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Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a modest open space far in the Peruvian Amazon when he detected sounds drawing near through the thick jungle.

He became aware he was hemmed in, and halted.

“One was standing, directing with an arrow,” he remembers. “Somehow he detected I was here and I started to run.”

He ended up encountering members of the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny settlement of Nueva Oceania—had been practically a neighbor to these itinerant individuals, who reject engagement with strangers.

A recent document by a rights organization claims there are at least 196 described as “remote communities” in existence globally. The Mashco Piro is considered to be the biggest. It states half of these groups could be eliminated within ten years unless authorities neglect to implement further actions to defend them.

It claims the biggest threats come from timber harvesting, extraction or drilling for petroleum. Isolated tribes are extremely vulnerable to common sickness—as such, the report notes a danger is presented by contact with evangelical missionaries and online personalities in pursuit of attention.

In recent times, members of the tribe have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, based on accounts from locals.

This settlement is a fishermen's community of a handful of families, located atop on the banks of the Tauhamanu River deep within the Peruvian jungle, half a day from the nearest town by watercraft.

This region is not designated as a protected zone for isolated tribes, and deforestation operations operate here.

Tomas says that, on occasion, the noise of logging machinery can be detected continuously, and the tribe members are seeing their woodland disturbed and ruined.

Among the locals, inhabitants say they are divided. They dread the tribal weapons but they hold deep admiration for their “brothers” dwelling in the forest and wish to defend them.

“Let them live as they live, we can't change their way of life. For this reason we preserve our distance,” says Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are worried about the damage to the tribe's survival, the risk of conflict and the possibility that timber workers might subject the tribe to diseases they have no defense to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia, a young mother with a young child, was in the jungle picking food when she detected them.

“We detected calls, sounds from others, numerous of them. As though there were a crowd shouting,” she told us.

This marked the first time she had met the tribe and she escaped. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was continually throbbing from terror.

“As operate timber workers and companies clearing the jungle they are fleeing, perhaps because of dread and they come close to us,” she said. “We are uncertain how they will behave towards us. That's what frightens me.”

Two years ago, two loggers were confronted by the group while catching fish. A single person was hit by an arrow to the gut. He survived, but the other man was found deceased subsequently with several puncture marks in his body.

The administration follows a strategy of non-contact with isolated people, establishing it as prohibited to initiate interactions with them.

This approach originated in the neighboring country after decades of lobbying by indigenous rights groups, who noted that initial exposure with isolated people resulted to entire communities being eliminated by illness, hardship and starvation.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau people in the country made initial contact with the outside world, a significant portion of their community perished within a matter of years. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua people experienced the identical outcome.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are highly vulnerable—in terms of health, any exposure could transmit illnesses, and even the simplest ones may wipe them out,” says an advocate from a tribal support group. “Culturally too, any contact or intrusion can be highly damaging to their life and health as a community.”

For local residents of {