Narco-traffickers moving into the previously lawless, remote Amazon river basin have escalated the danger dramatically, to the point of murdering a colleague and issuing a network-wide kill order on Paul and his partner JJ after they photographed a coca clearing with a drone.
Rosolie describes how narco-traffickers growing coca and building hidden airstrips under the jungle canopy have turned the conservation fight into a literal drug war, killing a police contact and putting a bounty/kill order on Paul and JJ after a drone flyover angered them. ✦ AI generated
Paul Rosolie · Lex Fridman · 2026-01-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 95:55
The police intercepted a phone from someone they arrested, and on the phone, in the WhatsApp chat, it said, 'If you see JJ or the gringo, anyone in our network, please kill them. You'll be rewarded.' So we both have a hit out on us and life on the river has changed.
verbatim transcript · starts at 95:55
95:55as if all these other things weren't enough indication, the police intercepted a phone from someone they arrested, and on the phone, in the WhatsApp chat, it said, "If you see JJ or the gringo, anyone in our network, please kill them. You'll be rewarded." So we both have a hit out on us and life on the river has changed. At the moment, we don't... we can't... I can't just go out walking around, swimming and
96:20driving my boat. You have to be looking over your shoulder at all times. You can get as trained as you want with a pistol and sleep with it under your pillow, but the way these people work, they'll catch you when you're least expecting it. They'll wait till you're at a cafe in town. They'll wait till your motor doesn't work on the side of the river. It'll just be a
96:39quick one and they'll go. And so that feeling, on top of the weight of- of protecting the ecosystem and the animals, and the race to tell people about it and do all this, it's like now we're actively being hunted when we're there. - And this is very directed at you and JJ? So they really don't care about the others. They understand. Are you afraid? What's it been like living with this,
97:13with the real fear of being murdered at any moment? - I wish I could say I handled it better than I've been handling it. I wonder how people in war zones do it. I wonder how some of my soldier friends that I have immense respect for did it when they were deployed, 'cause for me, once this happened, it was, every phone call now I think, "Did something happen to JJ?"
97:40Every time I go to sleep, my dreams are that I'm being shot. And it really threw me. It really affected me. When JJ called me, the way he was just shouting... I don't even remember what he was saying. He was just shouting, "They almost got us! They almost got us!" He was so, terrified and angry and, so yeah, it's... There was a day not long ago that I was swimming
- ·Narco-traffickers moved into remote Amazon river basin
- ·They grow coca and build hidden airstrips under canopy
- ·Conservation fight has become a literal drug war
- ·Paul and JJ photographed a coca clearing with a drone
- ·Police intercepted a WhatsApp chat with a kill order
- ·Message: 'If you see JJ or the gringo, please kill them'