In 2011, Topher White was hiking in an Indonesian rainforest when he happened upon an illegal logger cutting down trees, masked by the sound of birds and bugs.
Declining rainforests is a big contributing factor to climate change, and the UN reported that 90% of deforestation is illegal.
On seeing this illegal logger, White, who used to work as a software engineer at a power plant, had a lightbulb moment. Soon after, he founded San Francisco-based nonprofit Rainforest Connection (RFCx), which equips old smartphones with special tools to combat deforestation.
Here’s how the device works: White adds extremely sensitive microphones to the old smartphones and runs an app that sends an alert to local rangers whenever the sound of a chainsaw is detected. He designed special petal-shaped solar panels that could garner enough power for the phones, even under the forest canopy. Surprisingly, even in remote forests, you can often get decent cell reception which makes sending the alert fairly easy.
These old smartphones are lovingly called ‘forest guardians’ and have, as of now, saved 110,000 hectares of rainforest. To put that in perspective, that’s more than 200,000 soccer fields. White now spends nine months out of the year installing and troubleshooting the devices. Today, listening devices are saving trees in Indonesia, Romania, Brazil, Ecuador, Cameroon, Peru, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. “I want to make nature interesting and compelling to the world,” White told Nationswell. “I want people to be involved — not because they feel guilty about deforestation, but because they find nature so irresistible that they can’t look away.” Care to have your mind blown, again? RFCx is a free app and users can log in to listen to the sounds of the creatures in the rainforests going about their day. Download the app here. Feature photo: Rainforest Connection
