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Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a tiny open space within in the of Peru jungle when he heard sounds approaching through the thick woodland.

He became aware that he had been surrounded, and stood still.

“A single individual was standing, pointing with an bow and arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he noticed that I was present and I commenced to flee.”

He found himself confronting the Mashco Piro tribe. For decades, Tomas—residing in the modest community of Nueva Oceania—was virtually a neighbour to these itinerant tribe, who reject interaction with outsiders.

A new document issued by a rights group indicates exist at least 196 described as “uncontacted groups” left in the world. The group is believed to be the largest. The study says half of these groups could be eliminated within ten years if governments fail to take further measures to safeguard them.

It argues the biggest risks are from deforestation, digging or operations for oil. Uncontacted groups are highly vulnerable to basic sickness—as such, the report states a risk is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities seeking engagement.

Recently, Mashco Piro people have been coming to Nueva Oceania increasingly, based on accounts from locals.

The village is a fishermen's community of seven or eight clans, perched atop on the edges of the Tauhamanu waterway in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, half a day from the most accessible village by watercraft.

This region is not designated as a preserved zone for remote communities, and timber firms function here.

According to Tomas that, sometimes, the noise of industrial tools can be heard around the clock, and the Mashco Piro people are witnessing their woodland damaged and devastated.

Within the village, inhabitants report they are torn. They are afraid of the projectiles but they also possess profound respect for their “kin” residing in the jungle and wish to protect them.

“Permit them to live as they live, we are unable to alter their way of life. This is why we keep our space,” states Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the damage to the tribe's survival, the risk of violence and the chance that loggers might subject the tribe to diseases they have no resistance to.

While we were in the community, the Mashco Piro appeared again. A young mother, a young mother with a young daughter, was in the forest collecting food when she detected them.

“There were cries, shouts from others, a large number of them. As though there was a crowd shouting,” she told us.

This marked the initial occasion she had come across the group and she ran. Subsequently, her mind was still pounding from terror.

“As there are deforestation crews and operations cutting down the woodland they are escaping, perhaps because of dread and they come near us,” she said. “We are uncertain what their response may be with us. This is what terrifies me.”

Two years ago, two loggers were attacked by the Mashco Piro while catching fish. One man was struck by an bow to the abdomen. He lived, but the other man was located deceased subsequently with multiple injuries in his body.

The Peruvian government has a strategy of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, making it prohibited to commence interactions with them.

The policy began in a nearby nation following many years of campaigning by indigenous rights groups, who saw that initial interaction with isolated people could lead to entire communities being eliminated by disease, destitution and malnutrition.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau people in Peru made initial contact with the broader society, half of their population succumbed within a matter of years. A decade later, the Muruhanua people suffered the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are extremely susceptible—in terms of health, any contact could transmit sicknesses, and even the simplest ones may eliminate them,” explains Issrail Aquisse from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “From a societal perspective, any contact or interference may be highly damaging to their life and survival as a community.”

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