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The Scientists Saving the Rainforests by Listening to Them
The sounds of our most diverse ecosystems are going silent
When Eddie Game straps the first wallet-sized recording device around a tree trunk in Papua New Guinea, he’s so deep in the Adelbert Mountains it’s a three-day hike from the closest road. A second device is secured on a neighboring tree. One will capture ultrasonic sounds imperceptible to human ears, the other, audible sounds. Local rangers swipe bush knives through the underbrush, guiding Game and his team of conservation scientists through this rugged, largely untouched forest. Their shoes remain perpetually soggy. They’ll arrange devices in four more areas today and set them all to record for 24 hours. Hopefully, rats and possums won’t chew up the microphones or straps.
“What we’re interested in is overall soundscapes, how rich they are,” says Game, lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific region and senior fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia. The more complex and dense the sounds, the healthier the habitat. Game is in Papua New Guinea to measure whether or not the conservation zones The Nature Conservancy helped set up 15 years ago are truly benefiting wildlife.
Bioacoustic technology has long been used to identify and count specific species. Game and his team…
