12/04/2023
As an 8 year old, I learned the hard way that slamming your car door at 5am would get you angry stares and silent fist-shaking from an older brother and father. 50 years later, I relish in the silence when I got hunting or hiking. This image is an audio spectrogram (which is a way of visualizing sound) of a twenty four hour sound recording I did deep in the back country of the greater Yellowstone this fall. Each row in one hour of audio. And there are 24 rows. On the top row (which is the midnight hour) there is a green circle around series of elk bugles and a wolf howling -- two of the iconic sounds of wild places. Circled in yellow are the sounds of airplanes. 32 plane flights in one day. Each airplane noise lasts an average of 2 minutes, and there are on average 32 a day north of Yellowstone. Do the math: an hour of airplane noise a day is already what we have around here. Perhaps we have enough planes flying over Yellowstone, and we should think twice before now allowing private plane tours at low elevation over Yellowstone and other national parks. It might happen sooner than we think: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415213 . Let Rep Rosendale know if you prefer the sound of elk bugling to private helicopter and plane operations in the Greater Yellowstone. Contact him at: https://rosendale.house.gov/contact/contactform.htm?zip5=59027 . Check out https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/news-analysis/air-tourism-national-parks/ for some interesting background.
