TRENDS
Real-time alert is received
3 by a responsible agent on
the ground nearby
4 Enabling
immediate
intervention
tions know that an area is under surveillance, it’s
typically enough to keep them away for at least a
year, White explains. This yearly estimate is based
on the organization’s own observations, as well as
reports from partners at the five sites where the
systems are installed.
That leaves Rainforest Connection with the
question of what to do with the hundreds of hours
of undisturbed rainforest recordings that they’re
continuously collecting. One solution is to use
machine learning to allow ecologists and biologists
to build sound profiles for species that interest
them. From here, the researchers would be able
to—at-will—select relevant recordings from Rainforest
Connection’s database.
“Right now, if you’re an ecologist and you want
to do research on the rainforest, you’d have to
apply for a grant and wait months for it to come
through,” White says. “Then you’d fly out and record
for maybe two weeks, and then you take this
back to your lab and spend years analyzing just a
couple of weeks of audio you were able to collect.
With Guardian technology, we can make years’
worth of audio data, from hundreds of locations,
available to them instantly.”
Ultimately, White wants people all over the world
to be able to listen to the sounds of the forest.
Rainforest Connection’s smartphone app now
allows anyone to tune into sound streams from
locations in Peru, Ecuador, Africa, and others. This
is important, he explains, because the survival of
the rainforests should matter to more than just the
animal species and the humans who inhabit them.
“The destruction of the rainforests is the second
largest contributor to climate change,” White
says. “The CO2 emissions from deforestation are
greater than all other forms of transportation put
together.” But 90 percent of this deforestation is
illegal, and because it’s already a crime, there’s no
additional mandate to stop the ongoing abuse.
With White’s rainforest engineering underway, it
seems possible to tackle the crux of the issue. For
White, “this could be one of the easiest ways to make
a significant impact on preventing climate change.” ■
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