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The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest open space within in the Peruvian rainforest when he detected footsteps approaching through the thick forest.

He realized that he had been hemmed in, and halted.

“A single individual was standing, pointing with an projectile,” he recalls. “Somehow he detected of my presence and I started to run.”

He ended up encountering the Mashco Piro tribe. For a long time, Tomas—who lives in the tiny settlement of Nueva Oceania—was almost a local to these itinerant individuals, who avoid contact with foreigners.

A new study from a human rights group claims remain a minimum of 196 described as “uncontacted groups” in existence globally. The Mashco Piro is considered to be the biggest. The study claims 50% of these tribes might be decimated within ten years unless authorities neglect to implement more measures to safeguard them.

It claims the biggest risks are from timber harvesting, mining or exploration for oil. Uncontacted groups are exceptionally vulnerable to ordinary illness—as such, the study notes a risk is posed by exposure with religious missionaries and digital content creators in pursuit of engagement.

Lately, the Mashco Piro have been coming to Nueva Oceania more and more, according to residents.

This settlement is a fishermen's village of several clans, sitting high on the banks of the Tauhamanu waterway in the heart of the Peruvian rainforest, 10 hours from the nearest settlement by canoe.

This region is not recognised as a protected zone for remote communities, and timber firms operate here.

According to Tomas that, sometimes, the noise of logging machinery can be noticed continuously, and the tribe members are seeing their jungle disrupted and devastated.

Within the village, inhabitants say they are divided. They fear the tribal weapons but they hold profound admiration for their “relatives” residing in the forest and wish to defend them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we must not alter their way of life. This is why we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are concerned about the destruction to the tribe's survival, the risk of violence and the likelihood that loggers might subject the Mashco Piro to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

While we were in the community, the Mashco Piro made themselves known again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a resident with a young girl, was in the jungle picking fruit when she heard them.

“We heard calls, shouts from individuals, numerous of them. As if there was a crowd calling out,” she told us.

It was the first instance she had encountered the group and she ran. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was persistently racing from terror.

“Since exist timber workers and operations clearing the woodland they're running away, perhaps because of dread and they arrive close to us,” she explained. “It is unclear what their response may be towards us. That's what frightens me.”

In 2022, two individuals were assaulted by the group while fishing. One man was struck by an bow to the stomach. He recovered, but the other person was discovered lifeless after several days with several puncture marks in his frame.

Authorities in Peru has a strategy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, rendering it forbidden to start contact with them.

This approach originated in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by community representatives, who observed that first interaction with isolated people lead to whole populations being eliminated by disease, poverty and malnutrition.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau people in the country made initial contact with the outside world, half of their community succumbed within a matter of years. A decade later, the Muruhanua community suffered the same fate.

“Secluded communities are highly susceptible—from a disease perspective, any contact might introduce diseases, and even the most common illnesses might decimate them,” states an advocate from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “From a societal perspective, any interaction or interference can be extremely detrimental to their way of life and well-being as a society.”

For local residents of {