Reusing Old Cell Phones to Save Rain Forests | Nat Geo Live

in the summer of 2011 I visited the
forests of Borneo the rainforests of
Borneo for the very first time and as
you can imagine it was the overwhelming
sound that really struck me the most but
in the backgrounds of the sound is
overwhelming cacophony is the sound of
chainsaws and in fact if you turn down
the sound of the other forests there was
actually a chainsaw noise behind that
the entire time it’s very very hard to
know where illegal logging is taking
place even over a short distance of the
forest because it’s such a loud place
and because it’s such a dense place that
you can’t move through so easily so
here’s this idea right the moment that a
chainsaw goes off in the forest a
computer a device is able to pick up the
sound pick it out of the the rainforest
chainsaw it sent alerts local
authorities who can show up in real-time
and halt the loggers which needed advice
right and so we’re talking about cell
phones the amazing thing is that there’s
sometimes pretty good connectivity
there’s cell phone service out in the
middle of the forest you have to protect
it from the elements of the rainforest
we put it in a box there’s a powerful
microphone on it
and you do have to put some solar panels
on it to make sure it can stay powered
this is actually what it looks like all
put together this is the prototype
there’s a phone inside that box and
you’re able to listen to to the sounds
of the forest we were able to pick up
the sounds of chainsaws and send a
real-time alert to myself and to the
Rangers that were there
you