How recycled cellphones can prevent illegal tree-chopping in the rainforest

Environmental awareness is very popular — everyone seems to be going green lately. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in protecting our own communities that we forget the world outside of our own.

Rainforest Connection, a San Francisco-based nonprofit with a new Kickstarter campaign, is converting old phones into devices that can detect illegal logging and poaching in the rainforest in real time.

Logging, chopping down trees illegally, and poaching, unauthorized killing of wildlife, can be detrimental to the environment by threatening species and destroying habitats. It is also surmised that tropical deforestation accounts for about 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
 
So Rainforest Connection is trying to help. Company founder Topher White and his team have developed a prevention system using a network of recycled devices such as Android handsets and fragments of solar panels that can detect and pinpoint signs of environmental destruction activity — such as chainsaws, gunshots, and animal distress calls over a mile away. Then can raise the alarm for conservationists on the ground in real time. 

Each RFCx device made of recycled electronics is installed and hidden in tree canopies to continuously capture all ambient sound. The device then transmits an alert to the cloud server which in turn sends an SMS messages to first responders.

Currently the only detection systems that exist rely on satellites that show rainforest destruction days or weeks after it has already occurred. Rainforest Connection’s system provides real-time detection so they can pinpoint deforestation activity the moment it begins, while simultaneously streaming the data openly and immediately to anyone around the world.

The rainforest mobile app

At the end of 2014, the company will release web and mobile apps that will transmit live sounds of the rainforest in Africa and the Amazon. If you visit the company’s Kickstarter page you can hear the sounds of the rainforest as captured by the RFCx system they developed in Sumatra.

Rainforest Connection has surpassed the halfway mark of its $100,000 funding goal with 21 days left to go. Learn more on its Kickstarter campaign page.