This forest is bugged

In its July 2014 edition, Conservation Magazine published a fascinating collection of articles about how industrious folks are using relatively new mapping and data aggregating technologies to address environmental and conservation issues. For example, one young American, Topher White began retrofitting old smartphones as solar-powered listening devices to catch loggers.

"In 2013, White hid four of his bugs in treetops around 134 hectares of the Kalaweit gibbon sanctuary in Sumatra. Within a day of going live, White says, the system homed in on a group of loggers and sent out an alert. Sanctuary managers then drove off the interlopers. Within two weeks, he says, illegal logging in the sanctuary ceased completely."

Read on.