Noises off: the battle to save our quiet places

We wouldn’t condone litter in our parks and countryside, so why do we put up with sound pollution? Alex Moshakis meets the people tasked with ‘saving quiet for the benefit of all life’ and hears their stories Last month, I spent a cold morning wandering around Hampstead Heath, one of London’s largest green spaces, with a sound designer named Nicholas Allan. For many, the Heath is an escape. There are almost 800 acres of it: meadows and woodland, hollows and springs, hills and ponds. It is big and important enough to have its own 12-person constabulary, which upholds the park’s 47 bylaws, including firm restrictions on drone flying and car driving. Locals I know walk dogs in and out of old forests and along curling gravelly pathways. On the few days in summer, when the sun shines on the city, the park becomes so busy it seems to vibrate, festival-like. But for the rest of the year it remains mostly hushed. In July, Allan awarded the Heath “Urban Quiet Park” status. He was acting on behalf of Quiet Parks International, or QPI, a non-profit based in Los Angeles that is “committed to saving quiet for the benefit of all life”. QPI’s purpose is to identify locations around the world that remain free from human-made noise for at least brief pockets of time. As humanity grows louder, these places are in danger of extinction, the organisation argues, even though they are integral to our wellbeing and to the health of the natural world. Some of the locations already identified, like stretches of the Zabalo River in Ecuador, where quiet might linger for several consecutive hours, are in the wilderness. Remarkably, others are in urban centres. The Heath, which QPI calls “a refuge from the noise of the city” that “has shown it provides the experience of being able to fully immerse oneself within the natural environment”, is one of them. Continue reading...
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