Why I Support Jungle Keepers
I’m half Bolivian. My dad is Bolivian, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by the rainforest: the scale of it, the sound of it, the sheer amount of life packed into every square meter. That fascination has stayed with me for many years, and lately it’s turned into something more practical. I want to tell you about an organization I support, and why.
Where It Started for Me
When I was 19, I volunteered with a project called Mapajo, an Indigenous community ecotourism lodge on the Quiquibey River in Bolivia’s Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve, near Madidi National Park and upriver from Rurrenabaque. The idea behind it was simple and powerful: give Indigenous communities a way to earn a living that didn’t depend on slash-and-burn clearing of primary forest.
I went back to Bolivia in 2005, 2010 and 2013.
That experience never left me. It’s part of the same great stretch of the southwestern Amazon that Jungle Keepers is fighting to protect, just on the Bolivian side of the border.
What Jungle Keepers Does
Jungle Keepers (also written Junglekeepers) was co-founded by conservationist and author Paul Rosolie and Indigenous naturalist Juan Julio Durand. They work in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, protecting the Las Piedras River corridor, a stretch of ancient rainforest that links several of Peru’s most important protected areas and is home to Indigenous communities, including some of the last voluntarily isolated peoples on Earth.
Their approach is the same one that drew me to Mapajo: protect the forest by making protection the livelihood. They’ve turned former loggers and miners into rangers, and they say illegal logging inside their reserve has dropped by more than 90%.
A few of their current efforts:
- Land protection: buying and securing threatened rainforest outright, the surest way to stop illegal logging and land grabs.
- Ranger program: local and Indigenous rangers who patrol hundreds of kilometers of river and forest every year.
- Science & research: documenting the corridor’s wildlife, including giant otters, jaguars and harpy eagles.
- END GAME campaign: an 18-month push launched in January 2026 to secure 50,000 more acres, working toward national park status for the Las Piedras Corridor.
My Small Part
I support Jungle Keepers with a monthly donation. It isn’t huge, but it’s steady, and I hope to help more in the future. If you’ve ever felt that pull toward wild places, I’d love for you to join me.
Read
- Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon by Paul Rosolie (HarperCollins, 2014). His early years in Madre de Dios.
- Junglekeeper: What It Takes to Change the World by Paul Rosolie (Convergent, 2026). The story of building Jungle Keepers.
Listen & Watch
Paul has done some great long-form interviews if you want to go deeper:
- Lex Fridman Podcast #369 (April 2023)
- Lex Fridman Podcast #429 (May 2024, recorded in the Amazon) – YouTube
- Lex Fridman Podcast #489 (January 2026) – YouTube
- The Joe Rogan Experience #2013 (July 2023)
- The Joe Rogan Experience #2209 (October 2024)
- The Joe Rogan Experience #2441 (January 2026)
- The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett: “I Met An Uncontacted Tribe” (February 2026) – Apple Podcasts
Madre Tierra
For me, the rainforest, the lungs of the Earth, has been a deep source of inspiration for my art. You can hear it most clearly in my song Madre Tierra, sung in Spanish and English and opening with an intro in Quechua.
Read the lyrics and listen to Madre Tierra · Madre Tierra on Bandcamp
Join In
If this speaks to you, donate to Jungle Keepers, even a small monthly amount. Or just pick up one of the books or put on an episode and learn more about this place. Every acre protected stays protected.
Some of the best music I know sounds like that forest: layered, alive, a thousand voices at once. Let’s keep it singing.
Con cariño,
Renée
