In a tropical forest, the sounds of birds, insects and frogs can tell an important story. Conservation scientist Zuzana Buřivalová is helping communities turn those sounds into evidence for protecting the places they call home.
What the forest sounds can reveal
Deep inside a rainforest, the first thing you notice may not be what you see. It may be what you hear: insects calling, birds answering, frogs sounding off among the trees.
For Zuzana Buřivalová, those sounds are more than a remarkable natural chorus. They offer clues about the living world around them—and whether a forest is still supporting the diversity of species that make it extraordinary.
On October 8, Buřivalová was named the recipient of UCLA’s 2026 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. The university announced the honor on October 9, recognizing her work using sound recordings to support tropical forest conservation.
Listening beyond the birds
Buřivalová, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who leads the Sound Forest Lab, works with a method known as bioacoustics. Instead of relying only on visual observations, researchers record and analyze sounds made by wildlife.
Her approach considers multiple groups of animals together—including birds, mammals, frogs and insects. Those recordings can help researchers study the character of a forest’s soundscape and identify changes that merit closer investigation.
The work is not a magic microphone that counts every creature or proves a forest is healthy on its own. Sound-based evidence has limits, and it works best alongside other observations and local knowledge. But it can provide useful information in remote places where conventional surveys are difficult.
Helping a community protect its forest
One particularly meaningful example comes from Gabon. According to UCLA, Buřivalová’s biodiversity data helped the Massaha community provide scientific evidence needed in its efforts to protect its ancestral forest from proposed logging.
The community successfully advanced protection of the forest, leading to what UCLA describes as Gabon’s first community-conserved area.
That distinction matters: the achievement belongs to people who worked to defend their home. Scientific recordings were one tool that helped them make their case.
A new award and a wider opportunity
The Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award comes with a $100,000 prize. Its aim is to support emerging environmental leaders and help promising ideas grow.
Buřivalová has also worked on a project to preserve acoustic baselines of intact forests—recordings that may help future researchers understand how ecosystems change over time.
The award does not mean that rainforest biodiversity loss has been solved. Habitat degradation, climate pressures and hunting remain serious challenges, even where tree cover appears stable.
What is established is that researchers and local communities are finding new ways to gather evidence, make environmental decisions and defend important habitats.
A reason to listen more closely
There is something hopeful about conservation that begins by listening. It acknowledges the complexity of the natural world and invites us to notice life that might otherwise go unheard.
And it reminds us that progress often comes from a partnership: people who know and care for a place, supported by tools that help others understand why it matters.
Good things are happening. We’re here to find them.
