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New tone of endangered species
03/01/2008 21:56 - (SA)
Albuquerque, New Mexico - The growls, bugles and chirps of dozens of rare and endangered species are being heard in cities and towns around the globe.
The Centre for Biological Diversity started offering free wildlife ringtones for cellphones a year ago to educate people about the plight of the animals, and the campaign enjoyed such success that the environmental group has collected more ringtones and revamped its website for this year.
The group plans to release an assortment of new ringtones each month, including the sounds of the African elephant and the Emperor Penguin of the Antarctic, said Peter Galvin, the group's conservation director.
"We've hit the 100 000th download in over 150 countries," Galvin said on Wednesday in a telephone interview. "It's pretty interesting. We didn't realise how much of an international hit it would become."
The response, he said, reinforces the worldwide movement to save endangered and rare species.
"The extinction crisis is a global crisis," he said.
Available ringtones include the howl of an endangered Mexican grey wolf, the bellows of an Arctic beluga whale and the calls of dozens of other mammals, birds and reptiles. Website visitors can also get cellphone wallpaper and facts for each of the species.
Later this year, the site will be available in Spanish and more ringtones from species in Latin America will be added, Galvin said.
It was Galvin who came up with the idea for the free ringtones as a way to educate people - especially the younger, technologically savvy generation. He has even tried collecting some of the sounds, which has proved to be a difficult task.
He's going to make another try during a trip next month to Ecuador and Peru.
"If you're birdwatching, for example, in many cases you may or may not see the bird, and then getting an actual recording of it is even harder," he said.
Despite the challenge, all but two or three of the ringtones offered on the site are from the wild. They've been collected by researchers around the world, and the centre hopes for even more recordings.
Environmental activists hope the ringtones start conversations and get people interested in what Galvin calls the "interconnected web of nature" and how it relates to humanity's survival.
"I'd like to think of nature's diversity as a symphony," he said, "and extinction is like one of the instruments in the symphony going silent."
- AP
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