he saw this python in one of the
waterways and jumped on top of it
wrestled it
unfortunately then the animals are
always destroyed
[Music]
my name is aaron jakovsky and i'm an
environmental photojournalist and
filmmaker
[Music]
this photo here was taken at a place
called safari world
wildlife tourism is a 250 billion dollar
per year industry
i went to thailand which is known as the
epicenter of the wildlife tourism
industry
when you visit orangutans in captivity
when you look at them and you see behind
their eyes
a lot of them this they're just gone
there's nothing there anymore
this photograph shows this very noble
ancient animal with this very human
expression on its face
and it sits there with her foot
primed on the on the ring ready to
perform and it's this kind of look of
resignation on her face was kind of like
how did my life
come to be like this the way that they
train orangutans to perform
is using these incredibly cruel
techniques they're often
fed the wrong diet they might be housed
with other orangutans
despite the fact that they're solitary
in nature others are found
lying on the floor orangutans are
arboreal
they never encounter the floor in the
wild the behaviors that you see these
orangutans exhibit in wildlife tourism
attractions
are as unnatural as you get
this particular image was taken when i
was making a documentary about pythons
and the exotic pet trade
so you may ask how did burmese pythons
end up in the everglades
people who were keeping burmese pythons
as pets
simply lost interests or the animals
became too big
to handle and what we have seen over
recent years is
that the everglades has now become
overrun with these animals
and they have no natural predators they
have wiped out pretty much all small
mammal species
they even predate on the alligators
there so in order to combat this problem
the authorities have started
incentivizing people to go out there
and hunt the pythons and as part of the
documentary we went and we filmed a
guide called dusty crumb
dusty was brought up in the everglades
he's a very thoughtful very intelligent
guy who cares
deeply about the ecosystem here in the
everglades
and he saw this python in one of the
waterways and
jumped on top of it wrestled it i also
kind of got down to the edge of the
water with him
managed to get down to eye level and
snap this quite fortuitous shot
this project about pythons and the
exotic pet trader lasted a year or two
these stories always go on a lot longer
than you think
takes you in different directions to
different countries meeting different
people
and that's what i find so fascinating
about these stories
this photo was looking at the recent
craze in otters
that are being kept as exotic pets
around southeast asia
particularly in japan we were going to
film in this
apartment block in tokyo this lady who
has these two very famous
pet otters i think they have like 300
000
fans on on instagram so we get to this
apartment block
and all we hear is this wall of noise
this
screeching that greets us as we go and
knock on her door
and this very tired resigned japanese
lady lets us
in we just see these tiny little hands
that are scurrying under the door and
this
stench she opens the door and these
two little crazy tasmanian devils
just then go on to wreak havoc they're
climbing on the furniture
this was a very lucky photograph i saw
the otter running along the windowsill
and there's her two or three year old
daughter who's looking out to the
cityscape behind
it's almost like a scene from a horror
movie you
have this kind of ghostly figure of the
the daughter looking out behind then you
have the silhouette of the otter running
along the windowsill
it's a very sinister suggestive image
we've also seen a craze over recent
years where otters are being used in
cafes
and again it's it's social media that is
fueling a lot of these crazies
otters are being plucked from the wild
the parents are killed in order to get
the babies
they're then smuggled into the exotic
pet market and now
otters are being sold for up to twelve
thousand dollars each
every year in cambodia around three
million dogs
are killed for the dog meat trade
they're rounded up from the streets they
are then
stuffed into cages with other dogs
transported around the country
and then they're taken to the
slaughterhouses where they are killed in
these drowning pits
this was uh a very very difficult story
to work on
this particular image was taken at a
restaurant
outside of phnom penh and it shows
this dog lying
what seems to be peacefully in a in a
bucket of blood
and i think what makes it so powerful is
that it
it kind of hints at this brutality
without
throwing it in your face uh you have to
be very careful
in this line of work that you don't
really repel people with your imagery
and you don't create shots that are
simply so disturbing or so
grotesque that people will look away
this
particular project was a real success
the story went viral on social media
and then it kind of shames the
government into acting
and now in the province of siem reap the
dog meat trade has been made illegal
i'm not saying that that's just because
of my work
my work was a contributing factor it's
mainly down
to the tireless campaigning of four paws
that this happened
a lot of the people who are killing dogs
there they're not doing it because they
want to all because they enjoy it
they're just simply trying to feed their
families a lot of the planet lives off
less than two dollars a day and we have
a lot of hungry desperate people who are
doing what they can to just try and
survive we're in the midst of a
sixth mass extinction event and all over
the world animals are being
consumed traded humiliated
and we have the opportunity to do
something about it
and as photographers we can document the
truth and we can show people what is
happening
you