This is the best summary I could come up with:

The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco.

His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.

He lost 70 years of letters, photographs and field journals, in flames so intense they left the refrigerator an unrecognisable puddle of aluminium and steel.

Desirae Harp, an educator at the state park and member of the local Mishewal Wappo tribe, says the silence that fell after the fires broke her heart.

Caitlin Cornwall, a project manager at the Sonoma Ecology Center, says: “There is a direct link between reversing climate change and having more birds in Bernie’s recordings.

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