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by Mike Gaworecki on 16 June 2021
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we look at why it’s such an “incredibly exciting” time to be involved in the field of conservation bioacoustics and we listen to some new and favorite wildlife recordings, too.
Our guest is Laurel Symes, assistant director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. Symes tells us about how a new $24 million endowment will allow the center to expand its support for bioacoustics research and technology around the world and why this field is poised to make a huge impact on conservation.
The $24 million gift will enable the center’s unique mission to use bioacoustics to help conserve biodiversity in some of the most remote yet species-rich parts of the world.
Harvard boasts the largest endowment of any university in the world and supplements its finances with hundreds of millions of dollars in donations annually. Despite the scale of Harvardâs philanthropic efforts, a sizable gender disparity persists among the Universityâs donors.
In the fiscal year 2020, 338 individuals, families, foundations, organizations, governments, and other entities donated more than $1 million to Harvard, according to the Universityâs âReport of Givingâ released earlier this year.
Eight of them were individual women. They include four Harvard alumni, financial services executives, philanthropists, a former delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, and the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook.