A/HRC/4/32 page 11 ownership for agricultural ventures, many of them foreign commercial companies. A growing social disparity has sprung up between them and there are high poverty rates owing to the loss of their grazing areas, restrictions on their land-resources management capacity, inadequate access to water, and lack of support for infrastructure and marketing of their cattle. But little by little, through the increasing activism of organizations of herdsmen and hunter-gatherers, State policy is beginning to take these communities’ rights and needs into consideration, including the 2005 Livestock Policy and the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty 2005-2010. 40. Most of the 45 groups that appear in the Common Register of Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation are in the Arctic region or in subarctic areas of the Siberian tundra and taiga, where they still subsist on pastoralism. The Ministry of Labour reported in 1995 that in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamal-Nenetz autonomous districts 11 million hectares of lands used by reindeer herds had been irreparably destroyed and dozens of rivers and lakes irreversibly polluted. The privatization of local lands and resources introduced in the post-Soviet era contributed even further to the loss of the indigenous peoples’ collective property, accelerating their social and cultural destruction and their impoverishment. 41. The Special Rapporteur recommends that development projects that allow pastoral peoples, if they so wish, to preserve their way of life and the traditional lands required for them to do so should be developed with indigenous participation. E. Peoples living in isolation 42. Small indigenous communities that shun all contact with modern society and prefer to live in isolation and devote themselves to their traditional subsistence economy are to be found in different parts of the equatorial forests that still exist in the world. Contrary to the image portrayed by some media, these groups are not the original settlers “who have never had contact with civilization”, but population groups that for generations have been avoiding contacts that have been extremely violent and deadly for them, leading them to seek refuge in forests. Many of these communities are now on the brink of what some describe as genocide, owing to oil exploration, timber extraction, the introduction of vast commercial plantations, infrastructure works, missionary activity, drug trafficking and international tourism. The few contacts that may take place can turn violent and the diseases carried by the new settlers continue to wipe out a large number of these population groups. 43. In Ecuador (see A/HRC/4/32/Add.2, paras. 37-41) the law has reserved “untouchable land” for the Tagaeri-Taromenani. But, even so, there are conflict situations or violent clashes between the indigenous settlers and the isolated population, generally involving the timber and mining interests in the area. The Special Rapporteur continues to be concerned at the extremely vulnerable situation of some small indigenous communities living in the Colombian Amazon and threatened with extinction as a result of violence (see E/CN.4/2005/88/Add.2, para. 57). 44. In the Madre Dios Department of Peru, the indigenous organization Native Federation of Madre Dios and Tributaries (FENAMAD), supported by other organizations, is endeavouring to secure a reserve for isolated peoples, including the small surviving groups of Maslo, Matsigenka and Chitonahua. But the legal establishment of indigenous reserves does not in itself guarantee