Larsen has both Bolivian and U.S. citizenship. He moved to Nebraska after he and his brother were the victims of an attempted kidnapping in the early 1980s (his father shot three of the five armed kidnappers dead in their home during the incident). After graduating from Montana State University in Bozeman, Larsen eventually made his way back to Bolivia in his mid-20s to work with his father, Ronald, whose landholdings included a 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) cattle ranch that a few years later would be seized by the Bolivian government in a contentious dispute.

In the aftermath of the seizure, Ronald fled Bolivia and Duston began managing another smaller holding, named San Miguelito, on the road to Brazil. San Miguelito, which covers 2,800 hectares (6,900 acres) at the junction of three ecological regions — the seasonally flooded Chaco alluvial plains, the Chaco subtropical forest, and the Cerrado dry forests of the Chiquitano shield — was already known for its wildlife thanks to camera-trapping work by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum, which had revealed a rich assemblage of six different wild cats and other animals. Those studies were published and conducted at that time by Damian Rumiz, who now works for the Simón I. Patiño Foundation, and still helps San Miguelito with jaguar identification.

Larsen loved animals, so when he took over San Miguelito he continued to follow in his father’s footsteps to protect its resident wildlife, including maintaining habitat and prohibiting hunting. But he also had to consider Bolivian laws that required landowners to demonstrate “productive use” of their holdings, which in these parts usually translates to cutting down trees for cattle or soy, so as not to run into a situation that could lead to the government seizing the ranch.

“In Bolivia the landowner must complete the FES [Economic Social Function] of the land, which means you need at least one head of cattle, buffalo, or horse for every 5 hectares [12 acres] of land,” Larsen told Mongabay as he collected memory cards from camera traps along a trail where he often sees jaguar tracks. “This puts a lot of pressure on landowners to clear their land.

“We have cleared small areas of San Miguelito in order to feed our cattle, but I have always stressed to the operators the importance of keeping medium and large trees,” he added.

Larsen previously ran a lodge on the other ranch before it was seized by the government, but he hadn’t done much to develop ecotourism in San Miguelito until he met an Australian ecotourism entrepreneur named Nick McPhee, who runs Nick’s Adventure Bolivia, which operates throughout the country. McPhee had heard of San Miguelito thanks to WCS’s camera-trapping work that had documented wild cats, including several jaguars, on the property and garnered it a measure of fame in conservation circles.

“I found out about San Miguelito from reading a camera trap study about jaguars,” McPhee told Mongabay as we bounced along a rutted dirt road toward Lomas de Arena, an area where sand dunes contrast sharply with the adjacent forest and wetlands. “I met Duston by chance through a friend. At the time there was no tourism at all and he told me they lose a lot of cows and that jaguars and pumas were being killed in the area.”

When Larsen invited him out to San Miguelito, McPhee jumped at the opportunity. McPhee brought a couple of camera traps with him, which proved to be the clincher in persuading Larsen to develop ecotourism on the ranch.

“I was immediately hooked by the images and videos taken by the trail cams on our property,” he said.