Rainforests are home to magnificent plants and exotic animals that make up 50 percent of the Earth’s flora and fauna. But the world’s rainforests are also disappearing quickly. The Amazon has lost almost one-fifth of its rainforest in the last four decades. Our rainforests are the world’s oldest living ecosystems, and it’s our job to take care of them. Luckily, one man has come up with a way to help by using old smartphones.
Illegal logging in the rainforest is on the rise, which is especially alarming considering that deforestation accounts for 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The air is already filled with so much noise from rivers, waterfalls, and animals that it’s been historically difficult to detect the sounds of illegal logging.
All it took was one person with a simple yet brilliant idea: using smartphones to listen for the sounds of destruction.
Topher White is the founder of Rainforest Connection, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting rainforests by using recycled smartphones to detect illegal logging activity.
He invented a system where smartphones are placed in trees, staying charged via solar cells. It just took the installation of an extra microphone to listen for sounds of chainsaws at nearly a mile away.
How it works?
When they install an old phone, Rainforest Connection first wipes the device’s memory and rewires the hardware, then fits it with a solar panel array and ships it off to a rainforest in need. Finally, the organization puts it in a tree and if it detects the sounds of chainsaws, they jump into action.
Rainforest Connection says that a single rewired phone could protect about a square mile of an endangered forest. That would have the same environmental impact of taking 3,000 cars off the road for a year.
With the help of a few old phones, Rainforest Connection is working to make sure we still have this resource for generations to come.