholom Rubashkin, with harboring undocumented aliens, employing children, and workplace health and safety violations.
Most of the men were charged with document fraud and sentenced to five months in prison, followed by deportation. The women who were sole caregivers of children were fitted with electronic tags and allowed to stay in Postville pending trial. They were banned from working.
WOMAN: [subtitles] I didn't even know what it was. They lifted my leg and put it on.
GREG BROSNAN: The raid had taken a fifth of the town's population. And for a time, it would put Postville at the center of the U.S. immigration debate.
Before the raid, Postville, Iowa, was a cultural curiosity, a bustling melting pot in the middle of the Iowa plains. At first glance, it doesn't look too different from any other small town in the rural Midwest. But over the years, hundreds of mostly undocumented Guatemalans and Mexicans settled here with their families, drawn by jobs at Agriprocessors. The plant was the nation's largest producer of kosher beef and chicken, founded in the 1980s by Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn. Hundreds of undocumented workers were a vital part of the local economy. They said they had risked everything to work here for $7 an hour.
Most of those arrested in Postville came from just two villages, El Rosario and San Jose Calderas. An economic lifeline from Postville once ran to nearly every home here. William Toj was just one of many here who said his hopes had been dashed.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] A part of me is happy. I'm with my parents, my wife and children. I have my family. But then I start thinking about my debt.
GREG BROSNAN: To make the trip north, William had borrowed $7,000, much of it from a local money lender who took his parents' home as collateral. He had to at least make the interest payments or his family would be on the street.
But there is no industry here, no steady jobs. Most families live off rented plots of land, growing just enough corn and beans to eat. Day labor is scarce and pays next to nothing.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] You earn $6 a day here working from 7:00 until 4:00. It's not even enough to pay the interest on my loan.
GREG BROSNAN: We went to the homes of some of the town's most vulnerable. Alejandra Zamora suffers from Alzheimer's. We had met her daughter in Postville. But Rosita was one of the women placed under house arrest after the raid and she can no longer send money back to her mother. She told us she feels helpless.
ROSITA ZAMORA: [subtitles] She's losing her mind. She wanders off and gets lost. She's not right in the head. She's relying on me to send her money, but I'm not working.
GREG BROSNAN: About 40 women faced months or even years in legal limbo here in Postville. They've been allowed to stay in the country temporarily to pursue claims of forced labor and abuse and to testify against Agriprocessors management. But their petition for full legal status was uncertain.
It's December in Iowa. Seven months have passed since the raid. With no decision yet over their cases, the women under house arrest say they are still living off of handouts.
Now, however, with the meat plant bankrupt, it isn't just Guatemalans who have to line up for donations from the local food bank.
POSTVILLE RESIDENT: When the plant got shut down, the whole economy just went downhill. It's just? everything is tough for everybody around here.
FOOD BANK VOLUNTEER: Before, we had 30, 35, 40 people, before the raid, is all that came through. And we have had as high as 165 in one afternoon.
GREG BROSNAN: While the rest of the country had slipped into recession, Postville was grinding to a complete halt.
HARDWARE STORE OWNER: Our sales in some areas have dropped 40 percent or more. You take a big city and take 400 jobs out, they got other places they can recoup. You take 400-plus jobs out of a town of 2,000 people, it hurts.
GREG BROSNAN: This kosher supermarket was once the pride of Postville's Jewish community. It thrived while Agriprocessors was at full capacity. Now that the plant was barely running, the deli's customers are out of work and its shelves are half empty. Manager Mordy Brown has not been paid in weeks.
MORDY BROWN: Every single person almost in the town almost without exception is really finding themselves having to cut back not just a little, just you know, really worry where the next, you know, dollar's going to come from.
GREG BROSNAN: That includes Mordy's wife, Leah.
LEAH BROWN: The saddest thing for me is watching people leave Postville, and people who don't want to leave Postville and who have been forced to leave, either because they're illegal immigrants or because they weren't hired back and there's no employment for them.
GREG BROSNAN: Guatemalan Jose Martinez had worked at the plant for nearly four years. He was on the night shift the day of the raid and wasn't caught. But he said there was nothing here for him now.
JOSE MARTINEZ: [subtitles] Like the old song goes, my dear village is the only place for me now.
GREG BROSNAN: Every day, someone seemed to be leaving.
TRAILER PARK RESIDENT: [subtitles] They call this place the ghost town now. Everyone's gone. When Agriprocessors stopped, everything stopped.
GREG BROSNAN: Back in Guatemala, the village bustled with life. There were people everywhere now. But most of the spectators here and many of the players are deportees from Postville who had served months in jail. Now they were back, but unemployed and in debt. The Sunday soccer game, they say, is only a brief escape from their troubles.
SPECTATOR: [subtitles] Today we can forget about all that we have been through. But tomorrow is Monday and we know there's no work. We get sad again.
GREG BROSNAN: For William Toj, it seems, life has been reduced to a single function, servicing a debt that threatens to consume his family. Unless he raises $180 by the 15th of every month, the money lender will take his family's home. In Postville, it would have taken him three days to earn this money. Here it takes all month.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] There isn't a moment of peace. Sometimes there's no work and you know that date is coming up.
GREG BROSNAN: Meanwhile, his mother's cancer is spreading.
ANGELA TOJ: [subtitles] It's hard enough just having enough food. There's no money for tests.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] All I can do is listen to her, suffer with her, and be there for her at the end.
GREG BROSNAN: By pulling together, they manage to feed themselves make the monthly payments to the money lenders' account.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] I know all I'll bring back is a receipt, proof that I've paid. You come back empty-handed and depressed.
GREG BROSNAN: William says his only real hope of paying off his debt is by returning to the U.S. at the risk of getting caught again, but this would mean leaving his family. If he stays, he knows without more skills there are few jobs, so he's teaching himself to read and write.
Meanwhile, the people of El Rosario are hoping things turn around.
JACINTO TOJ, Father: [subtitles] We failed. If my sons had stayed just one more year, they would have done what they needed to do. Let's hope this stops, that one day things change and that this new president gives people a chance.
GREG BROSNAN: So far, the Obama administration has been reluctant to carry out big workplace raids, pointing to the economic impact and the damage to immigrant families.
Meanwhile, in Postville, the town continues to struggle in the aftermath of the raid. Temporary workers brought in to Agriprocessors didn't work out.
NEWSCASTER: Canadian businessmen restarted the Postville plant last summer, and now there's yet another sign of progress.
GREG BROSNAN: The new owner recently renamed and reopened the meat line, but so far, below capacity. Late last year, the former head of the plant was convicted of fraud in federal court and now faces a state trial for labor abuses.
Last December, women like Rosita finally had their ankle tags removed. Some have won visas, but most are still in legal limbo. And back in El Rosario, some have begun to risk return to the U.S. But not William.
WILLIAM TOJ: [subtitles] When you hear someone has gone to the U.S., you're happy for him. You say ``He made it!'' because you don't know how they've suffered. Then you go yourself and you find out. But the American dream is no game. It can ruin your life.
ANNOUNCER: Finally, in Uganda, viruses jumping the species barrier with deadly consequences.
Uganda: Out of the Wild
Reported by Serene Fang
SERENE FANG, Reporter: [voice-over] In the lush mountains of western Uganda, tourists come to these dense forests in search of rare and exotic animals. What they don't anticipate is to come in contact with some of the world's rarest diseases. That's what happened to an American tourist recently who came down with a mysterious and deadly disease after visiting this cave known for its bats.
Dr. STUART NICHOL, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: We're still not exactly sure how she acquired the infection. So we know that she did enter into the mouth of the cave but didn't go very deep into the cave.
SERENE FANG: A team from the Centers for Disease Control found that she'd contracted Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever that causes extensive internal bleeding. Hers was the first case to reach the U.S.
Dr. STUART NICHOL: She would have had to put her hands down. You can imagine it's hot and sweaty. You know, you brush your face to, you know, push your hair back or something, and there's ways that you could get the virus onto your mucous membranes and get very efficient virus infection.
We've slowly pieced together that Marburg, this nasty hemorrhagic disease, they're getting it from the bat reservoir.
SERENE FANG: During the same period, another outbreak of hemorrhagic fever was devastating a remote village in the same region. It was discovered to be a new strain of the Ebola virus which scientists believe was transmitted to humans who ate infected bush meat.
NURSE: [subtitles] The blood is very, very contagious. I've cleaned it with chlorine, and someone from the CDC will come for the sample.
SERENE FANG: For public health experts, the Ebola and Marburg cases in Uganda were chilling examples of just how dangerous animal diseases could be to humans.
Dr. ALI KHAN, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: One of the common factors that links these emerging and new infectious diseases is that all of them actually started with an animal somewhere. So what we call these diseases is zoonotic diseases, diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans.
SERENE FANG: Uganda lies at the front lines for diseases that cross the species barrier. Plague, Ebola, anthrax, tuberculosis and HIV are all endemic here. The CDC has made Uganda a special focus for its work.
[www.pbs.org: Pandemics throughout history]
Dr. ALI KHAN: Uganda is also a really good example of a hotspot for where diseases arise. Infections due to animals represent 75 percent of all the emerging infectious diseases, and so if you're really going to tackle these diseases, you can't just focus on people. You need to focus on the animals, you need to focus on the environment, and that interface where those come together, to decrease infectious diseases worldwide.
SERENE FANG: The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest lies on Uganda's southern border. It's home to half the world's remaining population of mountain gorillas. We're headed into the forest to track a new gorilla family with Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. She's been studying diseases in the gorillas for 15 years and is known as the Dian Fossey of Uganda.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA, Wildlife Veterinarian: This is where they rested, over here.
I think what's so special about the great apes is that they're so similar to us. We share over 98 percent genetic material both with gorillas and chimpanzees, and it means that we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying them.
When you go to visit them in the wild, you actually feel like you're connecting. They look at you, you look at them, and there's some kind of connection. It's actually very therapeutic watching them. And the infant gorillas are very playful, just like humans. Like, when I see them playing, I think of my two children.
SERENE FANG: Gladys became Uganda's chief veterinarian when she was 26.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: I've always loved animals ever since I was little. And then at the age of 12, I really decided I wanted to be a vet.
SERENE FANG: The BBC even made a documentary about her first year on the job.
BBC NARRATOR: This young woman's got a fight on her hands, but she's determined to make her mark in a tough world.
SERENE FANG: Nine months into the job as country's chief vet, Gladys was called to treat a family of gorillas who were suffering from a troubling new disease.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: The gorillas are losing hair and developing white, scaly skin. The baby gorilla had lost almost all its hair and was very thin. And the mother, where she was carrying the baby, had also lost a lot of hair. And the baby was making crying sounds, which is extremely abnormal for gorillas. And I visited a human doctor friend of mine because they could have picked it up from people. And she said it's scabies.
SERENE FANG: Scabies is a minor skin infection for humans, but gorillas were naive to the disease. For Gladys, it was the first time she saw a human disease jump to mountain gorillas with fatal consequences.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: This is a really good area to show that there's no buffer zone and the forest cuts directly onto the hill. So that means gorillas come out often because they think it's still part of their normal range, and that's when they get in touch with contaminated items from people. They could even? like there, there's a field? they could even just find dirty clothing on a scarecrow which is set out to scare wild animals, and then they get sick.
SERENE FANG: Recognizing this link between wildlife health and human health marked a turning point in Gladys's thinking.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: It made me realize that you can't protect the gorillas if you don't think about the people living around the park who have very little health care. And because we're so closely genetically related, we can easily get diseases from each other. The only long-term and sustainable method to improve the gorillas' health is by improving the health of the people living around the park. And not just the people, but their livestock, as well.
Dr. WILLIAM KARESH, Wildlife Conservation Society: When we say that there's human health or there's livestock health or there's wildlife health, and that? we just made that up. That's not? there's only one health.
SERENE FANG: Dr. William Karesh heads the global health program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Dr. WILLIAM KARESH: There's just a tiny percentage of diseases that only affect one group. So when we eradicated smallpox around the world, that was a simple one because that's one of the few diseases that only affects humans.
SERENE FANG: He says the most difficult diseases are the ones we share.
Dr. WILLIAM KARESH: We want to work upstream. If animals are the source of a disease, we want to break the chain from people from getting it. If people are the source of the disease, we need to break the chain going in that direction. And it really does play out at the local level. Until you get it on the ground, like Gladys is doing, it doesn't really mean anything.
SERENE FANG: We've come to a small village near the forest boundary, where Gladys has gathered the community to watch a drama play about tuberculosis, a serious problem in Uganda.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: This is showing a good family and a bad family, so that the bad family, like, threw rubbish next to the garden and defecated. And the gorillas came and was exposed to this. So then the good family, which is a man dressed as a woman, came in and cleared everything up and told them off.
ACTOR: [subtitles] Oh, my God! You've started bringing your waste from your home to my garden! Now what's going to happen? Won't the wild animals catch TB?
SERENE FANG: High rates of HIV/AIDS and little available health care leave people highly susceptible to infectious diseases like TB. Simple hygiene education can help.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: So this is a family. They're dirty. Some of them don't have shoes?
SERENE FANG: But Gladys also finds volunteers to gather samples from villagers with chronic coughs?
MAN: So he says he has been coughing for about five months.
SERENE FANG: ?and makes sure that those that test positive for TB follow through with the full course of treatment. There's a problem with the local cattle, as well. They carry a strain of bovine tuberculosis which can sicken humans who drink infected cow's milk.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: These cows could carry TB infection into the humans, which would be a big shame in this community because are improving the health of the community. So we're going to carry out TB testing with the samples. And if there is any cow that has TB, unfortunately, it has to be euthanized.
SERENE FANG: She's doing all this because she knows how easily this disease could jump to gorillas.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: If the gorillas got TB, it would be a disaster. TB requires daily treatment every day for eight months, and it's impossible to do that in the forest setting. It's easier for people to get that.
I'm just trying to record all the gorillas I've seen so by the end of the visit, I can tell [unintelligible] gorillas in the group.
We're developing an early warning system for disease outbreaks. If we collect fecal samples regularly, then when there's an outbreak, we'll be able to tell what's different and be more informed and give a proper treatment.
SERENE FANG: What began a decade ago for Gladys as an understanding that animal and human health are tethered together has become a new policy for organizations like the CDC.
Dr. ALI KHAN: We think of ``one health'' as not just about human public health, ``one health'' is about human and animal public health. And increasingly, what this strategy is telling us is we need to be working more closely in an integrated manner with the animal public health field.
SERENE FANG: In Bwindi, Gladys remains worried. Diseases far worse than TB have caused major die-offs in other primate populations. In the Congo basin, wildlife experts estimate that more 5,000 lowland gorillas have died of Ebola over the last decade.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: In Congo-Brazzaville, they've had people dying of Ebola who ate gorillas that died of Ebola. They were very encouraged by what we're doing in Uganda, and so now they're trying to bring the wildlife authorities together with the public health authorities to address these issues.
SERENE FANG: Health authorities are also concerned about the further spread of these emerging diseases.
Dr. ALI KHAN: Once upon a time, it would have taken days, weeks, months to go from one continent to another continent. Nowadays, within 24 to 48 hours, you can travel from one place to the other place and still be incubating the disease. So its very easy to transmit diseases worldwide.
Dr. GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: Sometimes it gets frustrating when you're trying to promote conservation. There's so many other pressing issues. But what gives me hope is that by promoting conservation, we're improving community public health around a very remote area of Uganda.
That's it. We're done here. We can head back.
ANNOUNCER: There's more of the world to explore on our Web site. Visit Carbon Watch, a multi-platform investigation into the carbon economy and just voted a winner in this year's Webby Awards. See more of our coverage on immigration and the border. Also, hear a story of survival from the forest. Discuss the world and tell us what you think of our Stories From a Small Planet at PBS.org.
Next time on FRONTLINE
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ANNOUNCER: FRONTLINE investigates the invisible scars of war.
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ANNOUNCER: The Wounded Platoon next time on FRONTLINE.
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