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Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest clearing deep in the Peruvian jungle when he detected footsteps approaching through the dense woodland.

He realized that he stood hemmed in, and froze.

“One was standing, pointing using an bow and arrow,” he states. “Unexpectedly he detected of my presence and I commenced to run.”

He found himself face to face the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny village of Nueva Oceania—served as virtually a local to these nomadic people, who avoid contact with outsiders.

A new report by a human rights organisation claims there are no fewer than 196 described as “remote communities” left globally. The Mashco Piro is thought to be the biggest. It claims a significant portion of these groups might be decimated within ten years if governments don't do further measures to safeguard them.

It claims the greatest risks are from logging, digging or drilling for crude. Isolated tribes are highly at risk to ordinary sickness—as such, the report states a risk is caused by contact with proselytizers and social media influencers in pursuit of clicks.

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

This settlement is a angling village of several clans, perched elevated on the edges of the Tauhamanu waterway in the center of the of Peru rainforest, half a day from the most accessible village by watercraft.

This region is not classified as a preserved reserve for remote communities, and deforestation operations work here.

Tomas says that, sometimes, the noise of industrial tools can be detected continuously, and the Mashco Piro people are observing their jungle damaged and ruined.

Among the locals, people say they are conflicted. They fear the tribal weapons but they also have strong regard for their “relatives” residing in the jungle and wish to defend them.

“Allow them to live in their own way, we are unable to alter their traditions. This is why we preserve our space,” states Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the harm to the tribe's survival, the risk of aggression and the likelihood that loggers might expose the Mashco Piro to illnesses they have no resistance to.

While we were in the community, the Mashco Piro made themselves known again. Letitia, a woman with a young girl, was in the forest picking fruit when she detected them.

“We detected shouting, cries from individuals, many of them. As if it was a crowd shouting,” she informed us.

This marked the first instance she had met the group and she fled. Subsequently, her head was persistently racing from fear.

“Since there are timber workers and operations destroying the woodland they are escaping, maybe out of fear and they arrive in proximity to us,” she explained. “We don't know how they might react with us. That's what frightens me.”

Recently, two loggers were assaulted by the Mashco Piro while fishing. One was struck by an arrow to the abdomen. He lived, but the second individual was found deceased subsequently with multiple arrow wounds in his physique.

The administration has a approach of no engagement with remote tribes, rendering it illegal to initiate contact with them.

This approach was first adopted in Brazil after decades of campaigning by tribal advocacy organizations, who noted that first interaction with isolated people lead to entire communities being wiped out by illness, poverty and hunger.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau tribe in Peru came into contact with the world outside, a significant portion of their population perished within a few years. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua community faced the identical outcome.

“Secluded communities are extremely at risk—epidemiologically, any contact could introduce diseases, and even the basic infections might eliminate them,” says a representative from a local advocacy organization. “Culturally too, any contact or disruption could be extremely detrimental to their life and health as a society.”

For those living nearby of {