Google monitors illegal deforestation with Amazon Tribe

Using its Google Earth Outreach imitative, Google will collaborate with an Amazon tribe and monitor illegal activity of loggers.

The Amazon rain forests are currently undergoing severe deforestation, which may not only hamper the weather in the region but adversely affect other parts of the world. They help absorb large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. Nearly 600,000 acres of Rondonia forest near Brazil are undergoing deforestation with illegal cutting of trees by loggers. Google Earth Outreach and the Amazon tribe Surui will collaborate on this project to monitor illegal activity in forests. Google will provide an up-to-date high-resolution satellite images and help the Surui people protect the regions from loggers. Surui’s chief Almir Narayamoga, 34, visited Google to ask them to help monitor the logger’s incursions more than a year ago. Google has since been providing them with photographs of the region and satellite images and alerting them whenever possible. Amazon tribes don’t usually have any contact with the outside world, but in this case due to the severity of the situation, the Surui people had to contact Google and others for help. The Surui also plan to setup a solar-powered network with help from Google, so it can better communicate and preserve the rain forests.