Speaking from his home in New York, he talks about how a childhood speech impediment made him bond with jaguars, how a fur coat worn by Jackie Kennedy triggered a catastrophic decline in jaguar populations, and how looking to jaguars could help us deal with problems we face, like climate change.

From the earliest time I can remember, I was unable to speak the way other people speak, fluently and easily. I was born with a debilitating stutter. I had very, very bad speech blocks and would spasm and shake, trying to get the words out. They called it "frozen mouth" at the time. So my entire childhood was filled with the feeling that I was not normal. But from a