HOW DOES RAINFOREST CONNECTION WORK?
Sounds of
1 the chainsaws
are picked up by
microphones in
the solar-powered
Guardian
Software transmits
2 signals to the cloud API
Each Guardian can detect
chainsaw noise up to 2 /3 of
a mile in the distance
18
trying to do a very energy-intensive thing in
this very harsh, wet, and hot environment.”
And then there is the noise. From the calls
of howler monkeys to the squawking of the
macaws, the rainforest is rarely a quiet place.
No matter how sensitive your microphone is,
picking out anomalies amid the cacophony can
be a difficult task.
Yet rather than running this computationally
demanding analysis on the phone itself, the
Guardians continuously stream audio to the
cloud, where Rainforest Connection’s system
analyzes it for suspicious sounds, like chainsaws,
trucks, or motorbikes. More recently,
they’ve also begun to spot predictive patterns,
such as the calling sounds of certain bird
species falling unusually quiet when intruders
draw near, in order to send warnings before
loggers even arrive at a site.
This sensitivity in pattern recognition is crucial
now that Rainforest Connection is helping
people take on larger black-market operations,
where confrontation could potentially be much
more dangerous than it was back in Indonesia.
“A lot of our partners typically wouldn’t
show up at a site because if they do, it’s going
to be a gunfight,” White reports. “That’s
what we’re trying to avoid, and that’s why
this real-time or even predictive response is
important, because if you stop a truck on the
way in, then the stakes are pretty low.”
In the predictive scenario, no crime has
been committed yet, but the invaders know
they’re going to get caught so, in some cases,
they will turn around and just leave. Alternatively,
“if you show up once they’re already
cutting down trees,” White says, “then the
stakes are high, and people can get hurt.”
BIOMONITORING
Successful intervention usually has a longerterm
impact than just driving the loggers away
one time. Illegal logging relies on being able to
operate undercover, and once the organiza-
ILLUSTRATION BY RANDALL MARTIN