On the evening of Feb. 12, a teenager from an isolated Indigenous group voluntarily made contact with people in a fishing village in the western Brazilian Amazon, according to Brazil’s Indigenous agency, Funai. He returned to his land on Feb. 15. The young man is likely part of an isolated Indigenous group in the Mamoriá Grande Indigenous Territory, only confirmed in 2021 after researchers found vases, food vestiges and baskets following accounts from neighboring Indigenous groups. In December 2024, Funai decreed a temporary protection order over the land. The territory’s demarcation is not yet completed, a step experts say is urgent to ensure permanent protection. The Indigenous territory, and the Bela Rosa fishing village where the teenager appeared, are nestled between the rural towns of Lábrea and Pauini in the south of Amazonas state. Both municipalities are hotspots for deforestation and wildfires as the Amazon’s “arc of deforestation” pushes farther north. “The direct cause [for the contact] is difficult to determine with certainty at this stage, given the information we have today. It would be premature for me to state definitively whether it is linked to environmental factors,” Marcos Tosta, the head of Funai’s coordination for isolated and recently contacted Indigenous peoples, told Mongabay in a voice message. “What we do know is that, in recent times, we have seen an increase in contact situations due to factors directly or indirectly related to climate change,” Tosta added. The Mamoriá Grande Indigenous territory and surrounding deforestation alerts. Map by Mongabay. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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