During his unprecedented expedition into the heart of the Amazon, Michigan State University geographer Bob Walker discovered surprising evidence that many of the Brazilian government’s efforts to protect the environment are working. As expected, Walker and two fellow scientists – the first research team to travel a 700-mile stretch of the so-called Transamazon Highway in the western Amazon basin – confirmed the existence of illegal logging and gold-mining operations that threaten further damage to the world’s largest rainforest. In this video Bob Walker and Eugenio Arima describe their research trip along the western Transamazon Highway in Brazil. Credit: Michigan State University