Paul Rosolie: Uncontacted Tribes in the Amazon Jungle | Lex Fridman Podcast #489

On his third appearance, Paul Rosolie describes Jungle Keepers' work protecting over 130,000 acres of remote Peruvian rainforest and a historic October 2024 encounter with an uncontacted Mashco Piro (Nomole) tribe, which his team filmed and recorded for the first time ever. He recounts the tense, dangerous contact in which warriors with seven-foot bows emerged from the jungle asking for bananas and demanding people stop cutting their trees, followed the next day by a violent arrow attack that nearly killed a community member. The conversation also covers the escalating narco-trafficking drug war on the river, where Paul and his partner JJ now have a hit out on them after a friend was murdered. Throughout, Paul reflects on Jane Goodall's influence on his career, his anaconda and wildlife work, his writing process, and the broader mission to preserve one of Earth's last intact wild places.

• Rosolie's new book Jungle Keeper opens with two loggers being killed by warriors of the uncontacted Mashco Piro tribe in August 2024.
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• The footage Rosolie shares of the uncontacted tribe is a world first: the first time the tribe has been filmed, their voices heard, and a documented interaction recorded.
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• The day after the peaceful contact, 200 tribe members ambushed a community boat with arrows, shooting George through the body just above the scapula and out by his belly button; he was medevacked and survived.
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• When the indigenous community called on a satellite phone saying the tribes were emerging, Rosolie's team did a two-day boat journey in a single night through a lightning storm to reach them.
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• After Rosolie's team flew a drone over a narco clearing, narcos did a drive-by and shot a police officer in the chest, killing him hours after Rosolie had shaken his hand.
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• Narcos put a hit out on Rosolie and JJ; police intercepted a WhatsApp chat reading, 'If you see JJ or the gringo, anyone in our network, please kill them. You'll be rewarded.'
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• During COVID, going through a divorce and broke, Rosolie quit conservation entirely; four days later Dax Dasilva called offering a 10-year funding commitment to Jungle Keepers.
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• The tribe's bamboo-tipped arrows are about seven feet long, fletched with a twist so they spin in flight, and sharp enough to cut meat; warriors can hit a spider monkey from 40 meters.
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• When Rosolie first went to Peru in 2006, the Peruvian government's official position was that the uncontacted tribes were a myth that did not exist.
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• The tribe appears to call themselves 'Nomole' (meaning 'brothers'); 'Mashco' means 'wild Piros,' and Piro is the broader group they belong to.
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• The tribe can imitate animal calls with enough complexity to give basic commands, using Capuchin and Tinamou calls to communicate.
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• Narcos build hidden airstrips by clearing only the interior beneath the canopy so the trees still meet overhead, making them nearly impossible to detect by satellite or plane.
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• Only about 17 to 20 percent of the macaw population reproduces in a given year because nesting hollows occur only in ancient ironwood trees at least 500 years old.
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• The biggest anaconda Rosolie has physically caught was just under 20 feet (named Millie); at that size they are apex predators and almost always choose flight over fight.
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• From a tree over 100 feet up, Rosolie witnessed the 'Mist River', more water reportedly flows above the Amazon canopy as moisture than flows in the river itself.
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• Conservationist Dax Dasilva (founder of Age of Union) made a 10-year commitment to Jungle Keepers and wrote the book Echoes from Eden about frontline conservation heroes.
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• Globally there are about 25 million cocaine users, fueling a multi-billion dollar industry that has pushed narco operations deep into the lawless Amazon.
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