Podcast: Indigenous bioacoustics listens to the land for conservation and tradition
By Mike Gaworecki
Mongabay
October 27, 2021
On today’s episode of the Mongabqay Newscast, we look at two stories that illustrate how bioacoustics are helping to advance Indigenous-led conservation initiatives.
We speak with Stephanie Thorassie, executive director of the Seal River Watershed Alliance, about the effort to establish a new 12-million-acre Indigenous Protected Area in northern Manitoba.
We also speak with Jeff Wells, Vice President of Boreal Conservation at the National Audubon Society, which has partnered with the Seal River Watershed Alliance to study the region’s importance to wildlife. Wells plays us some of the bioacoustic recordings of birds that are informing the effort to establish the Indigenous Protected Area in the Seal River Watershed.
Our third guest is Angela Waupochick, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin and a research forester for the Menominee Tribal Enterprises. Waupochick tells us about her research project that is using bioacoustics to establish baseline data on the forest-wetlands of Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee Tribal Lands in northern Wisconsin and how that data will in turn help devise long-term management plans for the forests.