World Resources Institute | By: Rachael Petersen and Lilian Pintea | September 26, 2017:
Obed Kareebi, a ranger with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, marches through the dense forests of Kibale National Park in Uganda, an area with one of the highest concentrations of primates in the world.
While the park is better protected than many forests in Uganda, nearby tea factories have begun cutting down trees around the perimeter of the park to plant a monoculture of rapid-growing eucalyptus trees that will provide firewood to process tea.
Due to limited resources and capacity, Obed usually sticks to the same well-worn footpath for his patrol, and only explores further based on intuition or scarce information. In doing so, he could miss illegal deforestation encroaching just beyond his regular route.
Satellites overhead see the clearing that Obed misses – but he keeps on walking, oblivious to the incursion on the protected area. It won’t be until later, if ever, that he finds a deforestation alert on Global Forest Watch (GFW) and can return. The damage may already be done.
Deforestation often happens beyond the view of those with the mandate or power to stop it. While systems like GFW monitor forests remotely, those on the frontlines of deforestation often lack internet connection needed to access and act on this information.
A new mobile app called Forest Watcher changes this equation.
Forest Watcher is designed to allow easy, offline access to data about forest change from Global Forest Watch. The app displays forest change straight on the mobile devices in the hands of forest managers, indigenous communities and law enforcement anywhere in the world, regardless of connectivity.
To read full article – please click here.
To read about similar apps for deforestation / water resources on the Global Forest Watch blog – please click here.
