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Australia is losing its birds at an alarming rate – one in six species are Now threatenedWith extinction, primarily due to climate change and land clearing.
Last year, when we met in a Darwin cafe to discuss Anthony’s PhD on the impact of environmental art on conservation, we wondered if his project could contribute to saving threatened birds.
We could perhaps harness the beauty and power of birdsong to help Australians think about what they are losing.
Humans have been inspired by the intricate melodies and rhythms that birdsong has provided throughout history. It’s a natural, daily celebration of our biodiversity, and Human speech and song evolution has been influenced for millennia.
Our goal was to allow threatened birds to speak directly to anyone who could help them.
Working together with a renowned bird recordist David StewartWe created a music chart CD that was entirely composed of bird calls. Songs of Disappearance. For the title track, the Bowerbird Collective’s Simone SlatteryI arranged a fantasy dawn chorus with 53 threatened species.
As of February 18, the CD – now with a Video by Senior Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street Bernadette Trench–Thiedeman – was sitting at No.2 on our charts.
Among the stars
The album was released on December 3, 2021. No.5 on ARIA chartsThis is partly due to the conservation organization BirdLife AustraliaIt alerted its supporters to a wonderful Christmas gift that would also help bird conservation.
Some of the calls on the CD are remarkable for their rarity. Night parrots, which have a bell-like sound and are in danger, were For a century, lostThey were first discovered in 2013 and then rediscovered. Young birds are now endangered by the Regent Honeyeaters. lack modelsYou can learn their soft, warbling sounds from here.
Others are the cries of a changing landscape: the creaking calls and buzzing bowerbirds of gang-gangs, the cries of mournful far eastern curlews, and the buzzing calls of gang-gangs.
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Some CD purchasers have written to confirm that they have the 53 calls available on loop.
Two weeks after its publication, The CD reached number 3., ahead of such artists as Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé.
“I’m very happy to have birds flying above me!” Paul Kelly told us when Songs of Disappearance displaced his Christmas Train album.
Retail giants demanded our album immediately. All over the world, media requests came in. Our CDs are being produced and distributed in the United States.
Continue reading:
Once, the Regent Honeyeaters were the kings and queens of flowering buds. They’re now on the verge of extinction. What happened?
Now it’s at number 2 on the ARIA charts – a pretty good result for threatened species from a project with a zero marketing budget. It may be the first time in history that a university research program has made it to the music charts.
Will the calls be answered
In December last year, more than 300 of Australia’s leading ornithologists released the Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020. It discovered that 216 Australian birds are at risk of extinction due to climate change.
Our idea was born from the devastating results of the action plan. The result of research, conservation, creativity, and storytelling created a story that resonated worldwide, something that the action plan would not have done alone.
JJ Harrison/Wikimedia, CC BY – SA
But will it make any difference?
The profits, which go directly to the charities, are certain. BirdLife AustraliaIt will be used. The 200 Australian bird taxa included in the action plan require far more support to survive than a single CD.
The question is, “Can art help change population trajectories?” Or, as cultural policy expert Christiaan De Beukelaer writes, will these haunting bird calls just “Naturalize the horrible future it wants to avoid”, like other climate apocalyptic art?
We don’t know the answer, so we continue to research. However, we do know that, 60 years ago this year, the fear of losing birdsong implied by conservationist Rachel Carson’s book Silent SpringIt was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
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Where will the songs take us?
Songs of Disappearance offers a fascinating opportunity for us to see if it can provide some of the same impetus towards change.
Those who bought the album were invited for completion a surveyTo help us understand if this project and others like them can have a lasting influence on conservation outcomes.
We would like to know, for example whether the CD affected people emotionally. Conservation is like art. A belief system that is driven by deep emotions. 2020 research shows that empathy for wildlife is strongly connected to a sense moral justification for preventing extinctions.
Continue reading:
More than 200 Australian birds are now threatened with extinction – and climate change is the biggest danger
Is the CD affecting our behavior? We know. bird songLike Music, boosts mental well-being. But does it make intention turn into action? And if so, what kind of action? We also want to learn from this experience and transfer it to other projects related to the arts or conservation.
The end of Australian bird song is not inevitable. It would be wonderful if birds’ songs could help to secure their future.
