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Born in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, my fascination with nature manifested early, as I camped outdoors and roamed forests collecting and pinning insects. My family and my own wanderings took me across various countries, where I pondered the absence of wildlife I knew from books, finally returning to Brazil and witnessing the desolation of our Atlantic Forest with new eyes. During my undergraduate years in Rio de Janeiro, amidst an empty ecoregion for which few parts remain, I learned that the extinction of megafauna and its lingering impacts on the planet were mainly caused by human activity during the Pleistocene. It was during my doctoral research in South Africa that I encountered a remarkable abundance of megafauna, once again shaped by human actions, but this time to sustain their existence through management. As nearly all the Earth is altered in some way by people, I strive to consider these impacts when studying biodiversity to avoid making grave misinterpretations of current patterns. I am also very interested in the concept of rewilding, or the reintroduction of megafauna to areas they have been extirpated from to restore lost ecosystem functions. Recently, I relocated from South Africa to study these topics in the fascinatingly diverse archipelago of Japan.