“Years ago, our grandparents still lived in the forest and carried their children to their farms every day. But one day, this family left their baby boy at home with his older brothers. They were playing and didn’t pay attention to the little boy, who followed his parents to the farm. On his way, he came across a giant armadillo, who took him to her burrow and raised him as her very own. She fed him with beetle larvae and ants, slept with him in her burrow during the day, and took him all around the forest on her back at night.”
Naturally rare and poorly known, giant armadillos are ‘ecosystem engineers’, because their burrows provide habitat for at least 24 other species, which means their loss has a cascading, harmful effect on all animals and plants that benefit from their role.
“In those days, giant armadillos were like humans, according to our belief.”
“Fearing the boy had been eaten by a jaguar, the parents went to a shaman, who told them he was still alive and living with the giant armadillo. When they found the boy, he didn’t recognize them. He already had the spirit of the giant armadillo. The shaman did rituals and prayed until he changed the boy’s mind back into that of a human. The family named him Rider of the Giant Armadillo in the Wapichan language: Kapashi/maroro pakizon. It is said his children and grandchildren are still alive today, living here in our territory.”
As 47-year-old Angelbert Johnny tells this story, the thought that he himself could very well be a descendant of the Rider of the Giant Armadillo is inevitable. Angelbert was born in Wapichan territory in a village called Sawariwau, one of the oldest in Guyana’s South Rupununi region, near the northern border of the Brazilian Amazon.
The South Rupununi region is a unique mosaic of interlinked wetland, forest and savannah ecosystems, which serve as a critical connection between the Guyana Shield and the Amazon Basin, two of the world’s most biodiverse, carbon-rich and intact forests. The area is home not only to the Wapichan, but also to other Indigenous Peoples like the Makushi and the Wai Wai, all of whom are highly dependent on these ecosystems.
From Ranger to Leader
Angelbert first got involved with environmental conservation over 20 years ago, after noticing a decline in wildlife around his community. When a rare, endangered bird (the Red Siskin, Spinus cucullatus) was found in a nearby village, he joined a group of friends to protect it by forming a small conservation committee, which later became the South Rupununi Conservation Society (SRCS), the leading grassroots, Indigenous-led conservation organization in Guyana today.
What started as passionate volunteering has now evolved into a prominent career. Angelbert was first trained as a ranger in a SRCS Red Siskin project supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). After working as a ranger and serving a term as vice president of SRCS, he was selected to manage a new SGP-supported project focused on researching and protecting two of the most iconic and vulnerable species of the Eastern Deep South Rupununi: the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus) and the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla).