BN FAVES: BEAUTIFUL RAINFOREST CONNECTIONS HAPPENING NOW

Here’s one of our BN Team Favorite Soul Impact Daily Fix posts!

We seldom think about rain without also thinking about the rainforest. Our awareness about its values and its threats is high. So as we come to explore some of the many impacts of rain, today we are checking out some beautiful things happening right now to save and restore our rainforests.

DEFORESTATION

Every minute, almost 3 acres of Amazon rainforest are destroyed. That’s 2,315 square miles per year. Trees are either cut or burned down, to clear land for cattle grazing, for lumber, or for firewood.

Every minute counts. Real-time information can spur real-time action.  

Rainforest Connection (RFCx) has developed a way to gather information about destruction in-progress. It transforms recycled cell-phones into autonomous, solar-powered listening devices that can monitor, detect, and locate chainsaws, animals in distress or gunshots, as they happen -- even at great distance.

The phones are paired with solar cells, and, together, they are installed high up on tree trunks.

The device then transmits this data immediately to anyone in the world through existing wireless telecom networks. When people hear the destruction underway, help can be deployed to stop it.

RFCx installs their destruction detection software in old, recycled smartphones -- over 150 million phones a year are discarded in the United States alone, so the opportunity is expensive and inexpensive. The world can listen to the damage as it occurs.

Check out this video to see how Rainforest Connection’s pilot program is working to guard Sumatra’s rainforest against illegal logging operations. 

The organization is expanding their next generation of devices into three more areas of rainforest in Indonesia, the Amazon and Africa.

They aim to prove that the system can operate on a global scale, in any forest, anywhere.

Rainforest Connection needs your help to make it a reality.

Neil Young helped Rainforest Connection to raise money in a Kickstarter campaign. "This technology enables the forest to talk to the world," says Young.

Sting has been committed to saving the Rainforest and its indigenous peoples for decades. He and his wife, Trudie Styler founded the Rainforest Foundation and Rainforest Fund in 1989. They have recently pledged a lion’s share of their estate to this cause.

NEW MONKEY SPECIES DISCOVERED

A beautiful new species of monkey has recently been discovered in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest. Scientists have called them Milton’s titi monkeys (Callicebus miltoni). They have bright orange tails, light gray foreheads and dark ocher beards. The locals call them “zogue-zogues.”

Much of the rest of its homeland faces the highest rates of deforestation in the Amazon, due in large part to the soy and cattle industries, with additional looming threats from a planned series of hydroelectricity dams. Please support Rainforest Connection and the Rainforest Foundation to help save these monkeys, their neighbors, and ultimately, all life on earth.

Finally, check out this cool video and see Kevin Spacey as the Rainforest, part of Conservation International’s amazing series, Nature is Speaking.

Read more about Beautiful Favorites, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including BN Faves: New Pages of Beautiful Green. BN Faves: Mind-Blowing Recyclers, BN Faves: Exquisite Flower Feasts, BN Faves: The Nature, Art, and Science of Doodles, BN Faves: 10 Beautiful Places to Read, Read, Read…, and BN Faves: Recycled Minds, Souls & Notions.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
2. Image: Courtesy of European Space Agency. Deforestation of the Amazonian Rainforest.
3. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
4. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
5. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
6. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
7. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. RFCx-Sumatra-01-59.
8. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Cell Phone Listening Device Project.
9. Image: Courtesy of Rainforest Connection. Neil Young supports Rainforest Connection Kickstarter.
10. Image: by Sue Cunningham Courtesy of the Rainforest Foundation. Chief Paiakan and Sting.
11. Image: by A. Gambarini Courtesy of Scielo. Milton’s Titi Monkeys.
12. Image: Courtesy of Conservation International. Nature is Speaking. Rainforest.
13. Photo: by Sara y Tzunki. Tiputini Rainforest.  
14. Image: Courtesy of The Living Rainforest. Proboscis Monkey.
15. Image: by BN App - Download now!
16. Image: by Eric Pheterson. Amazon Rainforest, Venezuela.