More than 50 members of an isolated Amazonian tribe have been spotted gathering on the banks of a river in rare footage out of Peru. Dozens of members of the Mashco Piro tribe appeared along the Las Piedras river in Madre de Dios province near the village of Monte Salvado, home to the Indigenous Yine people, at the end of June. This while another 17 members appeared near the neighboring village of Puerto Nuevo, per ABC News and the Guardian. "This is irrefutable evidence that many Mashco Piro live in this area, which the government has not only failed to protect, but actually sold off to logging companies," says a rep for the local Indigenous rights group FENAMAD.
The group said the tribe had been observed leaving the rainforest near the border with Brazil more often than normal in recent weeks as they seek to avoid loggers. They were spotted just a few miles from a logging area, per ABC. "The Yine, who are not uncontacted, speak a language related to Mashco Piro, and have previously reported that the Mashco Piro angrily denounced the presence of loggers on their land," says the London-based Indigenous rights group Survival International, which released the footage.
Various logging companies hold timber concessions inside the Mashco Piro's territory, per the Guardian. SI says one company, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu SAC, has built more than 120 miles of roads used to extract timber, per NBC News. "This is a humanitarian disaster in the making—it's absolutely vital that the loggers are thrown out, and the Mashco Piro's territory is properly protected," SI Director Caroline Pearce says in a release. FENAMAD notes loggers could introduce diseases that would wipe out the tribe. "There's also a risk of violence on either side." The Mashco Piro, thought to be the world's largest uncontacted tribe with 750 members living deep in the rainforests of southeast Peru, has previously been linked to fatal attacks on loggers and villagers. (More Peru stories.)
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