Indonesia preserves rainforest sounds amid new capital's rise
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Abidin, an elder from the Balik community in Borneo, Indonesia, noticed diminishing wildlife sounds as development increased around his home. The Indonesian government began constructing Nusantara, a new capital city, to address issues of sinking land and climate vulnerability in Jakarta.
Leah Varjacques, a US director, documented this change and followed Abidin’s collaboration with Wendy Erb, a bioacoustic scientist from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to record the rainforest’s sounds.
The research team collected audio from various locations within the rainforest, aiming to preserve a record of the soundscape before further construction alters it. They believe these sounds contain cultural and ancestral knowledge linked to the environment. The project intends to safeguard this knowledge by creating a lasting audio archive. The team hopes their work will document the forest’s soundscapes and the cultural practices connected to them, preventing their complete loss as the new city grows.
They suspect construction noise is already impacting wildlife populations.
