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 With his ripped ear and single tusk, Abba, a Dzanga bull, is easy to recognize. He was seen at Mbeli bai, 80 km away in Congo!
© Elephant Listening Project/Ana Verahrami
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Elephant Listening Project
October 2019
News Briefs:
Another year of protection! We have just committed to supporting the acoustic team in northern Congo for another year. In addition to continuing to manage a grid of recorders monitoring 1250 sq km of forest, Phael, Frelcia, and Onesi are beginning to work on their own independent projects and will come to Cornell next summer for intensive statistics training and to write manuscripts to present their studies.
How do you rumble? Under the insightful direction of Daniela Hedwig, we have taken the first steps toward a better understanding of the acoustic communication system of forest elephants, in a publication about their vocal repertoire and how this could help us understand the evolution of human language. Dive into this and learn more about the 'ambiguity reduction hypothesis'!
Can AI save the elephants? Nothing like being connected to something that Microsoft is funding! ELP has been collaborating for years with Conservation Metrics Inc. (CMI) to design a better elephant rumble detector. After CMI landed an 'AI for Earth' grant from Microsoft, we have been getting a lot of media coverage about AI and conservation. Two very fun podcasts aired recently: 'Deep learning with the elephants' (NPR: Planet Money episode 932 - funny and short), and a longer one 'Can AI save the elephants' (NPR: I'll be Seeing You).
Spreading the word
Basing his explanations on years of experience in the rainforest of northern Congo, Frelcia Bambi played a huge role at the workshop, walking participants through everything from what metadata should be collected in the forest to the importance of good file organization back at base.
With major assistance from previous trainees, I held a week-long 'Acoustic Monitoring for Conservation' workshop at the Congo Basin Institute, Yaoundé, Cameroon. We had participants from Equatorial Guinea (2), Nigeria (2), Congo (1), and Cameroon (9). Fantastic bunch! We covered all aspects of acoustic monitoring, including how to configure and run the sound recorders (each went home with a SWIFT recorder), how to climb trees with ropes and ascenders for deploying the recorders, and how use Raven sound analysis software to examine sounds, design automatic detectors, and organize the huge amounts of data that result from acoustic monitoring.
Possibly the most rewarding aspect of this workshop for me was the participation of three researchers who ELP has trained and collaborated with in the past. Nelson Ekole was part of the team trained to study poaching pressure in Korup National Park, Cameroon, beginning in 2012. Kelly Boekee, originally from the Netherlands but now living in Cameroon, was involved with the Korup project as well and was invaluable in helping me organize, configure computers, and assist participants in the learning process - I could not have survived without her! And finally, but really significantly, Frelcia Bambi from our team in Congo. I could only bring one of the three excellent members of the Congo team, and Frelcia drew the short straw. For me this was an outcome long awaited. Frelcia's grasp of what we are doing, and why, came through so clearly as he explained many aspects of acoustic monitoring work, and updated everyone with experiences gleaned over many months in the forests of northern Congo. Bravo Frelcia!
We have exciting plans for a long research season at Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic, coming up early in 2020. And our analysis work here at Cornell has really ramped up, with 18 (eighteen!) undergraduate interns participating in our lab this semester. Two of these are working on independent research projects that will likely be the basis of an honors thesis. More about all of this in the next newsletter.
Thanks to all of you for your interest in what we do. It makes a difference.
Peter H. Wrege,
Director, Elephant Listening Project. |
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