Since I first engaged with the ecology of sound fifty-three years ago, the density and diversity of wildlife acoustic signatures has diminished markedly. At some sites, as a direct consequence of anthropogenic climate change and other exploitive human endeavor, the biophony can no longer be heard in any form. This essay of personal thoughts on my evolution to ecoacoustics is framed by the title, a paraphrase of the late David Bowie aphorism. Bowie’s deeply profound observation speaks to a host of insights that flow from it. Most important, we can no longer disregard the cries of wild organisms and human ensembles living closely connected to the natural world, those begging for relief from the relentless corporate assault on the earth’s finite resources that have otherwise sustained them from the beginning. It is an onslaught now transmitted all too eloquently through the otherwise life-affirming voices of the natural world, its biophonies and geophonies, as these critters struggle for purchase. Will this descent toward silence be the world-wide outcome of Bowie’s prediction? What can be done to alter this course? And who among us will take the lead? 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352823537_The_Future_Belongs_to_Those_Who_Can_Hear_It_Coming