When it's gone

Sometimes I ask people to listen… to silence.That silence could be the Irish elk.That silence could be the dodo.Extinction doesn’t just remove an animal. It removes a voice from the planet forever.During my lifetime, I’ve recorded species whose sounds no longer exist in the wild. The Panamanian golden frog. The northern white rhino. Voices gone within a single generation.Wildlife populations have dropped by 74% in my lifetime. North America has lost 3 billion birds since 1970.After nearly 60 years recording nature, two thirds of the soundscapes in my archive no longer exist as they once did.Silence in nature is not peaceful.Silence is absence.Silence is warning.Silence is forever.www.thelisteningplanet