Newly released photographs from the Peruvian Amazon show dozens of uncontacted Indigenous people, members of the Mashco Piro tribe, only a few miles from an area where logging is set to begin.
The new photos are “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,” said Alfredo Vargas Pio, head of the Indigenous organization FENAMAD. “The logging workers could bring in new diseases which would wipe out the Mashco Piro, and there’s also a risk of violence on either side.”
Several logging firms hold claims to lands belonging to the Mashco Piro, who are believed to be the largest uncontacted tribe in the world. One firm, Canales Tahuamanu, has built more than 100 miles of roads through Mashco Piro territory in preparation for new logging. Caroline Pearce, head of Survival International, which gathered the photos, said the operation is “a humanitarian disaster in the making.”
Even though the Peruvian government has acknowledged that logging claims fall within Mashco Piro lands, the Forest Stewardship Council has certified the Canales Tahuamanu operation as sustainable and ethical. Pearce is calling on the council to withdraw the certification, saying that “failure to do so will make a mockery of the entire certification system.”
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