Newsletter November 2007

A team of ecologists found an unknown indigenous group living in isolation deep in Peru's Amazon jungle. The ecologists were flying over areas near Peru’s border with Brazil looking for illegal loggers when they spotted 21 Indians.

The group was photographed and filmed from the air on the banks of the Las Piedras River in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region. A government official who was on the flight said there were three palm huts on the river bank. "We've found five other sites with this kind of shelter along the same river," said Ricardo Hon. "This group is nomadic."

Las Piedras River in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region.

Some indigenous groups, like the Mashco-Piro and Yora tribes, have been forced to move deeper and deeper into the jungle to avoid contact with the steady advance of loggers and oil and gas prospectors. Contact with outsiders can be fatal for these isolated tribes people who have no immunity to many diseases. Indeed, Indigenous leaders say tribes have suffered many deaths from diseases contracted from outsiders. Peru’s government has no plans to further contact the indigenous group.

A pan-American human rights group criticized Peru's government this year for doing little to protect the groups from illegal loggers who are chopping down the forests in which they live.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

PAST NEWSLETTERS:

• Newsletter December 2007
• Newsletter November 2007
• Newsletter October 2007
• Newsletter September 2007
• Newsletter August 2007
• Newsletter July 2007
• Newsletter June 2007
• Newsletter May 2007
• Newsletter April 2007
• Newsletter March 2007
• Newsletter February 2007
• Newslette January 2007