People indigenous to some of the world’s most precious natural
environments are helping to preserve their way of life using GPS
mapping. Communities native to the world’s second biggest
rainforests in the Congo Basin, for example, rely on the
ecosystem for 80-90% of their resources, through activities such
as hunting and fishing that they have practised for years.
Because they are semi-nomadic, meaning that they move around the
rainforest rather than living in a single, fixed location, the
extent to which they live and work there is often disputed. The
rainforests are under constant threat from industries such as
logging and farming (both legal and illegal), so already these
people are used to seeing their world shrink around them. But
even conservation itself can, ironically threaten their way of
life, as frequently protections not only prevent the destruction
of the forest but also their right to continue their own
activities there. Tribes are also enabled, using their GPS
devices, to hold companies who hav