Why is listening important?

We are all good listeners.

40,000 years ago, around the world in Argentina, Borneo, New Mexico and Europe, we were mostly living in caves and natural shelters. These people were hunter gatherers who enlivened their living spaces with drawings and paintings of the animals they shared the landscape with. Most likely the sounds of these animals were also performed alongside the flickering flames of firelight through which the images were viewed. These people were in very close contact with a sense and spirit of place because their lives depended upon it. I like to think that during the night when the group was asleep, a pack of spotted hyenas or a sabre-toothed tiger may have crept inside searching for a meal. Those people, our ancestors, who heard the predator approach, woke up and escaped. Those who didn’t hear the threat came to a swift evolutionary dead end. 

Of course we don’t have ear lids, we are still listening when asleep. Unfortunately today we spend most of our waking hours processing out the challenges of noise pollution in order to simply focus on our daily activities. The National Parks in this respect are a vital resource as places of refuge and respite from much of this barrage. We need places where there is very little noise pollution, so we may open our ears to listen and re-engage with our landscapes. This is not just some artistic whim, we need areas of tranquillity within our National Parks to assist in restoring and maintaining our psychological health and wellbeing. I suspect that deep down in our psyche we already know this, we simply need to act.

Chris Watson

(BAFTA Award-winning field recordist. working on many of the BBC's best-loved documentaries, including David Attenborough's Frozen Planet)