Technology can help indigenous communities limit the number of trees cut down in the Amazon rainforest, a new study has found.

According to a report by the BBC, indigenous people living in the Peruvian Amazon were given satellite data and smartphones by conservation groups.

By using this technology, they were able to cut tree losses by 50 per cent in the first year.

The news broadcaster said that reductions had been greater in communities facing threats from logging, drugs, and illegal gold mining.

Research shows that more than a third of the Amazon rainforest is located within the land of around 3,344 indigenous territories.

But for many years these communities have been disrupted by outsiders who cut down trees for mining, logging, and the planting of illegal crops.

"It's quite a sizeable impact," Jacob Kopas, an independent researcher and an author on the paper, told the BBC."We saw evidence of fewer instances of tree cover loss in the programme communities compared with control communities."

Kopas added: "On average, those communities managed to avert 8.8 hectares of deforestation within the first year. But the communities that were most threatened, the ones that had more deforestation in the past were the ones pulling more weight and were reducing deforestation more than in others."

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