Dear Jack,

When uncontacted Mashco Piro people collect turtles’ eggs on a river bank, or pick fruit and vegetables, they whistle first. Mimicking the high trill of a tinamou bird, it’s a sound that warns their neighbors, the Yine people, to stay away.

The Mashco Piro people assert their right to live undisturbed on their own territory, remembering only too well the violence and disease of the rubber boom more than a century ago, which killed many of their ancestors.

But the threats to their lives, land, and way of life are not just historical. In recent years, men working for the logging company Canales Tahuamanu have penetrated deep into the Mashco Piro territory in Peru’s Amazon, bulldozing up to 120 miles of logging roads.

Following a campaign by Survival International – with help from you, our supporters – the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) temporarily suspended its “sustainable” certification of Canales Tahuamanu’s timber.

But the Mashco Piro’s survival shouldn’t depend on the FSC — or the logging companies — doing the right thing.

Logging would end immediately if the government of Peru properly demarcates all of the Mashco Piro’s territory and cancels the logging concessions. In 2002 the government created the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve to protect the Mashco Piro’s forest. But the reserve only covers part of their actual land. The government sold off much of the rest to logging concessions.

It’s time to put things right, affirm the Mashco Piro’s right to reject contact, and protect their forest. They have delivered a clear message. It must be heeded, or the Mashco Piro will be wiped out.