Colorado State University joins national, international organizations to encourage listening to ‘Sounds of Your Park’

Contact for reporters:
Mary Guiden
(206) 854-3786
mary.guiden@colostate.edu

WHO:  The Sound and Light Ecology Team at Colorado State University joins the U.S. National Park Service, Parks Canada, George Wright Society and IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas to celebrate acoustic beauty and the diversity of the world’s national parks and protected areas.

WHAT:  The new site has sounds from parks and protected areas around the world, from the Gunnison River in Colorado to a roaring waterfall in Slovakia, and a dawn chorus at the banks of the Limpopo River in South Africa. Researchers will continue to add to this collection of sounds in the years to come.

Many of the natural spaces, species and traditional cultural practices are disappearing at an alarming rate due to human activity around the globe. These losses take with them associated unique natural and cultural sounds.

The Sounds of Your Park initiative aims to celebrate these sounds and raise awareness about the protected parks and places where these sounds can still be found.

The official launch of the new initiative coincides with Find Peace in Parks, this month’s theme from the National Park Service.

Given the global pandemic, this is an important time to share these recordings, which many people find healing and restorative during an isolated and lonely time. Natural sounds benefit human health in a number of ways, and can work to connect us in this particularly disconnected period in human history.

CSU Research Associate Jacob Job is available for interviews.