A deadly mission

Dom Phillips was working on a book about saving the Amazon when he was killed. In this extract. he reflects on his encounters with the rainforest and its people

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira disappeared on a research expedition into the far western Amazon in June 2022. Pereira had received death threats due to his work helping Indigenous people protect the rainforest from illegal fishing and hunting. When the pair did not return, a search was launched. After 10 days, their bodies were found. Two men will go on trial for their murder later this year

“SNAKE!” The cry came from near the end of the line of 11 men, strung out along a narrow trail being hacked out of thick Amazon rainforest. I shivered. I had walked right past the danger lurking unseen in the dense undergrowth. Poisonous snakes are one of the most lethal threats in this part of the world. Indigenous people fear them and they present even more danger to a bumbling, middle-aged journalist like me, stumbling over roots the local men stepped lightly over in their rubber boots, skidding on muddy ground where they were sure-footed.

Takvan Korubo - a taut, forbidding man with a wicked sense of humour - was unfazed. He knew these forests like city people know streets. Snakes for him were an occupational hazard, an everyday danger.

He shouldered the polished, shoulder-height wooden club his Korubo people use for hunting and fighting, and walked briskly back towards the reptile with all the care of a man heading down a garden path to fix the gate. "Be careful," shouted Bruno Pereira - an official from Funai, the Brazilian government Indigenous agency, who was leading this expedition.

There was a short, terse silence. Three loud thumps. Seatvo, a Korubo boy of about 13, appeared with a wide grin, dangling the thick body of a 1.5-metre, poisonous jararaca on a stick. "If this bites you, you won't live," said Josimar Marubo, another of the Indigenous villagers on the trip.