Advocates are concerned by a recent uptick in sightings of uncontacted people. This image was released by Survival International in 2011. 
 
 Indigenous people with no prior contact to the outside world have just emerged from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and made contact with a group of settled Indians, after being spotted migrating to evade illegal loggers, advocates say. 
 
 The news, which was released yesterday (July 2), comes after sightings of the uncontacted Indians in Brazil near the border with Peru, according to the group Survival International. Officials with the organization had warned last month that the isolated tribes face threats of disease and violence as they moved into new territory and possibly encountered other people. 
 
 "Something serious must have happened," José Carlos Meirelles, a former official with the Brazilian Indian Affairs Department FUNAI, said in a statement. "It is not normal for such a large group of uncontacted Indians to approach in this way. This is a completely new and worrying situation, and we currently do not know what has caused it." [See Photos of Uncontacted Amazon Tribe] 
 
 Survival International officials said dozens of uncontacted Indians were recently spotted close to the home of the Ashaninka Indians in Brazil's Acre state along the Envira River, while a government investigation in the region uncovered more ephemeral traces of the tribe on the move: footprints, temporary camps and food leftovers. On Sunday (June 29), reports suggest, the vulnerable group of Indians made contact with the Asháninka. 
 
 Advocates think the Indians crossed into Brazil from Peru to escape drug traffickers and illegal loggers who started working in their territory, Fiona Watson, research and field director for Survival International, told Live Science in an email. 
 
 Advocates warned this could be a deadly development. 
 
 As they travel, the tribe may be at risk of clashes with other groups and contagious diseases to which they have no immunity. Illnesses like the flu and malaria, for example, devastated the Zo'e tribe in northern Brazil after Christian missionaries established a base camp in the area in the 1980s. 
 
 "I am from the same area as they are," Nixiwaka Yawanawá, an Indian from Brazil's Acre state, said in a statement. "It is very worrying that my relatives are at risk of disappearing. It shows the injustice that we face today. They are even more vulnerable because they can’t communicate with the authorities. Both governments must act now to protect and to stop a disaster against my people," added Yawanawá, who joined Survival to speak out for the rights of such indigenous peoples. 
 
 Another uncontacted tribe was famously photographed near the Brazil-Peru border in 2008. Images released by Survival International at the time showed men pointing arrows at the plane photographing them. In 2011, a government post that was monitoring the area was overrun by illegal loggers and drug smugglers. 
 
 "International borders don't exist for uncontacted tribes, which is why Peru and Brazil must work together to prevent lives being lost," Survival director Stephen Corry urged in the statement. "Both governments must act now if their uncontacted citizens are to survive." 
 
 Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Image: FUNAI/Gleison Miranda 
 
 For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Brazilian government has made contact with a previously isolated indigenous tribe after the group was likely forced to take refuge from illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest. 
 
 According to FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs department, the contact was made last weekend near the Peru-Brazil border after the group approached a settlement. It's the first time the Brazilian government has has extensive interactions with a previously uncontacted tribe since 1996. The group is believed to have been pushed there by illegal logging in Peru and comes just days after FUNAI warned of "imminent death and tragedy" if the logging didn't stop. 
 
 The group has no name known outside of the tribe, and it's unclear what language its people speak, Kayla Wieche, a spokesperson for Survival International, a London-based group that fights for indigenous rights worldwide, told me. 
 
 "There is no name for the group. We can't be sure how the refer to themselves or even what language they speak," she said. "It's difficult to know how many people are in the group in total and how many made contact. One FUNAI official has mentioned a figure of 70, but nobody can really be sure at the moment." 
 
 The contact was somewhat expected, because in recent weeks, Brazil's Ashaninka people, a contacted tribe living near this group, reported many more sightings of the group. Sunday, a large group of them apparently approached the Ashaninka village. 
 
 The group is believed to be the same one that was photographed from the air in both 2008 and 2010, though officials don't know for sure yet. In those photos, men can be seen pointing spears and arrows at a helicopter. Back in 2008, a widely-circulated rumor suggested that the photos were somehow a hoax, a claim that originated at The Observer. That paper has since apologized, retracted its article, and deleted it off its website. 
 
 FUNAI says the increased sightings started June 13, and contact occurred on June 29. 
 
 This image was taken from a helicopter in 2008 and is believed to be of the same group that was just contacted. Image: FUNAI/Gleison Miranda 
 
 This is, of course, not good news. The general consensus is that uncontacted tribes should be left alone in the forest, where many of them have lived for hundreds of years or more. 
 
 A recent study suggested that many uncontacted tribes die out almost immediately after they are contacted. Of the 238 tribes that have been contacted over the past several decades, three fourths have died out. The ones that have survived see mortality rates of up to 80 percent due to contracting diseases they've never been exposed to, among other things. 
 
 FUNAI "has the premise of no contact, respecting the self-determination of peoples and doing the work of territorial protection with the presence of these people," the group said in a press release about the contact. It added that it has sent experts in indigenous health and interpreters to do their best to communicate with the uncontacted people and to keep them safe. 
 
 Back in 2011, WikiLeaks released documents that showed as much as 90 percent of Peru's mahogany exports were illegally logged from the Amazon, much of that in the region where these people lived. Survival International believes that illegal logging was to blame for pushing the tribe into Brazil, where they eventually bumped up against the contacted tribe. It's the same thing that experts fear could happen in Ecuador, where oil drilling is boxing in an uncontacted tribe and pushing them toward contacted ones. 
 
 What happens from here is anyone's guess, according to Sarah Shenker, a campaigner with Survival International who has been in close contact with people on the ground in Brazil. The group will be given the choice about whether or not it wants to settle in a village associated with outside society. There have been instances of a group being contacted and eventually electing to return to live in isolation. 
 
 She says Brazilian officials believe that in order for an uncontacted group to approach a settlement like this, external pressures must have been involved. 
 
 "It seems there were real pressures on them—logging and drug trafficking forcing them to do this," she told me. "It seems like something big has happened, for them to approach a village like this. Maybe they saw loggers and felt they had no where left to go." ||||| Last week, Brazilian officials announced that an isolated Amazonian tribe took a momentous and potentially tragic step. Emerging from dense rainforest along the Upper Envira River in the state of Acre, Brazil, the group willingly approached a team of Brazilian government scientists on 29 June and made peaceful contact with the outside world. Officials suspect that the tribe fled illegal logging and drug trafficking in their traditional homelands in Peru. The meeting was Brazil's first official contact with an isolated Amazonian tribe in 20 years. Anthropologists remain deeply concerned about the tribe's future as it encounters novel diseases and resource-hungry outsiders. Many previous contacts have ended in tragedy, as diseases such as influenza and whooping cough ravaged tribes. 
 
 For more, see the full story in this week's issue of Science. 
 
 *Correction, 9 July, 1:51 p.m.: The photo caption contained an incorrect date; the photograph was taken in 2010.
– An Amazon tribe that has managed to remain isolated from the outside world is isolated no more. Members of the unnamed tribe have taken what Science calls the "momentous and potentially tragic step" of approaching a group of Brazilian scientists in the rainforest. (It's believed to be the same tribe that was photographed a few years ago by a government plane, notes Vice, though no contact was made at that time.) The government dispatched the team of scientists to the Upper Envira River region after getting complaints from local villagers that members of the tribe had shown up and were raiding their fields. Brazil has a strict no-contact policy with such tribes—about 70 are thought to exist in the rainforest—but an Arizona anthropologist thinks it made sense to send the team in this case given the "serious threat of violence" that existed between the tribe and villagers. Little is known about the group, and scientists haven't yet identified its language, but LiveScience reports that the tribe likely came from Peru when illegal loggers and drug traffickers encroached on its territory. Maybe they "felt they had nowhere left to go," says a member of advocacy group Survival International. Scientists have quarantined the area because the tribe's members are at high risk of picking up diseases. They'll eventually get to decide whether they want to settle in a village with ties to the modern world. Click to read about another remote tribe thought (by Westerners, anyway) to be exceedingly dull.