The Arctic Wildlife Refuge

The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is truly one of the most beautiful places on earth.  It's home to a wide range of wildlife, including iconic species such as polar bears, caribou, Arctic foxes, muskoxen, hundreds of migratory birds, and many others.  It also supports diverse habitats, from coastal lagoons and wetlands to alpine tundra and boreal forests. 

Sound ecologist Martyn Stewart is our guide through this acoustic wonderland. He shares his profound experiences from the heart of this awe-inspiring region, providing not just a rare glimpse into its untamed beauty but also an urgent narrative on the environmental and political challenges it faces. His stories bring the Arctic to life, from his first moments of isolation to his encounters with its diverse inhabitants, and the troubling reality of oil drilling's looming threat over this sanctuary.

Venture with us into the realm of the Arctic tern's astonishing migration and stand witness to the caribou's ancient river crossings, as Martyn showcases the critical role the refuge plays in the lives of these wandering species. The silence that fills the space left by migrating birds is also a poignant reminder of the fragility of this ecosystem. With each anecdote, we're reminded of the Arctic's vibrant pulse and the importance of safeguarding its unique soundscape, a repository of our planet's rich biodiversity.

As the episode draws to a close, we're prompted to consider the legacy we leave for future generations. The Arctic is not merely a distant, icy expanse—it's an integral part of our collective home, demanding our respect and protection. By joining us on this auditory adventure, we hope to foster a deep connection with the natural world, ensuring that the serenity and joy of the wild remain an enduring presence in our lives. Listen and let your heart be stirred by the call of the wild.

www.thelisteningplanet.com

Transcript

Martyn Stewart
Host
00:01
This is Martin Stewart, with a life in sound from the listening planet. 

Amanda Hill
Host
00:14
Oh, I'm really, really excited about today's episode, so I can't remember if it was episode four or episode five, it doesn't matter. We said we're now going to start going into some of the places that you've loved the most over the years, and my hope is that this is going to take us a long, long long time and weeks and weeks and months of exploring, and I know that you don't like to carve out the ones or identify the ones that are your favourites. It's like every baby is loved the most by you but I do know that one of your favourites is the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and, Martin, you talked about it quite a bit in our very first episode, and I think one of the things that struck me the most is when you talk about this real sense of wilderness and I'd love us to start there really which is, talk to me about where are we? Where is even the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? What year are we in? The first time you go, what do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? Take me back. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
01:17
I think you have to talk about the introduction to Wildlife Refuge first. When I was a, there used to be some amazing documentaries. When we had electricity on the television, we had BBC ITV. I don't think there was a BBC 2 then, so there was probably just two channels. You just had a knob on the telly, just one side or the other, and they did a program on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and I was absolutely captivated with the Arctic and it was this idea of wilderness what, what is wilderness? So I'm probably older than seven, because I couldn't understand shit when I was that age. So you know, I'm probably 10, maybe 10, 11. 

02:09
It was 2004 when my dream came true about going up there and I went up to record around the Canning Delta. There's there's a bunch of places on the refuge and if you think of the refuge being something like 90 plus million acres of land but it was always in conversation activists that would talk about the Arctic were talking about the threat of the place and I think how can 90 million acres be under threat? So it's a huge oil resource. You know there's a place there that they feel humans need to go in and pull and extract everything out that's really good and destroy everything. So I went up to record it. And I went up to record it because I was asked if I could do a soundscape for a book. So I recorded and I went to Fairbanks, got on a plane to Cactivate, which is an Inuit village the north on the slope. 

Amanda Hill
Host
03:28
And how old are you at this point? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
03:30
This is 2004, so work it out. I'm 60, bloody nine now, so You're 49, to my age. Yeah, I was your age when I was there. I was your age. You haven't been to the Arctic yet. 

Amanda Hill
Host
03:48
No, I think it's one of the reasons that I'm so excited about this conversation, because I don't think I've ever really experienced wilderness. So when you talk about even when I've been out to remote parks and national parks in America, I've still not ever felt that sense of really kind of absolute isolation. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
04:12
Because you know there's boundaries around it. You know there's these boundaries and you've got there by car. You can't go by car to the Arctic National Islands no roads, no signposts. 

Amanda Hill
Host
04:24
How do you get there? Am I being ridiculous? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
04:28
So you have to go there by bush plane. 

Amanda Hill
Host
04:31
Okay. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
04:32
And you pack all your shit in there and throw you out. So the first time I went there it was five days and I recorded the soundscapes. 

Amanda Hill
Host
04:47
But tell me, martin, what did? Did it tell me what it felt like? Just when you talk about feeling wilderness for the first time, try and explain like, was it cold, was it? I also know that the arts and wildlife refuge is a lot more diverse than people think. I always think of creaking ice, and yet actually there's a lot more diversity in the landscape there than just ice. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
05:03
Right, just paint the picture for me there used to be a guy, because when you're in america you get to hear a lot of politics and there's so-called crazies, and there's so-called not crazies but the idea of the arctic national Wildlife being this huge oil resource. I looked into this and I thought what is the Arctic about? You know, as a 12-month thing, and there was a guy called Ted Stevens who was a senator for Alaska and he was for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife and he was for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and he described the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as being a wasteland, he described. He held a white poster board up on the Senate floor and said something like make no bones about it, this is what the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 12 months of the year, it's flat. 

Amanda Hill
Host
06:10
It's unattractive, it's not pristine. This is what it looks like. Don't be misinformed. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
06:19
And I thought that's poppycock because I've seen all this stuff you know, To the contrary, it wasn't that way at all. 

06:28
So I looked at both sides. I thought you know, you've got to take a little bit from the left and the right. You've got to understand which is right and wrong. I'm always impartial about stuff, I'm always. I listen to two sides of any argument and I listen to two sides of any politics and I decide myself. I'm neither left, I'm neither right, I just. I just like common sense and seeing is always believing. You know, you, you have to always go and see and make up your own mind. 

07:00
So when I was dropped into the refuge the first time and the plane went away, it was an incredible feeling. It was a feeling of oh my God, you know what happens if something happens to me. There's no phone who's going to come and get you if you're being eaten, you know, excuse me, can you pop down here in 10 minutes? It just doesn't work that way, because when someone's gone and dropped you off, that's it. You're on your own. I could feel all my senses, there was a quietness about it. But there wasn't quiet because you had winds, you had subtle sounds, you had these bird chirps and stuff, and remember, it's 24 hours a day. 

07:54
So there's no sense of time, there's no sense of afternoon, there's no sense of morning, and I could feel my pulse. The quietness was deafening. It was almost like I would think, going back to your primal self. 

Amanda Hill
Host
08:10
Yeah. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
08:11
I mean it was vast. You stood on the top place called Sunset Pass and you looked and you could see for miles. And then your eyes play tricks because when you see the coastal plain it looks like there's a city down there. But there's these illusions and then when you adjust to the environment that you're in, you're just in awe of everything. I'd never experienced that in my life and remember I'm getting on for 50. Then I'd been to places open lands, I'd been to big parks. I've been to places open lands. I've been to big parks. I've been to Africa. Then I've been to the plains, but nothing like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And then you start to make up your own opinions about things. How could someone stand saying this is a wasteland. This is what wilderness is about. Wilderness is something that is so special. She became the lover of my life. 

09:11
She, she was the most special thing being there and you felt like everything you did. You had this privilege of being able to step, and then you start to adjust to your surroundings. You know, you see animals and you see bears, and you see caribou, and you see arctic fox, and you see all these critters and you're thinking there's no time here. There's just I don't need to get everything done by seven, because it's going to get dark. It's just light and it's a feeling of being maybe in the Garden of Eden. 

Amanda Hill
Host
09:52
So I know we're going to come on to the birds, but I actually want to start with the mammals. And maybe I want to start with the mammals because of the fact that it is home to, clearly, one of my psychotic species in the world, which is the polar bear, and the thought of being in a wilderness, in isolation with these huge animals. And can you just introduce the different characters to me, of course, but start with some of your favorite and tell me what it was like to record them, to be amongst them so we're talking the mammals first. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
10:22
So yeah, the first mammal I experienced was huge big brown bear. My tent you, you have your tent the grizzly. 

Amanda Hill
Host
10:30
That's the grizzly bear. Right, martin, that's up there yeah, it's the grizzly bear. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
10:34
There's a crossover between brown bear, grizzly bear. I think they're the same bloody bear, but it's. It's a big bloody bear, you you know. And where my tent was, where I set my tent up, your food and stuff had to be about 50 yards away from your tent. You couldn't sleep with stuff. You're just asking for trouble, but I would walk maybe a mile. Be like a difficult mile. 

11:02
I mean walking a mile on the tundra is like walking 20 miles. It's just so difficult. And you got boots and you're weak because you're standing on these tufts of grass and you're twisting your leg and you're doing so. You can't maneuver like you could do anywhere else. So I've got my microphone, my tripod, my cables, my recorder, um, and my gear and stuff and a little stall used to carry a little stall around. You take a little bit of your you know your luxuries with you and, um, I saw this thing coming up up the slope. My god, what the heck is that? And then the outline it's a bloody bear. So you're in survival mode then and you think the bear and me and where my tent is is a mile away. How the hell am I going to get back to the tent? And even if. 

11:59
I got back to the tent. What's the tent going to do to protect me? It's just a tent, you know. So I realised I'm standing in this bear's dinner plate. 

Amanda Hill
Host
12:14
So what do you do? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
12:15
Well, the bear was going from left to right, left to right, left to right, and that went out of the way. And then I said to myself myself well, if there's another bear somewhere else, what am I going to do? So you just get on with it. But it was it. That's the closest I've ever been to to a brown bear. You know, I'd seen them in a zoo. 

Amanda Hill
Host
12:37
I remember being in jackson hole and at the wildlife festival and we were out a few of us have gone out for a walk in between some of the sessions and you could see all the bear markings on the trees and you know, people who listen to this have no idea quite how tiny I really am. And I was just this massive like bear of a guy this filmmaker and he's like amanda. When you see a bear, just you make yourself really big. I just kept looking at myself thinking I'm so, so tiny. I'm like the appetiser. When did you see a polar bear? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
13:09
The polar bear was another journey, another trip that I did. I took Roo up there. There was a porter cabin which was a hotel in Cactovic named after a famous hotel chain. But it was laughable, it was like a. 

Amanda Hill
Host
13:29
A porter cabin. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
13:30
An old. 

Amanda Hill
Host
13:30
The Hilton porter cabin. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
13:32
Like the Hilton thing, and it was named after this. The guy's name was the same name as this hotel I wish I could pull that to the top of my head and he had this old Chevy car and he said you can take it to the spit, where the natives would kill whales and take them out onto the spit and the polar bears would come and start sniffing around the whale bones and getting whatever meat was left, so their dinner time they'd come in and they'd be grabbing it. So Drew and I took this car down and I put a microphone into the whale bones and ran the cable. So the bears were in and out, growling and fighting each other and things and it was really cool. But we went to the other side of the spit this one time and Rue stayed in the car she didn't want a chance being chased by a polar bear. 

14:28
And I went half a mile to where the the coast was, the coastal plain, and it was like a, a sand dune type of thing. There was a ledge and I'm standing about 20, 25 feet above the beach and the wind's blowing down. And I just looked to the right of me and there's this huge big polar bear and I looked around to see where the car was and I thought, oh my God, if that bear sees me or smells me, there's not a chance on this earth that I'm going to be able to get back to the car. So I legged it. I just ran like hell, the worst thing you could possibly do. 

15:11
These. Like you say, you're supposed to stand there and make yourself big. But I wasn't going to be big. You know he's still going to bloody eat me. I got back to the car and that was it. I never got a recording of it. You know there's never that intention. I never thought I was going to see a bear. The polar bear, I think, is probably one of the scariest mammals on you know that I've ever encountered, and they, they don't they don't. 

15:35
You know, they don't decide. There's a. There's a guy who I spoke to in cactovic and said you know what happens when you encounter a polar bear? And he said the bear will decide. Okay, amazing animals. 

Amanda Hill
Host
15:51
Do you know which? One of my absolute favourites from the Arctic is the what's the very shaggy, thick coated muskox. Have you recorded a muskox? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
16:03
I have a grunt, but not on the arctic in a zoo kind of place. That I did, I think I think, oh, they're amazing things. 

16:14
It's like um beyonce gone wrong. They're amazing, amazing animals. But I I watched a lot of different mammals caribou I recorded herds going through river crossings and um arctic fox. I found a den where one of the arctic foxes were going back and forward, taking prey back to its babies, to the cubs. That was magic, you know, and I'd sit there for ages by this burrow watching and she or he got to know who I was. 

Amanda Hill
Host
16:55
Yeah. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
16:56
It's a playground. It's the most amazing place. The Arctic is just the most amazing place on earth. When you talk about wilderness, the majority of people will never experience that in their lives no but you have to know, it's there, you just have to know because, it's. It's. It's one chance we have as humans. If we stuff that up, you know we can't do anything. It's beautiful. It's a special place. It's the most special place on earth for me. 

Amanda Hill
Host
17:33
I know that one of the key reasons that you clearly said that you started going over there was for the birds and the soundscape that you wanted to collect. And tell me if I'm correct in terms of it. I know it's a really critical breeding ground, but I think it's almost like 200 species of birds that go to the arctic wildlife refuge. One of my favorites that you've talked to me about a lot is the arctic tern. So can we start with the arctic tern and tell me why they're quite so amazing? 

18:03
you know, you always get this wrong. You always get it wrong where they start their journey. But they clearly start their journey in the arctic. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
18:08
The hint is in the main there's some, some brilliant places on the. The refuge and you can walk for just a short time and find yourself by a lake, and the tundra is just a fabulous place for birds like the terns to to breed. You know, there's hardly any predators and the ones that predate on them are basically foxes or um, or wolves, but um, it's a critical breeding place for the arctic tern, ready to fuel itself to fly off to the south pole, and the journey that that makes you know, um, I forget how many thousands of miles it flies, but it goes from the south all the way back to the south pole, all the way back to the north pole. 

18:52
In the space of a year it's the longest migration of any, the longest and the longest and think of all the, the critters that it, that it meets on the way and all the different biomes it encounters. But the, the Arctic tern. I've seen that guy, you know, seen the tern in the Faroes. I've seen it in Norway, I've seen it down in New Zealand, I've seen it in Africa. I've seen it down in Patagonia and you go and see it up there and it's all like hello mate. You know, when you go to a party and there's always Jack there. 

Amanda Hill
Host
19:21
The Arctic Turn always turns up. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
19:22
You know all these people as well. You know the Arctic Turn is Jack. Jack is there at the party, so he's in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There's some stunning places, you know, along the coastal plain and that rattle and din of the arctic turn. When you, when you approach them, when you start to record, they attack you, they dive, bomb you, so you have to hold, like your tripod up because it can rip your head out you know they're aggressive little buggers what's it it called? 

Amanda Hill
Host
19:56
when they're about to go on that epic migration, don't they go from incredible noise to this absolute silence? What do they call that? I think it's the dread. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
20:05
The dread. Yes, it's the dread. I've recorded the dread. 

Amanda Hill
Host
20:09
I find that amazing that they're about to go on this epic adventure and it goes from noise to nothing. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
20:15
Noise to nothing and then poof, just that explosion. But you say there's 200 species of birds there. It's almost like going to the Royal Albert Hall to listen to the proms, but you're not really sure what to expect. You know the music they're going to play, you know the conductor's going to do jerusalem, or you know land of hope and glory. So the arctic has those renditions, but there's a different instrumentalist that comes along and changes the, the theme or the, or the direction of it. There's never a time that sounds the same, there's always something. But you know those sounds belong together. 

Amanda Hill
Host
20:59
But they're always in a different way. Tell me some of the main characters that I might encounter. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
21:04
So some of your favourites the animals, the birds, there's one up there called the blue throat, which you don't really encounter in North America. You have to go up to the Arctic to find it and that's a trickster. That's the mimic of the Northern Hemisphere. I remember going through a list of stuff of bird species which I thought maybe I'll encounter these, maybe I won't encounter that. 

21:34
I was in my tent and my tent was probably the worst kind of choice you could ever make. I had a yellow tent and when the sun's out 24 hours a day, it was almost like living inside an egg. It's like me being in an embryo. It was weird and all my skin was yellow. I was thinking I'm going to die here. Yellow jaundice, this is crazy crap. But I was in this tent having a cup of tea and I could hear this um, golden plover. I mean, what the hell? You gotta be kidding me. It was definitely a golden plover. 

22:09
So I shot out of the tent, grabbed the covers over the top of my recorder and my parabola dish and went looking for this plover and I thought it's not going to be able to get away quick because they're not the greatest flyers. And it's gone. Where the hell has it gone? And then there was a loggerhead shrike calling Where's that one, where's that one gone? 

22:32
And then I found this blue throat sitting on a creosote bush singing away, mimicking. So it's all I always say. Birds have these conversations with me and I live this kind of fantasy that they're doing this open theater for my benefit all the time. But it's almost like this blue throat's looking at you with a faggot saying did you like that one? You know I got you on that one, didn't I? But the blue, the blue throat, was just fascinating. It was even mimicking a ptarmigan that was that was on there. So recording birds like, um, the lyrebirds down in Australia and the mockingbirds up here in North America and starlings and stuff, and the blue-throat mimicking other birds, it's fantastic. You know it's this theatre that you walk into and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is like going to theatre night. 

Amanda Hill
Host
23:33
Tell me about some of the other characters, bird characters, that we might find. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
23:36
Tell me about some of the other characters, bird characters that we might find Tell me the story. So the story with the Jaeger is that they're very territorial when they're on the refuge and Roo and I were walking through the tundra and we must have just happened upon their nesting area. So then they become very aggressive and they fly over and shit on you, they dive, bomb you and shit on you, they dive, bomb you and shit on you. So Rue was screaming Stewie, stewie, they're shitting on me. When we got off the tunnel she was covered in whitewash. She was absolutely, and of course, her experience about it all is just, you know, the worst ever. But it's just that protected instinct. It was just so funny so when, when I did talks, order bond meetings and things, I'd include these soundscapes of a screaming, with the jaegers coming and attacking her. The um, the ptarmigan's another character, but the long spurs which are there, the calls. You walk for about 20 feet and there's a nest, and then you walk another 20 feet, there's another nest. You've got to be so careful about where they are, but they've got such a short time to breed, to hatch out, to learn to fly and to get the hell out of there. There's some fantastic birds up there. 

25:05
The geofalcon was one where one day the film crew was with me. We were doing a short film on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and I agreed that they could follow me because I'd heard about a ledge that was really difficult to get to. There was a pair of geofalcons mating and breeding and nesting up there, and when you think of going out to record a species you never think that you're going to encounter a geofalcon. So it was so rare to go and do that. So we got to this ledge and I told the film crew you can't come anywhere near me because there's a lot of shale and you're going to make a lot of noise, and I know you want to get the shot but I want to get this sound. 

25:48
So they agreed they stayed back on the ledge and I went down to this thing and I found these geofalcons. But four hours and I'm standing there with my mic waiting for the male to come back with food and as soon as the female knows the male's in the vicinity, it starts to do that fantastic squawking. Yeah, so you know it's. It's like at the end of a lot you just say thank you very much, you know, I really appreciate it that's okay, stupid question. 

Amanda Hill
Host
26:14
Can I ask a stupid question? So does the? Does the arctic wildlifefire Refuge have a dawn chorus? Given the fact that it's not a dawn, that's? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
26:21
not a stupid question? It's not a stupid question. Yes, there is a dawn chorus and there's an evening chorus. There's a change, a definite change in temperature. So through the night the sun is just going round in a circle, and six o'clock, five o'clock in the morning, there's a difference in temperature. Even though the sun's up there, there's still a change of fluctuation in temperature and there's a definite dawn. There's a definite difference. You know, I'll play, I'll play some snippets from midday and morning and evening time and you hear yourself the difference it is. I was. I've been asked that many times is there a dawn chorus on the Arctic National Wildlife? And the answer is yes. 

Amanda Hill
Host
27:03
I think we mentioned this in the first episode, but I love that Jimmy Carter wrote to you and said that the soundscapes of the birds and what he listened to every night before he went to bed, which is just a lovely thought. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
27:14
I couldn't believe that there's a letter marked to me, typed out Martin Stewart, and his name, jimmy Carter, on the top of it, because I didn't know. He did the foreword in the book, so he did the foreword in the book, the Arctic Wings book. I think it was out for about six months and then I got this letter saying I just want to say I thank you very much for the beautiful uh collection of sounds you have in there. Me and my wife listen to it before we go to bed at night so I got the letter and stuck it in one of the Arctic Wings books. 

27:48
You can't find it I can't find it, I've got about 20 of these. Arctic Wings books and I can't find the letter, but I know it's. It's here somewhere. But it's a special thing, you know, and he was a great conservationist, he was a great birder, lovely man. 

Amanda Hill
Host
28:03
There have been so many. When I was reading the other day about how the Arctic Wildlife Refuge was even formed, you know I still. There are so many incredibly important figures in America who've been so significant about preserving the natural world and creating that space. Can we talk about one of my favourite sounds of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which is ice? And I also want to touch on it because we've been working with Michelle Sanders and Alice Boyd on their project, which is Under the Midnight Sun, arctic Ice. And what I love is that when you hear you've got so many different sounds of ice and its different forms and you just recently collaborated with Alice on the track for this film and I love how poignant it is, and even more so given the fact that we know that the Arctic Ice is also rapidly disappearing. So I'd love you to talk about the sounds, martin, just what it's, this pure sound of ice cracking and how that fills a soundscape. But I'd also love us to touch upon the fragility of that ecosystem ecosystem. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
29:21
How fragile the arctic national wildlife refuge is is only really understood when you are actually there, I think. I mean, you can hear so many people saying the ice is melting, planet is warming up, but when you actually see the change in such a short time, even when you're there for a season you get shards of ice. 

29:39
You know you can gather that temperatures the temperature can be brutal and you're so cold you just lose all your senses in your body. But I I saw in a in a space of 10 days how everything thawed out. So I have microphones and I record everything I possibly can. I love sounds. I love hiding contact mics under stones where the water's just rushing past or trickling by and it gives a different sound signature all the time. So when you amongst ice itself and these brooks and streams are frozen over and lakes are frozen over, if you get the mic underneath the surface, there's some brilliant sounds like cracking and expansion sounds and just the weirdest lot. It's like being in a Star Wars film. There's certain things that you never dream of that ice could make that sound. So the thawing of ice, the shards of ice, the granules of ice, they all have a different sound signature for them. But you have to be so quick with it, because I was there start of June on this one period and getting from Kaktovik out onto the Sunset Pass was difficult because of the snowpack when I left there on the 14th of June. I came back on the 21st of June, took Roo back up there because I wanted her to see the beauty and the splendour of the place. All the ice and the snow had gone, it just disappeared, so it was that quick. 

31:17
I experienced, where you get the boundary of the Boreal Forest and the Taiga Forest, drunken trees and local people, the local Inuits up there never experienced trees falling over before and even their dwellings you know the houses that they had. On Kaktovik there were supports that were sinking down into the ice. So it's obviously a thing. It's not just some liberal crap that someone's spewing out, it's actually a problem. The polar bears up there are finding it hard to exist and the villagers up there were saying they would hardly see polar bears 10 years before. Then the polar bears are coming into the village looking for food because of the thawing of the ice fields. But it's so quick, the season is just so quick, you know. But the sounds of water thawing, the sounds of streams, the sounds of lakes are different every single day that you're in the Arctic, because that ecosystem is just so fragile. 

32:26
I can't go back over a period of 10 years and say I recorded 10 years previous and it was different to that of that but I can tell you that the times I went up four or five times there was a change in seasons, most definitely, and still around the same time the flowers have to bloom in a quick cycle, the, the insects that go up, the birds that go up, to meet the, the insect, lavas and the hatching of of lavas is critical for them and that kind of window is is closing pretty quick. 

Amanda Hill
Host
33:01
So once they miss that window, then they find out they can't survive the food storages and it takes more than my pathetic outlook on stuff to do, but you obviously know something's going on I know that michelle and alice were really inspired I mean, inspired is probably the wrong word but moved and motivated to make the film based on a report that they'd read, where the Arctic summer ice could disappear by 2030s. And we so often see the incredible beauty but not necessarily understand the precarity. And I know that you have done a lot of work also, martin, in terms of really ensuring that you give the arctic wildlife refuge a voice, and in advocacy and in activism and all the things that you've done. Over what time period were you there? So, even the time that you've been and you saw the changes that you saw, what time frame was that? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
34:00
21 days each time I was there. 

Amanda Hill
Host
34:03
Over the different years? How many years? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
34:05
2004, 2006, 2010, 2011. Same place. 

Amanda Hill
Host
34:12
And I know it's somewhere you'd really like to go back to. So if you could go back, what would you want to most specifically record? So if you had your wish and you, could Everything. Everything, Of course everything. 

Martyn Stewart
Host
34:26
I had an outfitter with me this one particular time. His name was Andy, they called him Arctic Andy, and the day we were going back to Kaktovik to get the bush plane and then fly back out to Fairbanks, he said to me come with me. And we walked up this hill and he pulled out a map and he laid it on the tundra and he started looking across to the coastal plain and he looked to the right and the left and there was the Canning Delta and there was the Conger cut river and the coastal plain and he started to. He started to cry, not blarting out, but his tears were running down his cheeks. And I said what's up andy? And he said that, um, one day I'm gonna be here and I'm looking at. 

35:13
Nothing's gonna be like it is now. The threat of drilling is so great. Man's thirst for oil is always there. We can't change, we can't leave something like, as beautiful as this under the soil. And earlier that day I was recording soundscapes around where we were looking out and I could hear Prudhoe Bay, which was 60 miles away, the the drone of the oil fields. So those who said they could come onto the arctic, onto the coastal plain, and surgically remove oil without damaging the environment is just poppycock, it's, it's yeah it's. 

35:53
It's a lie, it's going to affect everything. And critters in on the ar itself know the difference. Know the presence of man. You get a bear that can smell something you know 40, 50 times more than what a dog can, and the senses of knowing that is under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would take probably 10, 12 years to extract it and it would probably be the equivalent of saving two cents at the petrol pump over that period of time. And yet if we inflated all our tires to the proper PSI, it would be the equivalent of drilling 10 arctics. 

36:39
So yeah we take accountability for our actions, and why would anybody go and try and destroy such a beautiful place than that to save two pence at the pump? Our thirst for oil needs to change if you could close with one sound. 

Amanda Hill
Host
36:56
That is just a reminder for you of why it's so important for us to protect such a pristine environment, so important from a diversity perspective, an ecological perspective, a cultural perspective. Is there one sound or soundscape that you would pick? 

Martyn Stewart
Host
37:15
I think just the soundscape of the arctic it has, it has a fingerprint to it, it's um yeah it's unique. 

37:24
It's so hard to record that soundscape because it has so many subtleties about it. Sometimes the volume of it isn't loud enough to pick it up. You have to have, sometimes real sensitive microphones, but it's it's almost like a feeling that you have. It's an auditory experience, but it's also a physical experience that you have. It's it's like walking into a room with a blindfold on feeling your, your presence and trying to guess where you are. If you take the sound away from the feeling, it's a completely different place. If you combine the two together, it's the most beautiful experience. 

38:08
And we have to have wilderness. We have to know that wilderness is there. If we can't protect somewhere like that that a lot of us won't be able to go, we can't protect somewhere like that that a lot of us won't be able to go. We can't protect anything. And I like to think that we can protect something like that. You've just experienced another journey on the Listening Planet podcast. Dive deeper into the world of natural sounds by connecting with us online. Visit our website or follow us on social media. Let the symphony of nature surround you wherever you go. Happy listening.