Indigenous Peruvians Use Smartphones to Monitor Deforestation

Members of nearly 40 Indigenous communities in Peru’s northern border region of Loreto have been using smartphone mapping apps to track deforestation in the Amazon, the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported. Forest loss there has been driven by illegal gold mining and logging, and by drug traffickers clearing trees to plant coca crops, which are used to make cocaine.

“The forest has been very hard-hit by drug trafficking,” Francisco Hernandez, a leader of the Indigenous Ticuna people, one of the communities taking part in the project, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Technology has helped us a lot to collect precise information about where deforestation is happening that gives exact coordinates about illegal activity taking place, which is then passed to judicial authorities.”

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