Kaska Land Guardians Use Audio Recorders to Identify Birds on their Ancestral Lands

The Ancestral Lands of the Kaska Dena are teeming with an array of wildlife, including tens of millions of birds. Guided by a combination of Traditional Knowledge and Western science, Kaska Land Guardians work to keep this intact wilderness landscape healthy, offering hope in the face of the global climate change and biodiversity loss crises. 

Members of the Land Guardian program in Daylu—the Dane Nan YḗDāh Network—are currently working on a unique bioacoustics research project that records bird songs and calls and then documents the dates, locations, and bird species present. The project relies on Traditional Knowledge to select the places to monitor and deploy the sound recording units (ARUs). Once the sound cards are collected from the ARUs, they are sent to Audubon where the recorded bird sounds are analyzed using machine learning algorithms. 

The results can help support the proposed Kaska IPCA, Dene K’éh Kusān. Learn more here.