Genre: Feature-length; action-adventure; family entertainment
Log line: Time is short and the water rises.
Synopsis: In 1962, Alcoa manufactures the first pull-tab aluminum can—the breweries love it and a transformative new industry is launched. Because the process demands intensive mining and massive electricity for smelting the ore, Alcoa turns to Suralco (its mining subsidiary in Suriname, South America) to build a hydro-electric dam across the Suriname River. The people and animals inhabiting the 900 square-mile jungle area are not a consideration.
Behind the Afobaka Dam, the water forms a vast spreading lake. Many native villages are submerging; thousands of animals are in peril. Although Commissioner Jan Michels oversees the woeful relocation of 6,000 Saramakas out of the flooded area, he can do nothing for the trapped animals who will surely die. In 1964, Michels pleas for assistance from the International Society for the Protection of Animals (ISPA) in Boston, Massachusetts. “Time is short”, he writes, “and the water rises”.
ISPA dispatches 24-year-old John Walsh to conduct this unprecedented animal-rescue effort in the most difficult tropical terrain. Walsh has never been out of New England. He has never caught jungle animals. He has never managed a project. The question is not so much whether he will save the animals, but whether he will survive at all. Yet the animals are dying and there is no one else to send.
Walsh initially approaches the challenge with boyish enthusiasm, confident he can accomplish the job with the skills he has developed as an Agent for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as well as his own innate abilities. And, in the beginning, it all seems to go according to plan. John and his team of 40 Saramakas (descendents of African slaves who revolted against the plantation owners and live in the bush) work very effectively together. His only obstacle is the occasional confrontation with a native called Kyli, who pilfers their gas drums and whom Walsh suspects to be involved in animal-trafficking.
By mid-project, conditions change. The water is rising faster. Money for the project runs out and he cannot pay his men. Animals are being poached under his nose. Then the rainy season comes—rusting the equipment, hindering the rescue, bringing disease. The Saramakas want to go home. John gets a rare bat-borne virus, parasites, fungus, and finally the worst of all happens…he over-tranquilizes a peccary and it dies. When he is hospitalized with Dengué fever, it seems impossible to continue. But he is tormented by the dire urgency of saving the animals as the water increasingly isolates them from escape.
This is the story of that adventure—how Walsh lives for two years in the bush with his team of Saramakas, forging friendships with his foreman (Wimpy) and assistant (Sime), and how together, racing against time and against all odds, they save nearly 10,000 animals from drowning and starvation. Only the characters of the real poacher and Kyli are fictionalized composites, and some of the minor characters are given fictitious names.
Operation Gwamba (meaning “animal” in Saramakan) remains to this day the largest animal rescue project in history since Noah. The project was featured in Life magazine, on Walter Cronkite’s Twentieth Century (t.v. program), as well as in many other media venues. Walsh went on to write a book (Time is Short and the Water Rises) and have his own PBS show (Walsh’s Animals). He has subsequently conducted numerous animal-rescue projects in both manmade and natural disasters around the world, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the Gulf War I as featured in the Nova special, “Saddam’s War on Wildlife.” He is the recipient of many awards, including Hollywood’s Genesis Award, as well as other national and international recognition.
