The Race to Record a Rainforest Before Its Sounds Are Gone

Indonesia is building a new capital city, and according to Aeon, the race is on to preserve the sounds of the rainforest before they vanish forever. Sound is an awkward thing to put in a conservation plan, because it can't be banked like a seed. A recording doesn't hold the forest; it holds one microphone's account of a stretch of time — this chorus, at this hour — and that becomes valuable precisely because the place itself is changing. There's a deadline built into the project: the capital is coming, and a recording made later would capture a different forest. Archiving is usually what you do when you have time. Here the construction schedule sets the clock.