From NFL Cheerleader to Nat Geo Explorer, Mireya Mayor Takes Viewers to the World’s Wildest Places in Order to Save Them.

by David Schmalz
Monterrey County Weekly

Mireya Mayor is an unlikely adventurer. Raised in Miami by Cuban immigrant parents, she had a “girly girly” upbringing of ballet, dance classes and little contact with nature. The small hills outside of Orlando she thought were mountains were actually landfill. When she asked her mother if she could join the Girl Scouts, she was told it was too dangerous. But Mayor always had a passion for animals, and as a child kept dogs, cats, birds and fish. She carried that love with her to the University of Miami, where an anthropology class that introduced her to the work of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey planted the seeds of a dream. “It changed the course of my entire life,” she says. “I realized that I could turn that passion into a career, and make a difference in the animal world.” Mayor got a grant at the end of her senior year to study monkeys in South America for five months, launching a decorated career that includes discovering a rare and critically endangered mouse lemur in Madagascar. A chance meeting with National Geographic producers followed, and ultimately led to her becoming a Nat Geo TV host and celebrity that earned her the nickname “female Indiana Jones.” But before all that, as a college student, she became a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. “It wasn’t a very straight line into this career,” she says.

Weekly: Were you at all prepared for what was in store on that first trip to South America?

Mayor: I went to South America with a brand new passport, and I had never been camping. I had a designer Calvin Klein field vest that was dry clean-only. It was a comedy of errors, but I threw myself in heart first, and it was a steep learning curve, but it was amazing.

Were there moments you were afraid?

There were definite moments of discomfort, if not straight-up fear. There were times I’d wake up to being bitten by a vampire bat. Or I’d find a spider the size of a dinner plate in my tent. Those were moments where I was thinking, “Shit, what am I doing here?” But those moments are fewer than waking up to howling monkeys, or seeing river otters playing around your canoe. Or discovering a species new to science.

What changed that first trip?

I went out on the initial expedition with a specific scientific-minded goal, and I came out of it a passionate conservationist. It became more important to me to protect these animals than to document their behavior. If they were to go extinct, they’d become the stuff of history books, not science books.

What are some of the most incredible things you’ve seen?

Coming face to face with a silverback gorilla in the wild. There are moments it can be scary; it is a 450-pound silverback gorilla. They’re not aggressive, but you know their strength and potential to harm you if they wanted. There were some moments when I was charged, like when one of the male silverbacks was getting blown off by the females all day, and I was getting the brunt of it. But it’s almost like peering through your neighbor’s window, seeing their daily ins and outs and arguments. It’s real life, but it’s the world of gorillas. To be able to catch even a glimpse of that is really special. I still pinch myself.

Scariest moment?

I was in the Congo on a flight that went down. It started to go down over a forest, and I looked out the window and suddenly we’re skimming trees, and we were going downward rather quickly, but they managed to maneuver the plane into a clearing, and luckily everyone walked off unharmed.

What’s the most important message to tell people about conservation?

Every single creature on the planet serves a role. Without the lemurs, the forests of Madagascar are certainly doomed. We’re learning more and more about the symbiotic relationship they have with the forest. Most immediately it affects the people locally, but globally, extinctions will start to have a domino effect of biodiversity and the sustainability of life everywhere on the planet. They’re just a drop in the bucket, but even if you don’t want to like lemurs, you sort of have to.