Listening to Elephants

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Biodiversity, Nature, Wildlife, Nature of Scince

Ed Hessler

The vision of the Forest Elephant Listening Project is "To conserve the tropical forests of Africa through acoustic monitoring, sound science, and education focusing on forest elephants." (my emphasis)

The goal is "to help conserve the second largest block of rainforest on earth and the biodiversity that it harbors, by focusing on forest elephant as key architects of these forests, and using innovative acoustic tools at the scale of landscapes."

The project website has sections on forest elephants including their ecology and evolution, research and conservation.

While included in the link "About Us," I pulled it out because I think it is important to know about Katy Payne, its founder and her "insightful idea - studying...hidden behaviors by eavesdropping on their conversations." The forest is thick and moms and daughters are separated by large distances, and the elephants are elusive. Yet they are in contact.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology just published a letter from Daniela Hedwig, Team Leader, Elephant Listening Project, with additional information and a link to Lih Ngolio, a cultural, musical, and theatrical group...to bring together the local cultures through music that focuses on the beauty of the Congo Basin Forest."

The Elephant Listening Project is part of the TheCornelLab K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics. Their mission is to "collect and interpret sounds in nature by eveloping and applying innovative conservation technologies across ecologically relevant scales to inspire an inform the conservation of wildlife and habitats." 

It is an example of why the concept of scale, proportion, and quantity were included as a crosscutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). for which see here). At this page is a chart describing what is relevant and appropriate for teaching and learning the concept for grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12, and additional links about NGSS, the standards, curriculum planning, classroom resources, professional learning and the NGSS blog. 

States have used the NGSS variously with some fully adopting them and others using them as a major resource for revising their own. Minnesota is in the latter category where they were an influential document.