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16m ago

Report Counts 196 Uncontacted Groups, Warns Half Could Disappear Within 10 Years

The findings spotlight eroding protections in Brazil and Peru that heighten extinction risk.

Uncontacted people in Brazil. Photo taken on a FUNAI fly-over in 2010.
Dozens of Mashco Piro people appeared on a riverbank in Peru in 2024, just a few miles from logging concessions. The Mascho Piro are Indigenous nomadic hunter-gatherers who inhabit Manú National Park in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. They have in the past actively avoided contact with outsiders. Image courtesy of Survival International.
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Overview

  • Survival International identifies at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups across 10 countries, mostly in the Amazon, and says many could be wiped out within a decade without decisive action.
  • The report estimates that nearly 65% face threats from logging, about 40% from mining and around 20% from agribusiness, with criminal networks and missionary incursions compounding the danger.
  • In Peru, a multisectoral committee rejected the proposed 1.2 million-hectare Yavari Mirim reserve in September, while bills 12215/2025-CR and 11822/2024-CR would enable review or removal of reserves and allow oil and gas in protected areas.
  • In Brazil, the Indigenous protection agency Funai remains weakened and underfunded, its patrol authority incomplete, and the 2023 marco temporal law constrains land demarcation despite a 2024 decree that faces congressional pushback.
  • Advocates call for a global no-contact policy, legal recognition and enforcement of uncontacted territories, suspension of extraction projects near those lands, corporate supply-chain traceability, and prosecution of crimes against Indigenous groups.