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the listening planet collection

Punta

Tombo Penguins

RECORDING THE WORLD ONE SPECIES AT A TIME

Martyn Stewart has spent his entire life aiming to bring NATURE’S VOICE to the world and over the course of 55 years he’s created one of the most important private collections of nature sounds that exists in the world, recording in over 50 countries and capturing over 3500 species of birds, countless insects, amphibians and mammals. From locations as diverse as the Okavango Delta and Alaska, but also environments that have more anthropogenic implications – such as  Chernobyl and the maelstrom of Hurricane Dorian. The collection currently contains over 30,000 hours of nature sounds and soundscapes, more than 97,000 individual sounds and as many intimate stories from the natural world. 

WAYS TO EXPLORE THE LIBRARY

Each place in each corner of the world creates an environment that is home to thousands of different species.   Each with its own orchestra and chorus. Each with a sound signature that tells its own unique story.  

FEATURED NATURE SOUNDS

ALBUMS & COLLECTIONS

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SOUND CAN ALSO ECHO A DISAPPEARING WORLD 

"a sonic landscape undergoing an extinction event of its own – one that is, with painful irony, happening silently." 

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

“75 per cent of the landscapes and soundscapes I recorded have vanished, been silenced or suffered significant degradation that they can no longer be heard in their original form.  Twenty-five years ago it would take three or four hours of recording to capture one pristine hour.  Now it would be more like 2000 hours.  The fragile weave of natural sound is being torn apart by our seemingly boundless need to conquer the environment rather than to find a way to abide in consonance with it.”

 

“Sound is a way of adding nature’s own voice to the urgent call for its conservation and protection, to mobilize people around the issue of climate change and diversity.

MARTYN STEWART

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