Treetop sensors help eavesdrop on illegal logging

Tree-mendous effort: White installing a Guardian in the Pasir Talang Timur forest. — The Straits Times/ANN

Clipped onto a rope, climbing high up in a tree swaying in gusts of wind, Topher White finally reaches the roof of the rainforest and opens a laptop to run checks on a machine he built to transmit 24-hour live sound from the surrounding forest.

The machine is one of 27 “Guardian” sensors eavesdropping on forests in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province to listen out for chainsaws as a way to tackle illegal logging in the region.

Over the next five or six years, White hopes to install tens of thousands of these audio sensors in forests around the world.

“We’re basically building a nervous system for the natural world, ” he said.

White, 39, got the idea to use sound in environmental protection 10 years ago while volunteering in a conservation project for gibbons in Borneo.

“You couldn’t really monitor (the forest reservation) with people walking around, but sound seemed like a good way to capture really anything, ” he said.

With a background in engineering, White spent nearly a year building an audio detection sensor using an old mobile phone, solar panels and a microphone, and then returned to Indonesia to test the system.

Today, White’s non-profit group Rainforest Connection is recording sounds to protect nature in a dozen countries with funding from some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Google and Huawei.

Incoming audio streams, from the Amazon to the Philippines, are analysed by artificial intelligence trained to pick out desired information, from the sounds of logging to bird calls.

If the system hears a chainsaw, it sends an alert via an app to community patrols, who can check on the ground for logging.

Since it was installed more than a year ago, local monitors say the system has made their jobs easier as they help with Indonesia’s crackdown on forest encroachment, which includes tougher law enforcement.

“(Logging) has totally stopped – people are afraid of coming to this area, ” said patroller Jasrialdi. — Reuters