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Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a tiny clearing deep in the Peruvian rainforest when he noticed movements approaching through the dense forest.

He realized he was encircled, and stood still.

“One person was standing, directing using an bow and arrow,” he remembers. “And somehow he noticed I was here and I commenced to run.”

He ended up confronting members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny community of Nueva Oceania—served as practically a local to these itinerant people, who shun interaction with outsiders.

A recent document from a human rights organization claims there are a minimum of 196 of what it calls “uncontacted groups” left in the world. This tribe is thought to be the largest. The report claims 50% of these groups could be decimated within ten years unless authorities neglect to implement more measures to safeguard them.

It claims the most significant threats come from deforestation, mining or drilling for crude. Isolated tribes are highly susceptible to common disease—consequently, the report notes a risk is caused by contact with proselytizers and social media influencers looking for clicks.

Lately, Mashco Piro people have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, based on accounts from inhabitants.

This settlement is a fishing village of several families, perched atop on the banks of the Tauhamanu River in the center of the Peruvian jungle, 10 hours from the closest village by watercraft.

The territory is not classified as a safeguarded area for remote communities, and timber firms work here.

Tomas says that, on occasion, the noise of logging machinery can be detected around the clock, and the community are seeing their woodland disrupted and devastated.

Within the village, people state they are conflicted. They are afraid of the tribal weapons but they hold deep admiration for their “relatives” who live in the forest and want to defend them.

“Let them live as they live, we must not modify their way of life. For this reason we maintain our separation,” states Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are worried about the harm to the tribe's survival, the risk of violence and the possibility that loggers might expose the Mashco Piro to diseases they have no immunity to.

At the time in the settlement, the tribe appeared again. Letitia, a woman with a young daughter, was in the woodland collecting food when she detected them.

“We detected cries, sounds from people, a large number of them. Like it was a crowd shouting,” she informed us.

This marked the initial occasion she had come across the tribe and she ran. After sixty minutes, her head was still racing from fear.

“Since operate loggers and firms cutting down the woodland they are fleeing, maybe because of dread and they end up near us,” she said. “It is unclear what their response may be towards us. That's what terrifies me.”

Recently, two loggers were confronted by the tribe while angling. One man was struck by an projectile to the stomach. He survived, but the second individual was found deceased after several days with multiple arrow wounds in his physique.

The Peruvian government follows a strategy of no engagement with remote tribes, establishing it as prohibited to commence interactions with them.

The policy began in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by tribal advocacy organizations, who noted that early exposure with isolated people resulted to entire communities being decimated by disease, hardship and malnutrition.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau people in Peru made initial contact with the outside world, a significant portion of their population died within a matter of years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua community faced the similar destiny.

“Remote tribes are very susceptible—in terms of health, any contact could transmit diseases, and even the basic infections may decimate them,” explains an advocate from a local advocacy organization. “In cultural terms, any exposure or disruption may be highly damaging to their existence and health as a group.”

For those living nearby of {