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The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a tiny open space within in the of Peru rainforest when he noticed sounds coming closer through the thick jungle.

He realized that he had been surrounded, and stood still.

“One person was standing, pointing with an arrow,” he remembers. “Somehow he noticed of my presence and I started to flee.”

He found himself encountering the Mashco Piro tribe. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny village of Nueva Oceania—served as almost a neighbor to these wandering people, who avoid engagement with foreigners.

A recent study from a advocacy organization claims there are a minimum of 196 of what it calls “remote communities” in existence worldwide. The Mashco Piro is believed to be the biggest. The report claims a significant portion of these tribes could be wiped out within ten years should administrations fail to take further actions to defend them.

It claims the biggest dangers are from deforestation, mining or operations for petroleum. Uncontacted groups are highly at risk to common illness—therefore, the study states a risk is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and social media influencers in pursuit of clicks.

In recent times, Mashco Piro people have been coming to Nueva Oceania more and more, according to locals.

The village is a angling community of several families, located elevated on the banks of the local river in the center of the Peruvian Amazon, half a day from the closest town by canoe.

The area is not classified as a protected area for isolated tribes, and deforestation operations function here.

Tomas says that, sometimes, the sound of logging machinery can be heard continuously, and the Mashco Piro people are observing their woodland disturbed and devastated.

In Nueva Oceania, residents say they are conflicted. They are afraid of the tribal weapons but they also possess profound respect for their “kin” dwelling in the woodland and wish to defend them.

“Permit them to live according to their traditions, we can't change their traditions. That's why we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are worried about the destruction to the community's way of life, the risk of violence and the possibility that timber workers might introduce the Mashco Piro to illnesses they have no immunity to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro appeared again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a toddler girl, was in the forest gathering fruit when she heard them.

“There were shouting, shouts from people, numerous of them. As if it was a large gathering calling out,” she informed us.

That was the first instance she had come across the tribe and she fled. An hour later, her head was still throbbing from terror.

“Because operate timber workers and companies destroying the forest they are fleeing, perhaps due to terror and they end up near us,” she explained. “We don't know how they will behave towards us. That is the thing that frightens me.”

In 2022, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the tribe while fishing. One man was struck by an projectile to the gut. He lived, but the other person was located lifeless after several days with multiple injuries in his body.

The administration follows a policy of non-contact with isolated people, rendering it illegal to initiate encounters with them.

The strategy began in Brazil following many years of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that initial contact with remote tribes lead to entire communities being eliminated by illness, hardship and malnutrition.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau tribe in the country came into contact with the outside world, half of their people died within a few years. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua community experienced the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are very at risk—in terms of health, any interaction might transmit sicknesses, and even the simplest ones may eliminate them,” states an advocate from a tribal support group. “From a societal perspective, any interaction or intrusion can be very harmful to their life and survival as a community.”

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