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Our brakes screech, our airplanes drone, our trucks beep: we humans like to make a noise. So much so, in fact, that some experts believe there’s now nowhere left on the planet unaffected by our racket.

Simply put: we’re running out of peace and quiet.

In the US, the National Park Service is leading a project to bring a little hush back to the wild. Cathy FitzGerald hears more on a hike with soundscape specialist, Davyd Betchkal, in Denali National Park, Alaska – a 6,000,000 acre wilderness bisected by a single road.

Davyd is part of the Natural Sounds Division, a special team within the National Park Service, tasked with preserving the soundscapes of natural habitats. He and his colleagues trek out to remote locations to install temporary recording stations; unmanned microphones-in-the-wild that can record a month of sound at a time. The stations monitor human noise pollution – sightseeing air tours, car engines, passing hikers – as well as capturing the incredible sounds of the Alaskan wilderness: passing moose and caribou, curious bears, howling wolves.

Davyd introduces some of his favourite Alaskan sounds. Plus we hear from legendary sound ecologist Bernie Krause, who has devoted his life to recording he sounds of natural habitats before they disappear, and from George Michelsen Foy, author of Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence.

With thanks to the US National Park Service for use of its recordings and to Bernie Krause’s Wild Sanctuary archive for:
Borneo Dawn
Amazon Dawn
Sumatra Days, Sumatra Nights

Producer: Cathy FitzGerald.

(Photo: Gr.izzly bear in front of Mt McKinley, (Ursus arctos), Alaska, Denali National Park. Credit: Getty Images)