UNCONTACTED TRIBES IN PERU
There are five reserves in the Peruvian Amazon meant to protect the lands and rights of isolated peoples. After Brazil (around 70 uncontacted groups) and New Guinea (Papua New Guinea and Iriyan Jaya), Peru has the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world.
LIFESTYLE
Almost all the isolated Indians are nomads, moving across the rainforest according to the seasons in small, extended family groups. In the rainy season, when water levels are high, the tribes, who generally do not use canoes, live away from the rivers deep in the rainforest. During the dry season, however, when water levels are low and beaches form in the river bends they camp on the beaches and fish.
THREATS
Illegal logging has long been a problem in these areas and oil and gas exploration is now pushing into remote areas, particularly in Peru. But growing drug trafficking activity across the PeruBrazil border may well also be driving isolated tribes out of the forest. More than 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been leased by the government to oil companies. Much of this includes regions inhabited by uncontacted tribes. Peru has overtaken Colombia as the world’s biggest producer of coca leaf, the primary ingredient for cocaine and crack. Brazil is the second biggest market for the drugs after the US. Guard posts in the area in the area of the new contact were closed after being ransacked by suspect drug traffickers
in 2011. In 2012, the Guardian revealed that an environmental consultancy working for oil company Perenco withheld evidence of an uncontacted tribe in an oil block which it was seeking permission to explore.
SPREADING OF DISEASES
In June, the members contracted influenza after making voluntary contact with the outside world Some researchers now fear that the contacted individuals, who speak a Panoan language, may spread the potentially fatal virus to other non-immunised members of their tribe. Flu virus is potentially deadly to isolated tribes people because they have no immunity to it, and such transmission is exactly what anthropologists and medical experts hope to avoid during contact.