a Machiguena (matsiguenka) child playing in a tree with a pet spider monkey

A Machiguenga (Matsiguenka) child plays in a tree with pet spider monkey in Manú National Park.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

Meet the People Who Live Inside This Eden-Like Park

Photographer Charlie Hamilton James shares a glimpse inside Manú National Park—home to undiscovered species and uncontacted people groups.

ByBecky Harlan
Photographs byCharlie Hamilton James
May 17, 2016
5 min read

To reach Manú, Peru’s gloriously diverse but “highly inaccessible” national park, you’ll have to forget planes, trains, and automobiles and try pushing a boat up an Amazonian river. That’s how photographer Charlie Hamilton James reached the remote communities he documented while working on a National Geographic assignment there. “It was the stuff you get excited about when you’re a kid,” Hamilton James says, “but the reality of it is that it’s a real pain.”

National Geographic photographer Charlie Hamilton James has returned time and again to work in Manú National Park. Hear him explain why he keeps coming back in the video below.

Manú might be hard to get to, but its remoteness is part of the reason it’s remained so pristine. (The park is also a biosphere reserve and a World Heritage site.) "Although lots of places claim to be the most biodiverse on Earth, Manú is officially the most biodiverse place on Earth," he says. At more than 6,500 square miles, it’s home to the Matsigenka tribe and other still uncontacted groups—highly unique for a national park—and, according to Hamilton James, countless undiscovered species.

macaws gathered in a group by the face of a rock

Red and green macaws gather at a clay lick—a rare seam of concentrated minerals—in Cocha Blanquillo, Madre de Dios, Peru.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

Black spider monkeys visit a clay lick on the edge of Manú National Park. Because salt is scarce in this part of the Amazon, clay licks are hugely important, providing minerals and salts to mammals and birds. They’re also important for predators such as jaguars and ocelots, which hunt the creatures that visit.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

An adult male jaguar at Cocha Blanco, Madre de Dios, Peru

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

In Manú’s case, the indigenous people weren’t pushed out of the park as they so often are, but continue to live inside. Because of this, a lot of the park is restricted. Encountering uncontacted people is dangerous, because they could end up “firing arrows at the people coming into the park,” Hamilton James explains, “but I suppose more of a threat is us giving them diseases.”

A Matsigenka boy spends time by the river as his community fishes. In order to catch the fish, barbasco root is used to poison them. The root is crushed and placed in sacks that are then placed in the water, which causes fish downriver to die or become immobilized so they can be collected.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

As threats of logging increase and the population of inhabitants who live off of Manú’s resources grows, questions have arisen about the park’s continued existence as an ecological haven.

That’s why Hamilton James, who might prefer not to push any more boats up the Amazon, keeps going back. “It's cliché to say, [but] I want people to see this extraordinary diversity so that we don't carry on destroying it.”

the feet of a member of the Mashco-Piro tribe in Manu National Park in Peru

Ilarios, a member of the Machiguenga tribe, walks across a log in Manú National Park.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James

See more of our coverage of Manú National Park in this month's issue of National Geographic magazine.

Charlie Hamilton James is a photographer and conservationist from the U.K. who’s currently living in Wyoming. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

Becky Harlan is an associate producer for National Geographic. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.