A recently published article by David Dobbs on the bioGraphic website summarizes the history of bioacoustics, outlines the potential of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) to revolutionize scientific research and conservation efforts, and describes Haikubox as “one of the products of this revolution.”
Dobbs notes the power of conservation bioacoustics:
The granularity of this type of data—its density in both space and time—is the key to its new power. The ability to keep tabs on species’ presence in many places constantly, rather than occasionally, essentially creates a giant new instrument exquisitely sensitive to change at both population and ecosystem levels. It’s as if a large collection of lenses were merged into one giant lens that could see things the smaller ones could not.
The article shares details, images and audio files highlighting research which utilizes bioacoustics to better understand elusive bird species such as the Eastern Black Rail and Spotted Owl, determine how some bird species’ vocalizations influence the behaviors of others in Vermont forests, and help protect African forest elephants from poaching.
Haikubox is one of the passive acoustic monitoring tools providing fluid scalability and distributed capacity which will advance future conservation efforts. “If we really want to have a global impact, we cannot be the bottleneck. It’s not scalable if people can’t do it for themselves.” said Holger Klinck, from the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.