By Stuart Grudgings
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Dramatic photographs ofpreviously unfound Amazon Indians have highlighted theprecariousness of the few remaining "lost" tribes and thedangers they face from contact with outsiders.
The bow-and-arrow wielding Indians in the pictures releasedon Thursday are likely the remnants of a larger tribe who wereforced deeper into the forest by encroaching settlement,experts said.
Rather than being "lost", they have likely had plenty ofcontact with other indigenous groups over the years, saidThomas Lovejoy, an Amazon expert who is president of The HeinzCenter in Washington.
"I think there is an ethical question whether you can inthe end keep them from any contact and I think the answer tothat is no," Lovejoy said.
"The right answer is to have the kind of contact and changethat the tribes themselves manage the pace of it."
The Brazil-Peru border area is one of the world's lastrefuges for such groups, with more than 50 uncontacted tribesthought to live there out of the estimated 100 worldwide.
They are increasingly at risk from development, especiallyon the Peruvian side which has been slower than Brazil torecognize protected areas for indigenous people.
Jose Carlos Meirelles, an official with Brazil's Indianprotection agency who was on the helicopter that overflew thetribe, said they should be left alone as much as possible.
"While we are getting arrows in the face, it's fine," hetold Brazil's Globo newspaper. "The day that they arewell-behaved, they are finished."
Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous forBrazil's Indians, who now number about 350,000 compared to upto 5 million when the first Europeans arrived.
"In 508 years of history, out of the thousands of tribesthat exist none have adapted well to society in Brazil," saidSydney Possuelo, a former official with Brazil's Indianprotection agency who founded its isolated tribes department.
CONCERN OVER PERU POLICY
In recent years, though, tribes like the Yanomami havesucceeded in winning greater protection by becoming morepolitically organized and forming links with foreignconservationists.
"It's not about making that decision for them. It's aboutmaking time and space to make that decision themselves," saidDavid Hill of the Survival International group.
More than half of the Murunahua tribe in Peru died of coldsand other illness after they were contacted as a result ofdevelopment for the first time in 1996, Hill said.
Sightings of such tribes are not uncommon, occurring onceevery few years in the Brazil-Peru border area where there areestimated to be more than 50 out of the total global number of100 uncontacted tribes.
In 1998, a 200-strong tribe was discovered by Possueloliving in huts under the forest canopy, also in Acre state nearthe Brazil-Peru border.
In September last year, ecologists looking for illegalloggers in Peru spotted a little-known nomadic tribe deep inthe Amazon.
The sighting underscored worries among rights groups thatoil and gas exploration being pushed by the Peruviangovernment, as well as logging, is putting tribes at risk.
Peru has no equivalent to Brazil's long-standing Indianaffairs department, which has a policy of no contact withunknown tribes.
"There is a lot of logging going on over on the Peruvianside," Hill said. "It's had all kinds of effects on the groupsliving there, particularly on the uncontacted groups -- it'sled to violent conflicts and deaths."
In May, Peru's petroleum agency Perupetro said it wouldexclude areas where isolated tribes live from an auction of oiland gas concessions. Perupetro had been under pressure to limitexploration activities near tribal areas, and had cast doubt onthe existence of isolated groups, angering activists.
(Additional reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio and TerryWade in Lima; editing by Angus MacSwan)
