Half of the world’s remaining uncontacted Indigenous communities could vanish in the next ten years unless governments strengthen protection for their lands, a new report has cautioned.

The advocacy group Survival International estimates that close to 200 groups still live in voluntary isolation across several continents. It warns that expanding logging, mining, and oil operations are destroying the forests and ecosystems these communities depend on.

Deep in the Amazon, the destruction is already being felt. “You hear the logging machines every morning,” said Thomas dos Santos, an elder who lives near one such threatened group. “We ask for the work to move further away, but it’s coming closer. The machines run day and night. Those living in the forest, our brothers, have never heard such noise. They are watching their home disappear.”

Human rights organisations are calling on world leaders to enforce stronger land protection laws and stop industrial expansion in isolated areas before it’s too late, warning that entire cultures could vanish without ever being known to the modern world.

–ChannelAfrica–