Speaker
Paul Rosolie
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
The Nomole tribe's primary weapon is a bamboo-tipped arrow roughly 7 feet long — larger than a grown man — that is razor-sharp and can be loosed accurately at targets 300 meters away.
Community member George was shot through the torso by a 7-foot tribe arrow while driving a boat upriver the day after the peaceful contact encounter, requiring helicopter evacuation.
Narco-traffickers intercepted by Peruvian police had a WhatsApp message offering a reward to anyone who killed Paul Rosolie or his co-director JJ on sight.
After Rosolie posted a video showing a narco road threatening uncontacted tribe territory, Jungle Keepers raised $150,000 within 48 hours and purchased the concession to stop the road.
Jungle Keepers estimates it needs $20 million to protect the remaining 200,000-acre corridor and fully safeguard the uncontacted tribe's territory from narcos and loggers.
Rosolie and his team physically caught a green anaconda just under 20 feet long — his largest ever — which required ten people to lift and still overpowered them effortlessly.
Because macaw nesting sites are limited to ancient ironwood trees with hollows, only 17–20% of the macaw population in a given area reproduces in any single year.
Paul Rosolie has physically caught over 90 anacondas during his 20 years in the Amazon, including multiple individuals in the 20–26 foot range.
During the October 2024 encounter, the Nomole tribe outnumbered Rosolie's group at least five to one, with warriors also surrounding them from the jungle and opposite riverbank.
Jane Goodall agreed to endorse Paul Rosolie's unpublished manuscript within 48 hours of receiving two sample chapters, which led directly to HarperCollins publishing 'Mother of God' and launching Jungle Keepers.
Jungle Keepers' lead ranger Ignacio was shot in the head by a Nomole tribe arrow in 2019 and barely survived, yet still guided the team during the 2024 first-contact encounter.
Drug traffickers build airstrips in the Amazon by clearing only the interior while leaving canopy trees standing overhead, making them invisible to aerial surveillance and satellite imagery.
Paul Rosolie's team became the first to film a full encounter with a previously uncontacted Nomole clan — warriors armed with 7-foot bamboo arrows walking onto a river beach in broad daylight. The footage, shot with 800mm cameras, shows dozens of warriors gesturing, clapping, and eventually laying down their bows after a tense standoff mediated by anthropologist Rommel.
When the call came that an uncontacted tribe had appeared, Rosolie and his team dropped everything, loaded a boat by 6 PM, and ran upriver through a lightning apocalypse all night — hypothermic, guided by caiman eyes reflecting in the dark — to arrive by dawn. It was a two-day journey completed in one night.
Rosolie stood behind a tree watching 50-plus Nomole warriors walk down the beach, bows drawn, butterflies swirling around them — outnumbered 5-to-1 with no backup and no help coming. The fear was visceral: he mentally planned escape routes while Ignacio, the ranger they'd once shot in the head, pulled him behind cover.
Narco-traffickers set up a roadblock ambush for Rosolie and his co-director JJ, intercepting their truck driver instead and demanding to know where 'the shithead gringo with the drone' was. Police later found a WhatsApp message on an arrested narco's phone: a standing reward offer for killing either Rosolie or JJ on sight. Both men now live with active hit contracts.
With no real climbing path — just one vine up 70 feet of bare vertical trunk before branches even appear — Rosolie hauled himself up a 160-foot ancient ironwood in pre-dawn darkness through pure strength, placing improvised safety anchors every 30 feet. At the top, in a moment of total exhaustion and wonder, he witnessed the legendary Mist River flowing over the canopy at sunrise.
Rosolie and ten team members struggled to measure a just-under-20-foot green anaconda named Millie — and she barely noticed. One flex of her body sent a line of people flying sideways. He has now caught over 90 anacondas, and at this scale they are pure Leviathan: apex, unhurried, and capable of crushing a human into 'goop' if they choose.
A spider monkey was being pulled under by river currents when Rosolie jumped in and offered her a paddle. She refused it twice. Then she made eye contact, registered 'another animal with a face,' and grabbed on. He credits it entirely to speaking broken spider monkey — a skill built from years of raising orphaned infants whose mothers were shot by poachers.
Rosolie handed Jane Goodall two manuscript chapters at the end of a long line of fans, asking for an endorsement on a book that didn't exist yet. Forty-eight hours later she agreed. HarperCollins, which had already rejected him, reversed course. That one act of generosity by Goodall is directly traceable to the creation of Jungle Keepers and the protection of 130,000 acres of rainforest.
Narcos build airstrips by clearing only the floor of the jungle while leaving canopy trees meeting overhead — invisible to satellites and overflying planes. Bush pilots duck under the canopy, land, load up, and leave. Rosolie is now racing these drug networks with an arms race of surveillance drones.
Scientists describe an invisible 'flying river' above the Amazon that carries more moisture than the Amazon River itself. Rosolie had heard about it his whole life. Bleeding and exhausted at 120 feet up a millennium ironwood at dawn, he finally saw it: golden mist flowing over the canopy as macaws took flight beneath him. He cried.
The Nomole don't make clay pots — so they've never boiled water and don't know it can boil. They have no stone tools because their region has no stones. They don't know their country exists or that World War II happened. A Peruvian anthropologist summed it up: people think of them as Stone Age, but they don't even have stones.
When Rosolie flew a drone over what he thought was a logging camp and the occupants gave chase, he discovered it was a narco operation. The police officers who escorted him to safety went back upriver that same evening — and one was shot in the chest in a narco drive-by. Rosolie learned of the death over the phone while sitting at dinner with potential donors, forcing himself to smile and say nothing.
During COVID, mid-divorce, with no income and everything falling apart, Rosolie called his partner Mohsin and quit conservation entirely. Four days later — without any knowledge of Rosolie's breakdown — philanthropist Dax called and offered a 10-year financial commitment to Jungle Keepers. The timing felt cosmically precise.
The morning after the seemingly peaceful contact — after banana exchanges and joking with Ignacio — the Nomole ambushed a boat with 200 warriors firing arrows. George, who had confidently reassured everyone the tribe wouldn't hurt them, was struck by a 7-foot arrow that entered above his scapula and exited near his belly button. He survived only because of a helicopter evacuation Jungle Keepers helped arrange.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Society & Culture 59%
- Science 17%
- Business 8%
- Education 8%
- History 8%
Connections
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