There is a page (fragmentsofextinction.org) where you can listen to the last tropical forests on the planet. This is an acoustic art project that explores the ecoacoustic complexity of the few equatorial forests that are still intact. The team of this non-profit organization travels through various ecosystems of the world capturing its most tangible characteristics: sounds. Unique sounds of recorded forests before they lose their biodiversity, threatened ecosystems in danger of extinction.
As they say: "If we take into account that the latest predictions by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicate that half of the planet's species will have become extinct by the end of this century (most of them never will be discovered by science), we understand that it is urgent to record sound samples of these diverse and unique, as well as fragile, ecosystems: “organized soundscapes”; snippets of sounds from the original nature."
The recordings have been carried out in three representative areas of primary tropical forest, in the Amazon, Africa and Borneo. The reason these forests have been chosen is because the equatorial forest biome integrates the most complex ecosystems on Earth. They are also the most fragile ecosystems, where the extinction rate is higher.
The decision to record their sounds is based on the fact that the acoustic setting of these ecosystems is practically unknown, despite the fact that the eco-acoustic surprisingly reveals the order and balance of these forests. Sound is the great underestimated element in the natural dynamics of ecosystems. These sounds made art, can help to raise awareness about the sixth mass extinction that we live this century. Until this, no similar project existed, and in a few decades these recordings will constitute important fragments of an irreversibly degraded acoustic heritage.
If you have never been in a tropical forest, you cannot even imagine what it is to be in the middle of the jungle at night listening to an infinite number of sounds at once, coming from unknown places ... unable to identify the animal that emits it. It is a sound that surrounds you and that makes you part of something much greater than you, of a stage that you do not know how far it extends and in which you feel insignificant and lost.
By Fernando Iturria