Keeping an Ear to the Ground — How Sound is Saving Our Forests

Conversations around climate change and environmental conservation have been growing ever louder in recent years. This has led to important innovations on the sustainability front, with societies around the world increasingly committed to finding forms of economic development that remain respectful of environmental and human health concerns.

DBS Innovation’s Head of Grants, Innovation Practices and Xcelerators, David Ding, sat down (virtually) with members of the team from Rainforest Connection (RFCx), one of the start-ups in the inaugural cohort of Sustaintech Xcelerator. Bourhan Yassin, Chief Operating Officer, Chrissy Durkin, Director of International Expansion, and Mahreen Qazi, Vice President of Strategy and Operations, shared more about the importance of tapping into innovation to help preserve our environment, why they joined the Sustaintech Xcelerator programme, as well as their vision for the future of conservation.

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David: Bourhan, Chrissy and Mahreen, it’s awesome to have all of you here! Can you share with us what Rainforest Connection is all about?

Chrissy: Rainforest Connection is a non-profit tech start-up — we’ve been around since 2014 with the objective of extracting insights from the acoustics of ecosystems. We created the first-ever real-time acoustic streaming hardware and software for illegal logging detection.

Bourhan: The way the system works is that our listening devices, Guardians, stream the entire soundscape to the cloud from the most remote threatened regions on earth. We then are able to use AI models to pick out whatever sounds we’re interested in — chainsaws, vehicles, gunshots, hounds — and then send an alert to rangers on the ground to intervene.

Mahreen: In recent years, we’ve realised that acoustic data is also uniquely positioned to monitor biodiversity at scale because most species make noise — be it frogs, birds, bats, mammals, or insects. So we’ve expanded our objective and now aim to build the world’s largest ongoing collaborative ecosystem management project that can aggregate and analyse acoustic data to support research and conservation. We are trying to unite all stakeholders, from scientists and governments to indigenous tribes and non-profits, to use our platform to inform conservation management.

David: That sounds super exciting! How did the idea come about?

Mahreen: Topher, our Founder, was in a forest in Borneo at a gibbon reserve where he saw first-hand the struggles that rangers were facing around simply knowing in time where destruction was occurring. Illegal loggers were decimating the reserve, but because it’s so dense and loud and hard to patrol, it was impossible to know where the illegal loggers were working.

Chrissy: Topher realised that there was actually cell connectivity in the region and recognised that the best way to understand what’s happening in the forest is through sound. That’s where the idea was born, and using acoustics to understand the forest and empower those on the ground so they can conserve it better has been our mission ever since.

David: So you started with protecting the forests and then discovered there is more that could be done in biodiversity through bioacoustics — can you give us a quick rundown about the innovation or technology behind it?

Bourhan: We had been building these systems for threat detection and accumulating an incredible amount of acoustic data before we realised there was so much more we could do. Bioacoustics is a science that has been around for a very long time. However, we are only now developing the tools to be able to understand species using acoustics at scale. Previously, scientists were storing recordings on hard drives and mostly analysing them manually. We are working on building a free platform that all scientists can use to store their data, analyse it quickly and effectively, and collaborate easily.

Chrissy: Acoustic data is extremely rich in information. One scientist might be interested in studying a particular frog species while another might be interested in studying primates, but they can both use the same data to learn about those species. We are even going one step further and working on building regional-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for biodiversity. What that means is we will have artificial intelligence models that can automatically detect thousands of species. The goal is to understand how we’re affecting species so that we can translate that understanding into conservation action.

David: That’s amazing! This new advancement in bioacoustics definitely sounds promising for environmental conservation. What encouraged the team to apply for the Sustaintech Xcelerator programme, and how has your accelerator experience been so far?

Mahreen: Rainforest Connection was eager to join the Sustaintech Xcelerator programme because we have and continue to develop these tools, but there is so much more we can do. We are still learning how to best implement them to create real change. We’re excited to work with Sustaintech Xcelerator’s team of experts to truly translate our work into a nature-based solution that is adopted worldwide and truly makes a huge impact on conservation.

David: Can you inspire us with your grand vision of what Rainforest Connection could be in 10 years?

Chrissy: Rainforest Connection’s vision is to connect scientists, conservationists and funders to bridge the gap between science, ecosystem protection and conservation. The goal is to inform and measure the tangible impact of technology implementation and data-driven insights to inform conservation management and policy decision-making worldwide. In 10 years, we hope to have an ever-evolving map of the world that informs what needs to be done for conservation while uniting all the parties required to make it happen.

David: What are some words of wisdom you can share with those thinking of launching their own sustainability-focused start-ups?

Bourhan: Conservation needs all the bright minds we can get! I think something we’ve learned is that it doesn’t take insanely high-tech solutions — it just takes looking at what we already have and figuring out how to put the pieces together in creative ways. Our organisation was born out of repurposing old cell phones to monitor forests. For those launching sustainability start-ups, persist and keep tweaking your solution. There’s a ton of room for creativity in the space and a tremendous need for new ideas!

Sustaintech Xcelerator is a 6-month virtual accelerator programme launched by DBS and other partners, focusing on increasing confidence in nature-based solutions — innovations that harness the power of nature to tackle social and environmental challenges. Stay tuned to the next few conversations with our Sustaintech Xcelerator 2021 cohort in the coming months!