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A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a small clearing within in the of Peru Amazon when he noticed sounds coming closer through the thick woodland.

It dawned on him that he stood encircled, and stood still.

“A single individual positioned, directing using an projectile,” he recalls. “And somehow he noticed I was here and I started to escape.”

He had come face to face members of the Mashco Piro. For decades, Tomas—residing in the small village of Nueva Oceania—was practically a neighbour to these nomadic people, who avoid contact with foreigners.

An updated report from a human rights organization indicates remain at least 196 termed “uncontacted groups” in existence worldwide. This tribe is thought to be the largest. It claims a significant portion of these communities might be decimated within ten years if governments neglect to implement additional to protect them.

It claims the greatest dangers come from timber harvesting, extraction or drilling for crude. Uncontacted groups are highly vulnerable to ordinary illness—consequently, the report states a threat is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities seeking engagement.

Lately, members of the tribe have been appearing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, as reported by locals.

The village is a fishing hamlet of a handful of households, perched elevated on the banks of the local river deep within the Peruvian rainforest, 10 hours from the nearest settlement by canoe.

The territory is not classified as a protected reserve for remote communities, and timber firms operate here.

According to Tomas that, at times, the noise of industrial tools can be noticed day and night, and the tribe members are seeing their forest damaged and destroyed.

Among the locals, people say they are divided. They fear the projectiles but they hold strong respect for their “brothers” dwelling in the forest and wish to safeguard them.

“Allow them to live in their own way, we can't alter their traditions. That's why we maintain our separation,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are worried about the harm to the tribe's survival, the risk of conflict and the chance that deforestation crews might introduce the tribe to diseases they have no resistance to.

At the time in the settlement, the tribe made themselves known again. Letitia, a young mother with a toddler girl, was in the woodland collecting fruit when she heard them.

“We heard calls, cries from others, numerous of them. As though there was a crowd yelling,” she told us.

This marked the first time she had met the group and she fled. After sixty minutes, her mind was still throbbing from anxiety.

“As there are loggers and operations cutting down the forest they are fleeing, maybe because of dread and they end up near us,” she said. “It is unclear how they might react towards us. That's what frightens me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were attacked by the tribe while fishing. One man was wounded by an bow to the stomach. He survived, but the other man was located deceased subsequently with nine puncture marks in his frame.

The administration maintains a strategy of no engagement with remote tribes, establishing it as prohibited to commence contact with them.

The strategy began in Brazil following many years of lobbying by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that initial contact with secluded communities could lead to entire groups being wiped out by illness, destitution and starvation.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau people in Peru first encountered with the outside world, 50% of their population perished within a short period. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe suffered the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are extremely susceptible—in terms of health, any interaction could introduce diseases, and including the basic infections may wipe them out,” explains a representative from a local advocacy organization. “In cultural terms, any exposure or interference could be extremely detrimental to their existence and health as a society.”

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