#2441 - Paul Rosolie

We’re wrangling the dog, keeping him out from under the camera, and laughing through a few wet kisses before we get rolling.

He’s a sweetheart, and yeah, I just put out that uncontacted tribe video; hitting publish felt risky.

You didn’t film that live, right, and how did that encounter even work?

They approached us across the river asking for plantains and rope, we kept distance, asked them to lower their bows, and made no physical contact while a local intermediary passed food by canoe.

The fighting over food looked intense; is daily survival that hard out there?

There’s no storage or refrigeration, so everything is day‑to‑day, and their two clear messages were more food and stop cutting our biggest trees.

Deforestation’s been brutal; how much is actually gone, and what’s driving it?

Roughly twenty percent of the Amazon is already lost, cattle ranching drives most of it, and new roads and mining push deeper as we try to stitch together a corridor that can become a national park.

It’s wild they cut a highway for a climate summit; that kind of short‑term thinking is crazy.

As we near the finish line, resistance grows from logging mafias and small‑time narcos, even as more people support protecting this river.

You’ve been flipping loggers into rangers; does that actually work?

It does when you offer better pay, gear, and a team, and leaders like JJ—who just got recognized internationally—show communities how protection benefits their own forests.

LiDAR keeps revealing ancient settlements; is the forest more human‑shaped than we thought?

Sites near rivers show terra preta and useful trees planted in higher numbers, but most of the vast uplands remain wild; overstating human engineering risks giving politicians cover to manage it like a farm.

Those giant river turtles are enormous; people farmed them, right?

Along certain river stretches, yes—turtles, pottery, and dark soils show localized cultivation, but that doesn’t describe the majority of the basin.

You’ve eaten turtle and monkey with communities; how do you square that with conservation?

When you’re a guest, you eat what’s served, and we focus on teaching seasons, restraint, and tracking what’s hunted so there are still monkeys and turtles for the next generation.

Do people want to keep that life, or move to town?

They usually want the same life with better health and education, and we help with the hard part—recognition papers and land titles—so their territory is legally theirs.

Mining scars are shocking; it’s not just trees, it’s mercury in the air and fish.

Mining burns the forest, vacuums the land, and cooks mercury off gold so it rains back down into waterways, sickening miners and families while fires kill wildlife by the millions.

The forest is so vast that finding rare species can feel impossible, which is why those sloth stories linger.

Wildlife clusters in specific pockets, locals guard secrets, and even if something exists, you might walk a lifetime and never cross its valley.

A lot of modern medicine has rainforest roots; what remedies do locals lean on?

Dragon’s blood sap is a potent topical antibacterial, and traditional knowledge like that thrives where intact ecosystems keep disease cycles in check—once you clear forest, mosquitoes explode.

You posted your stingray injury; how did you get through that?

It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but they cooked a bark‑and‑fiber poultice and pressed it on hot, pulling venom out and preventing nerve damage and infection when a hospital likely wouldn’t know what to do fast enough.

People say the jungle teaches ayahuasca; maybe our dulled senses miss signals that trackers still hear.

Guides read birds like a live weather and predator feed, and that same sensitivity helped me calm a drowning spider monkey by mimicking her calls so she’d let me guide her tail and paddle to shore.

Scarcity drives hard choices; I’ve seen places eat down to baboons or small birds when everything else is gone.

We’re teaching villages to pause during birthing seasons and count what comes in, because firearms make overhunting too easy and empty forests push people into desperation.

You ran into a recently contacted group being exploited; what happened?

Missionaries lured them out, then demanded money for fuel to return, and when JJ handed over a few coins so they could buy bread, dozens swarmed him like he held the only way to eat—pure, dangerous hunger.

That frontier sounds dark, with fear turning strangers into targets.

We heard of hikers murdered preemptively by men who’d convinced themselves outsiders were organ raiders, and you can feel eyes sizing up your boat, your watch, your tent.

Then there are the narcos; how did that flare up around your river?

We spotted a clearing with a drone, got chased by armed men, alerted police who later raided a massive site with sacks of white powder, and not long after a cop was assassinated and messages put bounties on JJ and me.

You were ambushed too?

Gunmen blocked our driver on a logging road asking for us by name, and JJ dodged it only because he turned back at the last minute; after that we traveled with security while pushing to lock the corridor as protected land.

What’s the status now—are they still after you, and can local police hold the line?

It was hair‑on‑fire for months and remains risky, but the officers we work with have been brave and straight, arresting small growers and backing our push to turn this river into a park that gives locals jobs and real protection.

How many small narco outfits are out there?

Peru’s now cranking out so much cocaine it may have passed Colombia, and that chaos bleeds into the forest, but locals are pushing back. This work is dangerous—one night a tree smashed our ranger station during a storm and pinned a ranger’s face; we chainsawed her out, she walked away with a scratch, and she’s still on patrol because she wants that jungle safe for her kids.

It seems like the danger is part of what pulls you in.

I won’t deny it—I grew up dreaming of the wild, not a desk, and the river at 4 a.m. feels like church. Even on a “quiet” day I’ll end up on a log with an eleven-foot anaconda, showing people it’s not out to bite me; most of the time, it just slides back into the water.

Do big snakes have predators?

When they’re small, sure—herons, crocs, piranha, even pelicans that gulp things whole. In the jungle we also deal with invasives and local game; people eat paca like fat, spotted squirrels, but my favorites are piranha and pacu, fried crisp with salt.

Pacu get huge here too.

They hit like trucks and we fish them with a heavy pole and rancid bait; one even launched into our boat at night and split a tourist’s forehead, so we ate it. A friend of mine in the jungle does a refined Amazonian cuisine—orchid flavors, wild mushrooms, pacu done right—proof the food there can be five-star without the ugly stuff.

You cut booze for a while; how’s that going?

Lex talked me into ayahuasca in the Amazon, and the ceremony was intense—our shaman had me there to protect Lex, we peaked together, purged together, and it felt oddly calm. Ever since, alcohol tastes wrong to me; a sip is fine, but anything more turns my body away, while Lex kept rolling and even wanted a push-up contest with Goggins in Vegas.

He’s off to Dagestan to train with Khabib’s crew; speaking of legends, Khabib retired after his father passed, but he’s in the GOAT talk along with Jon Jones and Mighty Mouse. I train for function, not size—bodyweight, kettlebells, range of motion—not the big show muscles.

Head shots are no joke—Knoxville’s concussions spooked me years ago, and I stopped hard sparring in my late twenties. I almost fought Wesley Snipes, trained twice a day for months, planned to clinch and choke, but it never happened.

I came up in Taekwondo, legit high-level, and later helped GSP polish a spinning back kick. The nastiest KO I ever landed was a wheel kick that folded a guy; when my coach said, “sometimes they die,” I reevaluated—no insurance, little money, clear brain damage around me—so I stepped away.

Did Jane Goodall really believe in Bigfoot?

Whatever her stance, she changed my life—at 22 I handed her rough chapters, she read them, encouraged me, and promised a blurb; that blessing launched my first book and everything since. Her legacy made us rethink animals and tools, and she kept answering strangers with grace even after decades on the road.

I don’t buy Bigfoot today, but something like Gigantopithecus did exist, walked upright, and could’ve crossed ancient land bridges; it’s curious that many Native languages have names for a wild hairy man. Smaller mystery primates like Orang Pendek feel more plausible, especially after the hobbits of Flores.

We filmed uncontacted people on the river—no stone tools, just sharpened sticks—and it feels like peering back millennia. The right move is protect their forest and let them decide, slowly, with careful exchanges and zero pressure.

North Sentinel shows why trust breaks—colonial creeps kidnapped people, spread disease, and now they shoot at boats; the Andamans still run escorts and, yes, they even shipped in elephants by rigging. Humans touch everything, everywhere.

Before we dream about Mars, we need to fix home—trash-choked oceans, burning Amazon—and there’s real momentum if people step outside, touch the world, and get involved.

Some “green” ideas backfire—Mojave’s mirror plant was a bird death ray—and nuclear deserves a rational second look. The larger fight is ignorance versus good information, and it takes a few brave people to course-correct.

Doomscrolling sells grief; picking one mission heals it. I’m lucky to be surrounded by helpers—people funding land, sharing blueprints, and proving the world isn’t falling apart when you focus on building.

Our feeds funnel the worst from eight billion lives, so folks chase meaning in online rage instead of real work. Side note, there’s chatter about the 49ers’ injuries near a power station; EMF effects are murky, but I wouldn’t live under big lines.

Environmental cases taught me hard lessons—fracking towns lighting tap water, clusters of cancers—and even “possibly carcinogenic” isn’t a gamble I’d take under high-tension wires.

On a lighter note, I’ve got mammoth ivory art from Alaska’s bone yard—thousands of animals in a small patch with a burn layer—and new deposits keep turning up. China even found dinosaur eggs turned into crystal geodes, which is wild.

The world stays strange and beautiful; I’m trying to see it and save it. This new book, Jungle Keeper: What It Takes to Change the World, sums up twenty years—from anacondas to uncontacted tribes to how we’re close to protecting an entire river.

You’re doing epic work—stay safe out there, and get some firearms training. Jungle Keeper is out now; go read it. Thank you, brother. Let’s do it again. Bye, everybody.