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Lex & Paul Rosolie: Jungle Keeper

3:14:26 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

First filmed contact with the Mashko Piro turns Jungle Keepers' fight for 130,000 acres into protecting people.

  1. Protecting the river now means protecting peoplePaul says Jungle Keepers inadvertently became caretakers of a civilization whose one mandate is to remain isolated.
  2. Peace and violence one day apartBananas, rope, shared gestures and singing on the beach, then arrows through George's boat the next morning.
  3. The remaining 200,000 acres is their territoryMost of the land still to be bought is Mashko Piro ground that landowners would otherwise sell to loggers, miners or narcos.
Executive Summary AI
  • Paul Rosalie tells Lex Friedman that Jungle Keepers now protects more than 130,000 acres of Peruvian rainforest and is working toward 200,000 more, while facing narco-traffickers, illegal loggers and gold miners.12:05
  • His new book Jungle Keeper opens with two loggers killed in August 2024 by warriors of the uncontacted Mashko Piro after they felled an ancient ironwood, a tree that can reach 160 feet and that Paul has found at 1,200 years old.13:06
  • In October 2024 a satellite-phone call from a remote indigenous community said the tribes were coming out, so the directors cancelled their meetings, got on a boat at 6 p.m. with ranger Ignacio and compressed a two-day river journey into one night of lightning and rain.21:46
  • The next day roughly fifty naked warriors with seven-foot bows walked onto the beach while the women raided the farm behind the camp; the anthropologist Rommel calmed them by calling nomole, brothers, and pushing out canoes piled with plantains, and the team filmed what Paul says is the first documented interaction with this group.27:41
  • The following morning about 200 of the tribe surrounded a boat and fired arrows, putting a seven-foot arrow through the ranger George from above his scapula out by his belly button; he was medevaced by helicopter and survived.52:26
Key Quote
“They see us as the destroyers of worlds.”
— Paul Rosalie19:43
Key Quote
“It's burned into my memory, them walking down the beach and seeing them with the bows.”
— Paul Rosalie32:03
Key Quote
“It was two tribes looking at each other with a thousand years of civilization between them.”
— Paul Rosalie36:21