Members of a violent and isolated Amazonian tribe have reportedly shot dead two loggers with arrows in Peru, following several previous attacks and repeated warnings that logging projects were encroaching on their territory.
Members of the Mashco-Piro tribe, believed to be the largest indigenous group living without any contact with the outside world, opened fire on Thursday in a remote area of the rainforest near the Las Piedras river, the British newspaper The Guardian reported.
A third logger was injured and two more were missing after the bow and arrow attack, an indigenous advocacy group told the media.
“This is a completely avoidable tragedy. Peruvian authorities have known for years that the area they chose to sell for logging is in fact Mashco Piro territory,” said Caroline Pierce, executive director of Survival International.
The deadly attack came a day after a logging company that had been cutting trees on the borders of the tribe’s jungle territory lost its “sustainability certificate” for eight months, the paper said.
Canales Tawamanu was accused of building logging roads through tribal territory and was stripped of its certification by the country’s Forest Stewardship Council.
Indigenous groups have previously reportedly fired arrows at an illegal logging camp, injuring one logger on July 27. In 2022, tribal members also fired arrows, killing one logger and injuring another.
Pierce said the controversial logging project puts both tribes and local workers at risk.
“By encouraging the felling and destruction of this rainforest, they are not only endangering the very survival of the Mashko-Piro people, who are highly vulnerable to introduced diseases, but they are also deliberately endangering the lives of loggers,” she said.
Peru’s Ministry of Culture, which oversees indigenous rights, said it was investigating reports of the loggers’ deaths and would send a police helicopter to the area where the incidents occurred.
“Recent events have raised concerns about potential risks to safety and health on board the Mashko Piro,” the agency said in a statement.
The logging company has had a concession in the jungle since 2002, covering more than 190 square miles, The Washington Post reported in May.
Last month, shocking footage was captured on camera showing around 50 members of the remote tribe near the riverbank.
Despite the tribe’s isolation, members of the tribe have been involved in violent clashes with tourists and other indigenous groups in recent years.
In Manu National Park, people were reportedly seen firing arrows at tourist boats and “warning arrows” at park rangers.
The violence reached a new level when the group killed Nicholas “Shaco” Flores, a member of another tribe who had been trying to contact them, by arrow in the heart in 2011.
Some members of the tribe have also reportedly come out of the forest to accompany Christian missionaries to trade machetes and food with residents of nearby villages.
