Many strategies are used to protect wild plants and animals, but we are much more lax when it comes to ancestral cultures that are threatened or endangered worldwide.

We should recognize the few humans still living in isolation as infallible indicators of true wilderness. Both are vanishingly rare and our responsibilities towards them are tremendous. Any country that can boast the presence of an uncontacted group is truly fortunate and should realize that this represents an unusual opportunity to save two irreplaceable assets — a unique people and a wild place — for the price of one.

Ecuador is one such country. The Tagaeri and the Taromenane clans of the Waorani nation, voluntarily separated from Western civilization in space and time, roam the lowland rainforests of Yasuní, a region that has been documented as housing the greatest species richness on the planet.

In eastern Ecuador, as elsewhere, valuable resources located within indigenous peoples' homelands put them and their cultures at risk. Resorting to violence to push them aside has rightly come to be considered abominable. Financial means (from job offers and donations to promises of improved standards of living) are more acceptable and widely used to pacify native peoples on contact, or simply to get them out of the way — always under the pretext of a country's greater economic good.

A small isolated group of humans with no vote or voice is as valid for preservation as an endangered species. A country such as Ecuador has everything to gain by protecting both intact ecosystems and cultures through hands-off policies that are akin to those used for endangered species.