Bioacoustics in Conservation

In September 2018, a workshop on “Bioacoustics in Conservation” at the Student Conference on Conservation Science in Bengaluru, India demonstrated the “ripple effect” of the Lab’s investment in building local capacity for applied and basic scientific research and conservation around the world.

Twice a year, the Lab’s Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP) offers training workshops at the Lab for scientists in techniques for studying animal sounds. Since October 2017, BRP has offered scholarships for students and scientists from developing countries to attend the workshop. The primary goal of the scholarship program is to build capacity for scientists in developing countries to apply modern bioacoustic methods to pressing challenges in wildlife conservation, as well as to basic ecological and taxonomic research in regions of high biodiversity. Without scholarship assistance, most scientists in these countries could not afford the cost of traveling to Ithaca to participate in the workshops, which also provide opportunities to network with other researchers and to establish international collaborations.

The September workshop in Bengaluru was organized and hosted by KV Gururaja (“Guru”), an Indian biology professor and frog researcher, who attended BRP’s Sound Analysis Workshop as a scholarship recipient in April 2018. The Bengaluru workshop, attended by 36 participants, featured presentations by Guru based on what he had learned in BRP’s workshop. Guru’s travel to Ithaca and participation in the April workshop were made possible by unrestricted gifts to the Lab and by a targeted gift from Ecological Associates, Inc.

Guru and his students work in the Western Ghats, a mountain range in India that is one of the world’s leading biodiversity hotspots. Thanks to your support of the Lab, Indian scientists now have some new and sharper tools available to advance the work of understanding and protecting wildlife there.

The picture  is a group photo of the April 2018 SAW class.