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Imagine a volcano so special that it’s been granted the same legal rights as a person. While this might sounds like something straight out of a quirky sci-fi movie, this is no fictional tale. It’s a real, living, breathing part of New Zealand’s landscape — <keyword id="24070380" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mount-Taranaki" source="keywords">Mount Taranaki</keyword>.<br /><br />Tucked away on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island, Mount Taranaki is not only a towering 8,261 feet (2,518 meters) of volcanic might, but it also holds a sacred place in the hearts of local Māori tribes. In 2017, New Zealand made history by granting the volcano <keyword id="19969897" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="legal-personhood" source="keywords">legal personhood</keyword> — a first in the country. This means Mount Taranaki has the same legal rights as you, me, or any other human being. No, it can’t file taxes or sue anyone just yet, but it is now legally protected in a way that’s tied directly to the cultural significance it holds.<br /><h2>Why does Mount Taranaki get all the attention?</h2>First, let’s talk about the volcano itself. Its snow-capped peak is stunning, poking up through a lush, dark green forest. This forest, known as Egmont National Park, forms a near-perfect circular ring around the volcano, and within it, you’ll find the curious "<keyword id="24070386" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="goblin-forest" source="keywords">Goblin Forest</keyword>." The kāmahi trees here are twisted and warped, growing around fossilized tree remains from past eruptions. The trees are also covered in hanging moss and liverworts, giving the whole place a hauntingly magical vibe.<br /><br />The volcano itself is a near-perfect cone, which is so symmetrical it served as the double for Mount Fuji in The Last Samurai (yes, Hollywood can’t get enough of this beauty!). But don’t let its picturesque shape fool you — Mount Taranaki has been through some serious transformations. Over the past 135,000 years, it has erupted multiple times, changing its shape dramatically and leaving behind signs of its violent past. In fact, studies suggest there have been at least 16 major shifts in the volcano’s structure. Talk about a dramatic personality!<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="115475455" title="From skin injections to swallowing a camera, here are some things Bryan Johnson has done to age in reverse" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>And yes, Mount Taranaki is an <keyword id="23386638" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="active-volcano" source="keywords">active volcano</keyword>. While its last major eruption occurred about 200 years ago, the mountain is far from dormant. Scientists estimate there’s a 30% to 50% chance of a major eruption within the next 50 years. For the 100,000+ people living nearby, this is a real concern. But don't worry — the volcano isn’t planning on exploding any time soon (hopefully), though it does occasionally spit out volcanic mudflows, also known as lahars.<br /><h2>A sacred ancestor</h2>Now, you might wonder, why does this mountain get its own legal rights? The answer lies with the Māori people. For centuries, the Māori have considered Mount Taranaki to be more than just a mountain. They see it as a relative, even an ancestor. The relationship between the Māori people and the mountain is rooted in deep respect and cultural significance. In 2017, the New Zealand government recognized this profound connection by giving the volcano legal personhood, meaning that harming the volcano could be treated the same as harming a member of the tribe.<br /><br />It’s a powerful statement of the Māori worldview, where the land, mountains, rivers, and nature are seen as living, breathing entities deserving of respect and protection. By granting Mount Taranaki personhood, New Zealand is acknowledging this deep-rooted cultural connection and ensuring that the volcano’s rights are taken seriously.<br /><br />Having a mountain with human rights may sound like a quirky twist, but it’s part of a larger global movement towards recognizing the rights of nature. Similar legal actions have been taken in places like Ecuador and India, where rivers, forests, and even specific animals have been granted personhood to ensure their protection.<br />

Do you know about the volcano that has the same rights as a human person?

Back in the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, pollution darkened tree barks and peppered moths developed darker colours that allowed them to blend in and evade predators. While this controversial case has been debated among scientists at length, new research has provided an intriguing parallel to this classic example of the effect human activity can have on other species.<br /><br />New research from the University of Otago has uncovered a striking example of <keyword id="23684492" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="rapid-evolution" source="keywords">rapid evolution</keyword> in New Zealand's native stoneflies, which have changed colour in response to <keyword id="20657663" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="deforestation" source="keywords">deforestation</keyword> caused by human activity. Published in <em>Science</em>, the study is one of the most definitive cases yet of <keyword id="23684494" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="animal-evolution" source="keywords">animal evolution</keyword> driven by <keyword id="23684493" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="human-driven-environmental-changes" source="keywords">human-driven environmental changes</keyword>, the researchers believe.<br /><br />Professor Jon Waters, a zoology expert and co-author of the study, explains how deforestation altered the stoneflies' colouring. “In natural, forested regions, one stonefly species has evolved ‘warning’ colours, mimicking the appearance of a poisonous species to deter predators. But with forest removal, the poisonous species disappeared, eliminating the need for mimicry. As a result, the stonefly in deforested areas evolved into a different colour altogether.”<br /><br />Dr Graham McCulloch, another co-author of the study, highlights the adaptability of some native species in the face of these rapid environmental changes. “Our study shows that some species have the resilience to adapt to human-caused changes, even when the shift is abrupt,” says Dr. McCulloch.<br /><br />What was particularly fascinating was that stonefly populations in separate deforested areas independently evolved similar colour changes, suggesting that evolution can be a somewhat predictable process.<br /><br />While this discovery is a hopeful example of adaptation, the research also underscores the intricate and delicate balance in <keyword id="23684495" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ecological-interactions" source="keywords">ecological interactions</keyword> that can be disrupted by deforestation.<br />

New Zealand’s native stoneflies have changed colour in response to human-driven environmental shifts

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Carsten Brinkschulte, who founded Dryad Networks, built an IoT network to detect wildfires.</li><li>He's motivated by the impact of his work and urges founders and engineers to move to green tech.</li></ul><p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Carsten Brinkschulte, the CEO of Dryad Networks, an IoT company offering wildfire-detection tech. The following has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p><p>You know the saying "Once you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail"?</p><p>That's what happened when I started learning more about the planet's growing <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-migration-where-moved-escape-natural-disasters-extreme-weather">wildfire problem</a> and its impact on climate change. With 25 years of experience scaling three startups in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/5g-transforms-businesses-better-security-remote-capabilities-2024-5">telecommunications</a>, I wondered how I could apply that technical and business knowledge to solving this problem.</p><p>What if we could create sensors that could detect wildfires and then have those sensors communicate back to authorities before the fire is a major issue? With these questions in mind, I cofounded <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dryad.net/">Dryad Networks</a>.</p><h2 id="89eba62a-12a8-4c0f-b628-46d2f454c838">A series of technical challenges</h2><p>While the vision for our solution was clear from the start, there were a lot of technical hurdles in making it real.</p><p>The first was how to detect fires. Instead of relying on vision via satellites and cameras, which only work when fires are already large, we focused on smell to catch fires at the early smoldering stage. We built a "digital nose," a gas sensor sensitive to hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds, with built-in AI to detect fire patterns in a distributed, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-edge-computing-5g-cloud-artificial-intelligence-2024-3">edge-computing</a> manner.</p><div type="image" title="A green and black sensor device on top of tree bark." height="3194" width="2396" msid="113885493" hostid="261" sizebytes="850234"></div><p>Building these sensors happened relatively quickly — but training the AI to work reliably took years. Every forest and tree species smells different when they're burning, so we've gathered data from customers around the world and even burned tree samples in our lab.</p><p>Another challenge was powering the devices. Unlike with at-home IoT devices, replacing batteries in millions of forest sensors every two years isn't feasible. We aimed for 10 to 15 years of battery life, added <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/solar-panel-industry-electricity-generation-us-eia-tariff-prices-trade-2024-2">solar panels</a>, and used supercapacitors to store power instead of lithium-ion batteries to avoid fire risk.</p><p>Finally there was the question of how the devices would communicate information. As you know if you've been hiking, there's often no mobile network in the forest. To solve for this, we developed our own solar-powered mesh gateway that could connect to sensors via an IoT network and relay information back to a cloud platform.</p><div type="image" title="A green device with a black grid screen in the middle, attached to a tree trunk in a forest." height="3456" width="2592" msid="113885494" hostid="261" sizebytes="1568642"></div><p>Given how much technology needed to be engineered from the ground up — the electronics, the embedded software, the cloud platform, the AI — we started with a team of seven cofounders and took three years to develop the technology and another year and a half to prepare it to scale.</p><h2 id="ce79374e-13ac-41bc-9adb-fb00e4258e7f">Proving value beyond money</h2><p>A persistent challenge with green tech is that many solutions require hardware — something VCs traditionally avoid. Getting the necessary funding for development can be tricky.</p><p>Fortunately, there are now plenty of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/investing/esg-investing">impact investors</a> who prioritize making a difference on global issues. Yes, they also want to see that you can build a profitable business, but they're willing to accept more capital requirements or a delay in return if you can prove your solution will have a meaningful and measurable impact.</p><p>Many <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/green-energy-transition-saves-millions-years-healthy-human-life-2023-11">green-tech</a> companies claim wonderful things about what their solution will do, but they need to quantify it. When working toward <a target="_blank" href="https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2024/03/20/2849406/0/en/Dryad-Networks-Announces-Initial-Closing-of-5-6-Million-in-Convertible-Financing.html">our fundraising goal</a>, we took months to calculate how many global CO2 emissions come from wildfires — a staggering <a target="_blank" href="https://ourworldindata.org/wildfires">5 billion to 8 billion tons a year</a> — and then project how much of that could be prevented with our sensors. Our financial plan includes those numbers to show the impact we can have alongside the money we can make.</p><h2 id="1863b547-6fd5-4c92-9756-e121e4390171">A wealth of possibilities</h2><p>Our ultimate goal is to develop applications that utilize the network infrastructure we put in place to protect and restore one of our most important assets: <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/a-groundbreaking-new-reason-to-plant-more-trees-2024-7">forests</a>. The first is fire detection, but in the future we may add sensors that measure the environmental risk of fire before one even starts, monitor tree and soil health, and detect gunshots or chainsaws to prevent poaching and illegal logging.</p><p>I encourage other engineers and founders to get out of building the next smartphone and do something impactful with the knowledge they've gained. Getting into green tech is the best thing you can ever do — it's rewarding financially and motivating to see that you're building something useful.</p>

I'm a telecommunications expert — here's how I think IoT can help prevent wildfires and save our forests

A woman lived in a 180-foot tree for over 2 years to protect a beloved forest. Meet Julia 'Butterfly' Hill.

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Do you know about the volcano that has the same rights as a human person?

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New Zealand’s native stoneflies have changed colour in response to human-driven environmental shifts

Ashmita Gupta

I'm a telecommunications expert — here's how I think IoT can help prevent wildfires and save our forests

Erin Greenawald

A woman lived in a 180-foot tree for over 2 years to protect a beloved forest. Meet Julia 'Butterfly' Hill.

Elana Klein

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