Amazon tribe uses Google to battle illegal loggers

A nomadic tribe in the Amazon rainforest has enlisted the search engine Google to help save their ancestral lands from extinction, the Independent on Sunday reported.
English

Google Earth have agreed to provide high-resolution satellite images of the forest home of the Surui people, in the remote Brazilian west,

which is under constant attack by illegal loggers. The report said 300 sawmills surround it and other Indian reserves and 11 local chiefs
have been killed trying to protect their land.

Their chief, Almir Narayamoga, has been training his people in IT with the help of the US-based Amazon Conservation Team. The tribe
already uses satnav to record the co-ordinates of any logging they find, the report said.

The tribe’s first contact with the modern world was less than 40 years ago. Since then the Surui were reduced from 5,000 to just 250 people
by massacres and diseases such as chicken pox, measles, tuberculosis and flu, to which they had no immunity.

See full story