It's beautiful, it's tranquil, but you really should hear a deep symphony of lush sounds. And it's getting weirdly quiet

Brutal wildfire images too much to bear? Fatigued by non-stop news of extreme weather, record-low snowpack, emaciated polar bears, unprecedented this and fast-receding that, a natural world that appears to be going more or less insane?

Maybe you need some quiet. Get outside, sit yourself down and let nature's innate healing powers soothe your aching heart.

Sounds good, right? Sounds refreshing. Sounds... well, not quite right at all. Not anymore.

Have you heard? Or more accurately, not heard? Vicious fires and vanishing ice floes aside, there's yet another ominous sign that all is not well with the natural world: it's getting quiet out there. Too quiet.

Behold, this bit over in Outside magazine, profiling the sweet, touching life and times of 77-year-old bioacoustician and soundscape artist Bernie Kraus, author of The Great Animal Orchestra (2012), TED talker, ballet scorer, and a "pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology."

Krause, last written about on SFGate back in 2007, is a man whose passion and profession has been making field recordings of the world's "biophony" for going on 45 years, setting up his sensitive equipment in roughly the same places around the world to record nature's (normally) stunningly diverse aural symphony - all the birds, bees, beavers, wolves, babbling streams, fluttering wings, the brush of trees and the rush of rivers - truly, the very pulse and thrum of life itself.

A bird in the hand is very sad indeed

One of his most favorite spots to record? Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, in the Mayacamas Mountains, in Sonoma. It's here he discovered something very disquieting indeed: The wonderfully diverse sounds of nature are no longer changing and evolving as usual. They are actually diminishing. Thinning out. And in many cases, vanishing completely.

This is the chilling news: Bit by bit, bird by bird, species by species, gurgling brook by gushing river, the song of wild nature is, in many places, falling deathly silent. The reasons? You already know: Real estate development, mining, logging, habitat destruction, climate change, drought.

Between 2004 and 2015, the [Mayacamas] site's biophony (totality of sounds produced by living organisms) dropped in level by a factor of five. "It's a true narrative, a story telling us that something is desperately wrong," Krause says.

In short: What once was a rich, varied symphony of sound has become a far more subdued chamber orchestra, with large spaces of eerie silence where there was once a vast natural racket, signifying everything.

It's not just Sonoma. The weird hush is surely spreading, becoming more and more familiar all over the world. It's not hard to figure out why: We've successfully wiped out fully half the world's wildlife, in the just last four decades alone. Songbird populations in particular, for a variety of (mostly terrible, mostly human-caused) reasons, have been decimated all over the world. The skies just aren't as musical as they used to be. Ecosystems are sputtering, shifting violently, dying away completely, as pathways to life are being choked off.

I recently wrote about the week I spent at my family's getaway cabin in northern Idaho ("Everything is on fire and no one cares"), a normally pristine, sublime summertime experience, this year ominously altered by the sheer density and persistence of smoke from all the regional wildfires.

The light was different, the air charred and dry. But perhaps most disquieting of all, was the sound - or rather, the lack of it.

When the wind died down and the smoke really gathered in, the sky would turn a more sickly yellow. The birds seemed to stop singing entirely. The bees fell silent. The normally vibrant background cacophony of the natural world flattened out. It wasn't just eerie, it was psychically disturbing. You could feel the lack of healthy sound vibration in the air.

Of course it's not that way everywhere. Wildlife still teems and flourishes in many parts of the world where humankind's reach hasn't penetrated as fully; in some places, due to the self-same climate change, there is bizarre excess, abnormal surges in animal population, even as overall biodiversity continues to decline. There is perhaps too much sound in some areas, as nature's recoil to our abuses takes different forms - hurricanes, thunder, earthquakes.

But overall, the tonal shift is undeniable, and deeply unsettling: There is now less birdsong than at any time in human history. Fewer lions' roars, beehive hums, elephant rumbles, frog croakings, simply because we've killed off so many of them, and show no signs of slowing. One by one and species by category, the orchestra's players are exiting the stage. The concert will never be over, but at this rate, it might be a very bleak final movement indeed.

A video from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Facebook page has animal fans buzzing.

The footage features an interview with 17-year-old Aslan Al Hakim, who says he walked from Damascus, Syria to Greece, with his little puppy Rose in tow.

The pup seems to have held up well throughout the journey and takes in some water from a drinking glass while the young man delights in telling the interviewer that he was told he could not bring a dog across the border.

In scenes similar to a sci-fi horror flick, the alien-type species swarmed over a coastline as warm weather sparked a peak in the breeding season.

Bathers have been stung by the transparent jellyfish as they grow in numbers and doctors have warned people to wash the stings with cold water, take painkillers and seek urgent medical assistance.

Even elderly locals living in Andreevka village - one of the badly hit areas - say they have never seen so many of the sea monsters.

Marine experts hope colder and wetter weather will disperse the stingers back into the Pacific.

A 46-year-old man was injured in what the Michigan Department of Natural Resources suspects was a black bear attack.

The man was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released, the DNR said.

About 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, the man was hunting for porcupine and alone in a ground blind. He reported to police that a black bear came from behind, knocked him over and attacked him.

"Using his hunting knife, the man stabbed the bear, which scared it off. The bear is thought to be injured," the DNR said in a news release. "The DNR was informed about 45 minutes later."


Sgt. Jon Wood spoke with the hunter and advised him to seek medical attention. The DNR's Law Enforcement Division is continuing to investigate the incident.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday it is investigating the deaths of 25 Pacific walrus found on an isolated northwest Alaska beach.

A person connected to an Air Force radar station in the remote area spotted the animals and notified the agency this week. The walrus included 12 pups, and some were missing their heads and tusks.

The cause of death has not been determined, said Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros, and investigators do not want to speculate.

"We can't come to any conclusions based on a report," she said Friday. "You have to go out and investigate."

Only Alaska Natives who live in the state may hunt walrus for subsistence or for the creation of handicrafts or clothing.

Biologists arrived at San Carlos Beach near Cannery Row early on Friday morning to examine the carcass of a 20-foot humpback whale that washed ashore the night before.

Although the whale's corpse was no longer resting on the shore Friday morning, it was still floating near the beach, says Justin Viezbicke, the stranding coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA biologists have taken small skin samples of the dead whale and hope to conduct a necropsy, but so far, it has proven to be a challenge to find a place to conduct the procedure.

"We don't know what happened. It came up last night and we are now trying to figure out why it died," Viezbicke says. The whale's carcass was reported about 9pm on Thursday.

For the past eight years, farmer Paul Canik has been protecting his exotic sheep worth thousands of dollars from wolves with a special breed of guard dog called a Spanish Mastiff.

After eight years, the wolves have killed two of Canik's dogs. The first one was over Mother's Day weekend, and a week ago, the second dog has been killed.

"Those dogs meant the world to us," said Canik.

The dogs were like family to him, and now, Canik has only four dogs left, three of which are puppies that he fears for.

"We had to tie our other three guard dogs up now every night," said Canik. "We tied them up so we don't lose them."

With his guard dogs tied up, the sheep are being left unprotected while Canik searches for anywhere to purchase more Spanish Mastiff dogs.

A viewer e-mailed KREM 2 News on Thursday expressing concern over a large amount of dead birds - crows, to be exact - right near Bessie Street in the neighborhood of West Valley in Spokane.

What is worrying residents like Debbie Lehinger is the fact that they are crows.

"We were always told that if you were to see a dead crow to be concerned and to report it," Lehinger said.

Thursday, the Department of Fish and Wildlife told KREM 2 they are looking into what caused this.

A photographer has captured the incredible moment a seal was seen surfing on the back of a humpback whale off the NSW south coast.

A pod of whales were in the midst of a feeding frenzy when Robyn Malcolm captured the extremely rare occurrence.

'On a recent whale watching trip out of Eden, NSW, we experienced dolphins, seals, birds and whales feeding on bait fish.

'At times there was so much going on, you didn't know which way to point the camera,' Ms Malcolm said.

'The seals and dolphins were going crazy on top of the water, then the whales would lunge straight through the middle.

'I managed to get some great shots of whales feeding, but was surprised to find these photos in amongst them, as I didn't see it at the time.

'I don't think he stayed there for long!'

Overfishing and other similar threats have caused the number of fish and animals in the ocean to have halved since 1970 with conservation group WWF calling the situation 'critical'.

Not only fish are dying out: The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study tracked the populations of some 1,234 species, such as seals, turtles, dolphins and sharks.

"There is a massive, massive decrease in species which are critical," said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International.

When it comes to dinner staples such as tuna or mackerel, populations have fallen by a shocking 75 percent since the seventies, according to a study by the WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Unfortunately all the threats are man-made. The study claims that the global fishing fleet is too big, and between $14bn and $35bn go into supporting it every year.