Listen To Nature

Listen to nature at the Sounds of Your Park website.

Earlier this year we introduced you to Jacob Job and his work recording sounds of nature inside the National Park System. Well, he's taken his game to the next level with help from the National Park Service, Parks Canada, the George Wright Society, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the World Commission of Protected Areas.

Of course, it's not just Dr. Job who has brought the Sounds of Your Park website to life. It was a collaborative effort, one that continues to look for additional collaborators.

"Sounds of Your Park is a collection of natural and cultural sounds from the planet’s protected places," says Dr. Job. "The project works to connect people with protected places worldwide and to inspire conservation efforts."

The Sounds of Your Park initiative is a continuously growing collection of sounds intended to celebrate the acoustical beauty and diversity of the world’s national parks and other protected areas. Natural spaces, species, and traditional cultural practices are disappearing around the globe as the modern human footprint expands. Coupled with this loss is the associated loss of natural and cultural soundscapes. Stated plainly, some of the planet’s most iconic sounds are disappearing and are now largely confined to the most isolated and protected places.

National parks and other protected areas are critical for maintaining human and global well-being. Natural sounds in particular are shown to benefit human health and can indicate the health of ecosystems. Having access to these places and their sounds, either directly or through remote listening opportunities like Sounds of Your Park, helps restore human well-being and ecosystem health and in turn, raises awareness of these critically important places.

Still in the formulative stages, the website lacks a drop-down list of parks where various sounds were recorded, a list that would make it quick to locate your favorite park. Still, as you look at the map of the world, if you scroll to zoom in place names come into sight and you can easily find parks and sounds that were recorded in them. For instance, scroll in on Maine and you'll see a small handful of pins in Acadia National Park, including one that lets you listen to a singing Golden-crowned Kinglet captured in the Schoodic Peninsula of the park.

There are some really interesting sounds if you spend the time to explore the map. Loons calling, thunderstorms, sharp-tailed grouse at Wind Cave National Park drumming on their lek, dripping snowmelt in advance of rock slides, even the sounds of a crackling campfire with bird calls in the background. There also are the expected sounds, such as howling wolves, bugling elk, and yipping coyotes.

This is not just an educational site, but a fun one to explore. Squaking Great flamingos at Delta de l'Ebre Natural Park in Spain, rain falling on a tent at Naatsih'ch'oh National Park Reserve in Canada, birds and frogs call from an old-growth forest along the coast at Cape Disappointment State Park in Washington. The more you hear, the more you want to explore.

Perhaps there should be a checklist of sounds you could download and fill out as you navigate national parks.

You'll also notice there is a lot of open space on the world map, spaces where those behind Sounds of Your Park are hoping you might be able to bring some sounds to the project. Scroll to the bottom of the site's home page and you'll find a form you can fill out to offer a high-quality recording.

This project is not limited to the United States, either. Or Canada. Rather, the whole world is in play for sounds of nature. How quickly can we fill the map?