With billion dollar boost, bioacoustics is set to soar

“This is an incredibly exciting time to be part of the field of bioacoustics,” our guest on this episode says, and she's right: if you care about wildlife conservation, or really like technology and interesting solutions to big challenges, this episode is for you.

Laurel Symes is assistant director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's bioacoustics lab, which was founded in the 1980s to study whale songs and elephant rumbles, and it just received a massive $24 million gift and changed its name to the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics. 

The Cornell program is therefore about to expand this field in many ways, from technology development to implementation, so we discuss their plans and the implications with this repeat guest, who previously joined the show to discuss her own fascinating work on the soundscapes of rainforests (episode 86).

Many bioacoustics researchers like her have been featured by this show, so after discussing Laurel's exciting news, we feature some of our most popular acoustic ecology segments: get ready for an absorbing crash course on what people are learning about animal behavior and ecosystem health with these increasingly affordable and ubiquitous listening devices!

If you want to hear any of the episodes featured in full, look up the episode numbers listed here in your podcast app of choice, or click its link to hear it via the Mongabay website:

• Elephant Listening Project, episode 95
• Indri lemur choruses, episode 107
• Gibbon songs, episode 82
• Humpback whales sharing songs, episode 77
• Right whales discovered singing for the 1st time, episode 72
• Rainforest frogs, episode 54

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Episode artwork: Topher White of Rainforest Connection installing a bioacoustics device in the forest canopy. Image by Ben Von Wong.   Please share your thoughts and ideas! submissions@mongabay.com.