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Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a small clearing far in the Peruvian rainforest when he noticed movements coming closer through the lush forest.

He realized that he stood encircled, and stood still.

“A single individual was standing, pointing using an bow and arrow,” he recalls. “And somehow he noticed that I was present and I started to flee.”

He ended up face to face the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—residing in the small community of Nueva Oceania—had been virtually a neighbor to these wandering tribe, who avoid engagement with strangers.

A new document by a rights organization claims there are at least 196 termed “remote communities” remaining globally. The group is believed to be the biggest. It claims 50% of these communities may be wiped out over the coming ten years if governments fail to take further to protect them.

It argues the biggest threats come from timber harvesting, extraction or operations for crude. Remote communities are highly vulnerable to ordinary disease—as such, the report says a threat is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities in pursuit of attention.

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

This settlement is a fishermen's village of a handful of clans, located atop on the shores of the Tauhamanu River in the heart of the of Peru rainforest, a ten-hour journey from the nearest village by watercraft.

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

Tomas reports that, sometimes, the sound of logging machinery can be noticed continuously, and the community are seeing their forest disturbed and devastated.

In Nueva Oceania, people say they are divided. They fear the tribal weapons but they also have deep admiration for their “brothers” residing in the jungle and want to defend them.

“Permit them to live according to their traditions, we are unable to alter their way of life. This is why we keep our space,” says Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are worried about the harm to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the threat of violence and the possibility that timber workers might subject the tribe to illnesses they have no resistance to.

While we were in the community, the tribe made their presence felt again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a toddler child, was in the woodland gathering fruit when she detected them.

“We heard calls, shouts from others, numerous of them. Like it was a whole group shouting,” she shared with us.

It was the first time she had come across the tribe and she escaped. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was still throbbing from terror.

“Because exist loggers and operations destroying the woodland they are fleeing, possibly because of dread and they come in proximity to us,” she stated. “It is unclear how they will behave with us. That is the thing that scares me.”

Two years ago, two individuals were confronted by the group while angling. A single person was struck by an projectile to the stomach. He survived, but the other person was discovered deceased days later with nine arrow wounds in his frame.

The administration maintains a strategy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, making it forbidden to start interactions with them.

The policy began in Brazil following many years of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that first contact with secluded communities resulted to whole populations being eliminated by sickness, destitution and malnutrition.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau community in the country first encountered with the world outside, half of their population perished within a few years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe suffered the identical outcome.

“Secluded communities are highly at risk—in terms of health, any interaction might transmit illnesses, and even the basic infections could eliminate them,” says a representative from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “Culturally too, any interaction or interference can be highly damaging to their way of life and well-being as a community.”

For local residents of {