Rainforest Connection has been working to monitor and detect illegal deforestation and poaching. Their thesis is that if “you can protect the trees, you end up protecting everything else.”
They use old cell phones to listen and monitor for different sounds. A recent National Geographic Article stated that the phones can “detect the sounds of chainsaws nearly a mile away.” Once logging is detected, their system sends a text message to local forest rangers or indigenous tribes so they can intervene.
Over the last two years, Rainforest Connection has been using our waterproof solar panels to power the audio monitors. The challenge with rainforests is that the dense canopy limits the amount of direct light hitting the solar panels.
Rainforest Connection mounts the panels high in the canopy, but individual solar panels may be partially shaded, dropping the power output of the system. The solution to date is to increase the total amount of power and use multiple panels to catch the sun at different times during the day.
Learn more about Rainforest Connection and all the great work they are doing on their site.