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Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a tiny glade far in the of Peru rainforest when he detected movements drawing near through the dense jungle.

It dawned on him that he stood hemmed in, and stood still.

“One person was standing, aiming using an arrow,” he recalls. “Unexpectedly he detected of my presence and I started to run.”

He ended up face to face the Mashco Piro tribe. Over many years, Tomas—dwelling in the modest community of Nueva Oceania—was virtually a neighbor to these wandering people, who reject interaction with foreigners.

A recent document from a human rights organisation claims remain a minimum of 196 of what it calls “remote communities” left worldwide. The Mashco Piro is thought to be the biggest. The study says 50% of these communities might be wiped out over the coming ten years should administrations fail to take more to protect them.

The report asserts the biggest threats come from logging, extraction or exploration for crude. Remote communities are exceptionally at risk to basic illness—therefore, the report says a threat is presented by contact with religious missionaries and social media influencers looking for attention.

Recently, Mashco Piro people have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, as reported by inhabitants.

Nueva Oceania is a angling community of a handful of clans, located atop on the banks of the Tauhamanu River in the heart of the Peruvian rainforest, 10 hours from the closest town by boat.

The territory is not recognised as a safeguarded reserve for isolated tribes, and logging companies function here.

Tomas says that, sometimes, the noise of logging machinery can be detected continuously, and the tribe members are observing their jungle disrupted and devastated.

Within the village, inhabitants say they are conflicted. They fear the Mashco Piro's arrows but they also have profound respect for their “kin” dwelling in the woodland and wish to protect them.

“Allow them to live as they live, we must not alter their way of life. For this reason we maintain our distance,” explains Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the destruction to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the danger of conflict and the chance that loggers might introduce the community to sicknesses they have no defense to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. A young mother, a resident with a toddler daughter, was in the forest picking fruit when she detected them.

“There were calls, cries from people, a large number of them. As though it was a crowd yelling,” she informed us.

This marked the initial occasion she had come across the tribe and she fled. After sixty minutes, her head was continually throbbing from terror.

“As operate loggers and companies destroying the jungle they are escaping, perhaps due to terror and they come close to us,” she explained. “It is unclear what their response may be towards us. This is what frightens me.”

Two years ago, two individuals were assaulted by the group while angling. A single person was wounded by an projectile to the stomach. He survived, but the other man was found dead after several days with several arrow wounds in his body.

The administration follows a policy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, rendering it illegal to initiate contact with them.

The policy was first adopted in a nearby nation after decades of lobbying by community representatives, who noted that early interaction with secluded communities could lead to whole populations being eliminated by disease, destitution and malnutrition.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru made initial contact with the world outside, half of their community perished within a short period. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua community faced the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are extremely at risk—epidemiologically, any contact could introduce diseases, and including the simplest ones might eliminate them,” says an advocate from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “From a societal perspective, any interaction or disruption may be highly damaging to their way of life and survival as a group.”

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