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Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a modest clearing far in the Peruvian jungle when he detected movements coming closer through the dense jungle.

He realized he was encircled, and halted.

“One person stood, directing using an arrow,” he recalls. “And somehow he noticed I was here and I commenced to run.”

He found himself encountering the Mashco Piro tribe. For decades, Tomas—dwelling in the modest settlement of Nueva Oceania—served as practically a neighbor to these wandering people, who shun contact with strangers.

An updated document by a advocacy group indicates remain no fewer than 196 of what it calls “uncontacted groups” left worldwide. The group is thought to be the biggest. The study says half of these tribes might be eliminated over the coming ten years should administrations fail to take more to protect them.

It claims the biggest risks stem from logging, extraction or drilling for oil. Remote communities are extremely vulnerable to ordinary illness—consequently, the report notes a threat is presented by interaction with proselytizers and digital content creators in pursuit of clicks.

In recent times, Mashco Piro people have been venturing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, based on accounts from inhabitants.

The village is a fishermen's village of a handful of families, perched elevated on the shores of the Tauhamanu waterway deep within the Peruvian Amazon, a ten-hour journey from the most accessible village by boat.

This region is not classified as a safeguarded area for remote communities, and timber firms operate here.

Tomas reports that, on occasion, the racket of industrial tools can be heard day and night, and the tribe members are observing their forest disrupted and devastated.

Within the village, residents state they are divided. They dread the Mashco Piro's arrows but they hold profound regard for their “kin” who live in the jungle and wish to defend them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we can't change their traditions. This is why we keep our space,” explains Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are worried about the destruction to the community's way of life, the threat of violence and the chance that timber workers might subject the tribe to diseases they have no immunity to.

At the time in the settlement, the group appeared again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a young girl, was in the jungle picking fruit when she heard them.

“We heard calls, shouts from others, numerous of them. As if there were a crowd calling out,” she told us.

This marked the first time she had come across the Mashco Piro and she escaped. Subsequently, her mind was persistently throbbing from terror.

“Since there are loggers and operations clearing the woodland they are escaping, maybe due to terror and they arrive close to us,” she said. “It is unclear what their response may be with us. That's what terrifies me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the group while catching fish. One was struck by an arrow to the abdomen. He lived, but the other person was located dead days later with multiple injuries in his physique.

The Peruvian government maintains a strategy of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, rendering it forbidden to start interactions with them.

The strategy began in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by community representatives, who noted that initial interaction with remote tribes lead to entire communities being decimated by disease, destitution and hunger.

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

“Secluded communities are very vulnerable—in terms of health, any interaction may introduce sicknesses, and even the simplest ones may wipe them out,” says Issrail Aquisse from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “From a societal perspective, any contact or interference can be highly damaging to their existence and well-being as a community.”

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