Peru shelves Mashco Piro reserve expansion, raising Amazon logging fears

The commission responsible for protecting Peru's isolated Indigenous peoples decided last week to revisit a 2016 study rather than act on it, according to Indigenous organizations and the advocacy group Survival International. That study had recommended expanding the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve, a protected area set up in 2002 for the Mashco Piro and other peoples living in isolation in southeastern Peru. The result: a proposed expansion is now on hold, leaving logging concessions that overlap those areas free to keep operating, Indigenous groups say.

Eusebio Rios Iviche, vice president of the Indigenous organization FENAMAD, told The Associated Press on Monday that the decision threatens to undo years of work to shield the Mashco Piro. He said it exposes them to more run-ins with outsiders and to diseases they have little immunity against. Rios Iviche called on the government to honor the 2016 agreement, expand the reserve and strip out the overlapping concessions. "The lives and survival of the Mashco Piro people must not come second to economic interests," he said.

Ramon Rivero, who ran Peru's office for isolated Indigenous peoples in 2014, pushed back on the rethink. He argued authorities should finish the expansion instead of reopening studies that were already approved, and said the government should consider compensating logging companies whose concessions would be affected. Peru's Ministry of Culture, which oversees protections for peoples in isolation, did not respond to a request for comment.

Pressure on the Mashco Piro's land is not new. Images released by Survival International in 2024 showed dozens of Mashco Piro near logging concessions in Madre de Dios, a region bordering Brazil and Bolivia. That same year, violent encounters between the Mashco Piro and loggers left at least two loggers dead; it remains unclear whether any Mashco Piro were killed or injured.

After those confrontations, the Forest Stewardship Council suspended certification for Maderera Canales Tahuamanu, a logging company working in the area, and withdrew it permanently in 2025. Survival International says logging has continued there anyway. Caroline Pearce, the group's executive director, condemned the government's decision, saying it effectively put the Mashco Piro's territory up for sale and put commercial interests ahead of Indigenous lives.

The fight is already in court. In September, FENAMAD and the environmental legal organization EarthRights International brought a case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, accusing Peru of failing to protect the Mashco Piro's ancestral territory and their right to stay isolated.