The Galway Sun

Members of Congo’s Mbendjele Yak tribe are using GPS that come with mobile phones to protect their forests from commercial loggers. Sacred sites and trees they want preserved are identified and tagged using GPS. These sites are then linked to a map used by logging companies and international conservationist groups.Behind the conservation project are the global environmental group Tropical Forest Trust, logging firm Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) and others. CIB sought the help of London School of Economics anthropologist Jerome Lewis, an expert on the Mbendjele tribe, to assist the company by designing pictorial icons understood by the pygmies, who do not read or write.