Peru’s indigenous tribes use tech tools to track Amazon deforestation

An aerial view shows a deforested area of the Amazon jungle in southeast Peru caused by illegal mining, during a Peruvian military operation to destroy illegal machinery and equipment used by wildcat miners in Madre de Dios, Peru, on March 5, 2019. — Reuters

BOGOTA: Peruvian indigenous groups equipped with remote sensing technology and satellite-based alerts have been helping to track and report forest loss in the Amazon as drug trafficking fuels deforestation, research published on July 12 showed.

Members of nearly 40 indigenous communities in Peru’s northern border region of Loreto were trained to use smartphone mapping apps that receive early deforestation alerts from satellite data in a project that started in 2018.