Wildlife ringtones reach milestone

Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Jan 08;

"I'd like to think of nature's diversity as a symphony and extinction is like one of the instruments in the symphony going silent."

With the new year comes a new Web site and new ringtones featuring the growls, bugles and chirps of dozens of rare and endangered species from around the globe.

The Center for Biological Diversity started offering free wildlife ringtones for cell phones 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 Web site 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 Wednesday in a telephone interview. "It's pretty interesting. We didn't realize 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 gray wolf, the bellows of an Arctic beluga whale and the calls of dozens of other mammals, birds and reptiles. Web site visitors also can get cell phone wallpaper and facts for each of the species.

And 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 center 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."