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A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a small glade deep in the Peruvian rainforest when he noticed sounds coming closer through the thick jungle.

He realized that he stood encircled, and froze.

“One positioned, aiming using an projectile,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he detected I was here and I commenced to flee.”

He had come face to face the Mashco Piro. For decades, Tomas—residing in the modest village of Nueva Oceania—served as virtually a neighbour to these nomadic people, who avoid interaction with strangers.

A recent report from a advocacy group states remain a minimum of 196 of what it calls “uncontacted groups” in existence in the world. The Mashco Piro is considered to be the biggest. The report states 50% of these groups may be wiped out within ten years unless authorities fail to take additional to protect them.

The report asserts the biggest risks stem from logging, extraction or operations for crude. Isolated tribes are extremely susceptible to ordinary illness—therefore, the report notes a threat is presented by contact with evangelical missionaries and digital content creators in pursuit of engagement.

Recently, members of the tribe have been venturing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, based on accounts from inhabitants.

The village is a angling hamlet of a handful of clans, perched atop on the shores of the local river in the center of the Peruvian rainforest, 10 hours from the nearest village by boat.

The area is not recognised as a preserved zone for isolated tribes, and timber firms function here.

Tomas says that, sometimes, the racket of heavy equipment can be detected day and night, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their woodland disturbed and ruined.

In Nueva Oceania, inhabitants say they are divided. They dread the projectiles but they also possess profound respect for their “brothers” dwelling in the jungle and want to safeguard them.

“Let them live according to their traditions, we must not change their way of life. That's why we maintain our distance,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are concerned about the destruction to the tribe's survival, the danger of violence and the possibility that timber workers might introduce the community to sicknesses they have no defense to.

At the time in the village, the group made themselves known again. A young mother, a woman with a toddler daughter, was in the woodland picking produce when she noticed them.

“We heard shouting, shouts from individuals, a large number of them. Like there was a crowd calling out,” she told us.

This marked the first instance she had met the Mashco Piro and she ran. An hour later, her head was persistently throbbing from fear.

“As operate loggers and firms destroying the forest they're running away, perhaps because of dread and they end up near us,” she said. “We don't know what their response may be with us. That's what frightens me.”

Two years ago, two individuals were attacked by the group while angling. One was struck by an projectile to the abdomen. He recovered, but the other person was located dead days later with nine arrow wounds in his frame.

The administration maintains a strategy of no engagement with secluded communities, making it illegal to start encounters with them.

The strategy was first adopted in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by community representatives, who noted that initial exposure with remote tribes could lead to whole populations being wiped out by disease, hardship and starvation.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau tribe in Peru came into contact with the world outside, half of their community died within a short period. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua people experienced the same fate.

“Remote tribes are very vulnerable—in terms of health, any interaction might transmit sicknesses, and even the simplest ones could decimate them,” says an advocate from a tribal support group. “Culturally too, any exposure or disruption can be highly damaging to their existence and health as a community.”

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