Meet The Inventor Using Drones To Save The Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest is known as the lungs of the world: it provides more than 20% of the world's oxygen. But all across South America, illegal gold mining and logging threatens to destroy and deforest huge swaths of the jungle.

Now, there's an unlikely new face in the fight to save the rainforest: an unassuming inventor from North Carolina. Wake Forest graduate student Max Messinger uses drones to monitor and track down illegal operations. He works together with Peruvian conservationists on the ground to make inroads where state governments have failed.

Get an inside look at their fight in the first episode of Now What, the new docu-series from AOL/Huffington Post, where host Ryan Duffy searches out the innovation, creativity, and ingenuity springing up in response to the world’s biggest problems.