SAVING THE RAINFORESTS USING OLD CELL  PHONES

Submitted By : SRIJITA CHAKRABORTY (Deprtment of BCA Batch :2018-2021)

What is the first thing which comes to our mind when we hear the words “ Old Cellphones”?   It’s that they are e-wastes, they can no longer be used and the only thing we can do is to dump  them. But have we ever imagined that these discarded , so called “useless” cellphones can also be made useful? Or that these cell phones can also contribute in saving the nature? No, right? But even if that seems quite impossible , engineer and physicist Topher White has come up with an ingenious method of using recycled cell phones to prevent deforestation and poaching in the rainforests.

Forests are disappearing worldwide at an unprecedented rate and the most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. Swaths half the size of England are lost each year, Amazon has lost close to one-fifth of its rainforest cover in last four decades, only because of illegal logging. Deforestation not only affects the habitat for millions of species but is also responsible for the greenhouse emissions which drive climate change.

Founder of the San Francisco–based non-profit Rainforest Connection, Topher White spends a lot of time walking in and thinking about the rapid degradation of forests and he became really concerned about this alarming fact. White has developed a simple but ingenious strategy of using old cellphones to listen for the sound of destruction.

According to White, between 50-90 percent of the logging that happens in the world’s rainforests is illegal. Yet detecting chainsaws and other sounds related to that activity can be tough, because the air is already filled with the cacophony of nature.

So he has developed a system in which he rigs a cell phone to stay charged by solar cells, attaches an extra microphone and listens. From there, the device can detect the sounds of chainsaws nearly a mile away. It might be quite unbelievable, but cell phone reception often isn’t bad in the rainforest. White said, ”when you are up in the canopy you can actually pick up a signal from pretty far away”.

Since it’s not feasible to have people listening to the devices all the time, he added some “ old-school analysis”, so that the cell phone’s computers can differentiate a chainsaw’s sound from the others in the forest. In this way, his device can automatically detect logging activity and send a text alert to authorities who can determine if it’s illegal and then take the necessary actions against it.

Use of his monitoring devices has expanded throughout the world over the past two years. So far, they have been used in Cameroon ,Ecuador, Peru and Brazil and will soon be deployed in Bolivia. It’s not just about listening for logging. The same technology that can pick out the buzz of a chainsaw can pick out the sound of specific birds , which is why White sees the forest recordings as a potential science tool .He is urging biologists and ecologists to use his monitoring system anywhere, whether it’s a remote forest or a park, as, “The more we learn about these places, the easier it will be to protect them.” White notes that he is not alone in the fight: Many people and organizations like the indigenous groups are particularly active in forest conservation efforts and they are working tirelessly to stop forests from vanishing.

Through all these years we have come to know that cell phones are always harmful to the environment , specially the electromagnetic radiation emitted from the mobile communication towers has damaging effects on the nervous and immune system of small insects and birds and that it can even damage it’s eggs and embryo. But Topher White by introducing this unique and innovative way of saving the rainforests has also proved that the discarded cell phones can also be put to use to save the nature.