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Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a small open space within in the Peruvian rainforest when he detected sounds coming closer through the dense jungle.

It dawned on him he was surrounded, and stood still.

“One was standing, pointing using an projectile,” he remembers. “And somehow he became aware of my presence and I commenced to escape.”

He ended up confronting the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—residing in the modest settlement of Nueva Oceania—had been practically a neighbor to these nomadic tribe, who avoid contact with foreigners.

A recent report issued by a human rights group indicates remain at least 196 termed “remote communities” left in the world. This tribe is believed to be the biggest. The report claims half of these communities may be decimated in the next decade unless authorities don't do additional measures to safeguard them.

It argues the biggest threats are from timber harvesting, extraction or operations for petroleum. Remote communities are extremely at risk to ordinary sickness—consequently, it notes a threat is posed by exposure with religious missionaries and digital content creators looking for clicks.

Lately, Mashco Piro people have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, according to locals.

This settlement is a angling community of a handful of clans, located elevated on the banks of the local river deep within the of Peru jungle, 10 hours from the most accessible town by boat.

This region is not designated as a safeguarded area for uncontacted groups, and timber firms function here.

According to Tomas that, sometimes, the noise of heavy equipment can be detected day and night, and the community are seeing their forest disturbed and destroyed.

Among the locals, inhabitants report they are conflicted. They are afraid of the projectiles but they hold strong respect for their “relatives” residing in the jungle and want to protect them.

“Permit them to live as they live, we must not alter their way of life. This is why we preserve our distance,” explains Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are worried about the harm to the tribe's survival, the danger of conflict and the likelihood that loggers might subject the Mashco Piro to sicknesses they have no defense to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro made themselves known again. Letitia, a woman with a toddler child, was in the jungle gathering food when she detected them.

“We heard shouting, shouts from individuals, a large number of them. Like there were a whole group yelling,” she informed us.

It was the first instance she had come across the tribe and she fled. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was still pounding from terror.

“As there are loggers and operations clearing the forest they are escaping, possibly due to terror and they end up in proximity to us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave to us. That's what scares me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the tribe while catching fish. One was struck by an projectile to the gut. He lived, but the second individual was found dead days later with nine puncture marks in his body.

The Peruvian government has a strategy of avoiding interaction with secluded communities, rendering it illegal to start contact with them.

The policy began in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by tribal advocacy organizations, who noted that early contact with isolated people resulted to entire groups being wiped out by disease, hardship and starvation.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru first encountered with the world outside, half of their people perished within a short period. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua community faced the same fate.

“Remote tribes are extremely susceptible—from a disease perspective, any contact could transmit diseases, and including the simplest ones could eliminate them,” explains a representative from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “Culturally too, any contact or interference can be extremely detrimental to their existence and health as a society.”

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