Deep in the heart of Yellowstone National Park, audio recorders roughly the size of hardcover books are documenting wolf barks, elk bugles and bird chirps 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.<\/p>\n
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But it\u2019s the new insights into wolf behavior that have proven most useful. The recorders, and the artificial intelligence technology that parses the sound they capture, are helping scientists better monitor and protect the controversial and ecologically important apex predator that brings thousands of tourists to Yellowstone annually.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCry Wolf<\/a>\u201d project is a collaboration between Jeff Reed, a computational linguist with three decades of experience in the tech industry, and the Yellowstone Wolf Project<\/a>. Yellowstone National Park spokespeople did not respond<\/a> to repeated interview and information requests.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n FILE: The Junction Butte wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, which includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, in 2018.<\/p>\n Dan Stahler\/NPS\/Cry Wolf Project<\/p>\n Reed lives just north of Yellowstone in Montana and had been recording sounds on his own property with his company\u2019s\u00a0GrizCam<\/a>, which also captures video, when something clicked. Why not record Yellowstone wolves? Wolves are notoriously hard to monitor and live in a rugged environment, the perfect fit for audio surveillance over many miles. He pitched the idea to Dan Stahler, the lead wolf biologist in Yellowstone, in 2023. \u201cI grew up here and I love it,\u201d Reed told\u00a0SFGATE. \u201cI want to protect it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Stahler, Reed and other members of the Yellowstone Wolf Project team installed 25 recorders during the summer of 2024. Some are attached to trees, while others are tucked under rocks. Today, 50 recording units span 500,000 acres in the park, monitoring Yellowstone’s wolves as they bark, yip, howl and whine.<\/p>\n Make SFGATE a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWolves are generally loud,\u201d Reed said. \u201cYou can pretty much pick them up in that grid anywhere, depending upon things like wind.\u201d Wolf packs north of Yellowstone Lake and between Gardiner and Cooke City in the park\u2019s Hayden Valley and northern mountain ranges are covered by the technology, which helps researchers identify and geolocate them by their sounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n According to Reed, the project has analyzed over 200,000 hours of recordings, making it the largest database of wolf vocalizations in the world. Stahler told PBS News Hour<\/a> that over 7,000 wolf sounds had been catalogued, and further analysis led researchers to determine the distinct \u201cacoustic signatures\u201d of several packs.\u00a0<\/p>\n FILE: The acoustic signatures of four wolf packs doing chorus howls in Yellowstone National Park, which includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jeffrey T. Reed\/Cry Wolf Project<\/p>\n While other bioacoustics researchers have recorded wolves for decades, they\u2019ve done so on foot with handheld microphones. That means they have to be in the right place at the right time. Setting up hardware that records automatically provides a much larger dataset and potentially more answers to questions about how wolves communicate with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt would almost be like standing at a location for a year, never going to sleep and always listening,\u201d Reed said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Reed uses technology from companies like Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI to analyze the sheer volume of audio recordings, search for patterns, isolate individual sounds and more. Google AI, for example, can help pick out the sounds of individual wolves in a pack\u2019s chorus howl.\u00a0<\/p>\n The tech companies don\u2019t fund the bioacoustic operation, and neither does the National Park Service. Yellowstone Forever, the park\u2019s philanthropic arm, and Colossal Foundation, a genetic engineering company known for its \u201cde-extinction\u201d efforts, provide some funding. Reed functions as a volunteer, donating his time and technical expertise.<\/p>\n FILE: A howling wolf in Yellowstone National Park, which includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.\u00a0<\/p>\n Holly Pippel\/Cry Wolf Project<\/p>\n So far, the sound recordings have revealed interesting new information about wolf communication. Researchers are tracking how often wolves howl, and it appears they do so mostly at night, all year round. Wolves have individual \u201cvoices\u201d that are distinct from others. And, at least once<\/a>, a wolf even howled back at a park ranger\u2019s siren.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Audio technology could revolutionize how wolves in the park are monitored in the long term. Setting up solar-powered recorders is far less invasive, time-consuming, expensive and hazardous than traditional wolf monitoring, which involves the use of airplanes, helicopters, dart guns and GPS collars.\u00a0<\/p>\n If a recorder can tell how many wolves are in a pack from its chorus howls, that can then help researchers better estimate population numbers. Tracking individual packs\u2019 signatures can also help keep a wolf pack from getting counted twice.\u00a0<\/p>\n FILE: The sound waves of 50 solo wolf howls in Yellowstone National Park, which includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jeffrey T. Reed\/Cry Wolf Project<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I could envision down the road a decade from now is that we may not have to collar certain packs or put out collars in certain areas of the park,\u201d Stahler told PBS.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Reed is thinking big for sound recording\u2019s broader potential. He told SFGATE that it goes beyond wolves \u2014 sound data can be used to understand what\u2019s happening on public and private lands, from poachers to trespassers to wildlife movement. He believes it\u2019s the natural extension of the technology that we already have in our homes, like the Google Nest home security cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is coming,\u201d Reed said. \u201cIt\u2019s in all our homes today, and it will come into the broader world. Because 95% of the planet doesn\u2019t have an electrical socket to plug into.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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