Recording a rainforest before Indonesia’s new capital changes it

Researchers led by Wendy Erb at Cornell's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics have spent 18 months placing recorders across 20 sites near Pemaluan in East Kalimantan, capturing gibbons, frogs, hornbills, and insects before Indonesia's new capital, Nusantara, reshapes the landscape around them.

Nusantara's planners call it a “smart forest city” where development and biodiversity coexist; roads, apartment blocks, a hotel, and a presidential palace have already gone up, and chainsaws are now part of the local soundscape.

The project also documents Indigenous Balik knowledge tied to animal calls, including the great argus, whose call some younger Balik children no longer recognize. Researchers say the recordings won't stop construction or save the forest, only document what was there before it wasn't.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.