Silence Please! - The Sound of Nature

The pure sounds of Nature lies buried under the cacophony of man-made and unnatural noises. It is time to lift the veil and soak in the music of the natural world

- DR ASAD RAHMANI

The recently concluded Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) held in Montreal, Canada from 7 to 19 December 2022, agreed to protect at least 30% of the Earth (both terrestrial and marine) by 2030. It is popularly known as 30 by 30 targets. But what about the soundscape? Soundscape: what is this? Most people are likely to ask this question. Wikipedia tells us, “…soundscape refers to both the natural acoustic environment, consisting of natural sounds, including animal vocalizations, the collective habitat expression of which is now referred to as the biophony, and, for instance, the sounds of weather and other natural elements, now referred to as the geophony …”. In this article, I will deal only with natural soundscapes.

The ever-changing Nature has its own sounds that come from wind, streams, animals, rustling of leaves, cracking of dry branches, falling of fruits, and even germination of seeds. Every forest has its signature soundscape that depends on season, faunal and floral diversity, geomorphology, altitude, weather, and environment. No two forest types have the same sound, similarly no two days have the same sound.