Dear Jack,

The Peruvian rainforest near the border with Brazil is home to the largest uncontacted tribe in the world: the Mashco Piro.

But their territory is now under threat as never before.

A logging company called Canales Tahuamanu has been extracting timber from their land for years. It has built more than 200km of new roads since 2016, putting the Mashco Piro’s survival at serious risk: the destruction of their forest, chance encounters with the loggers, and the spread of disease could all wipe them out.

Incredibly, Canales Tahuamanu has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). This stamp of approval is supposed to guarantee that the company’s operation is both sustainable and ethical, but that clearly isn’t the case here.

The Mashco Piro have taken to appearing occasionally in the settled Indigenous communities on the borders of their reserve. Their Indigenous neighbors take this as a sign that the Mashco Piro are feeling increasingly threatened by the loggers invading their forest. They say that the Mashco Piro have even shouted at them: “The men in orange clothes [the loggers] are bad people!”

Please ask the FSC to cancel its certification of Canales Tahuamanu. The company, which uses the certification as a stamp of approval for its operations, is already under pressure from Indigenous organizations in Peru to withdraw from the Mashco Piro territory. Losing the certification will be a powerful signal - to the company and the government - that logging in this area must stop, before it’s too late for the Mashco Piro.

With thanks,

Caroline Pearce
Director