How you can use your smartphone to save the rainforest
Wait, what? Smartphones to help save the rainforest? Yes, the ubiquitous smartphone could be the next step in helping preserve what rainforests we have left. Topher White, engineer and physicist, has developed an app called the Rainforest Connection. Using old mobile phones carefully hidden in the trees, his app detects sounds linked to illegal logging and poaching such as the revs of chainsaws and even gunshots. Park rangers can use their own phones to link up with the app and head over to the scene of the crime to crackdown on the wrongdoers.
The system is already in use in the Amazon but the developers are looking to expand it to other endangered rainforests around the world. The good news is, there is a way for all of us to help. We can donate our old smartphones to the company which will be converted into 'forest guardians' - the phones that are secreted in the trees to monitor for any suspicious sounds. Considering the fact that millions of mobile phones are discarded each year, re-purposing them into conservation tools sounds far better than throwing them into an electronic dump site!
Turn your old phones into rainforest guardians!
The guardians are hidden up on trees to keep an ear out for illegal logging
Find out more about Rainforest Connection here!
#rainforest #smartphone #amazon #technology #conservation #deforestation #Spotlight #tropical
