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A cross country skier navigates a skinny trail through the winter stillness and quiet of the BWCAW. Photo courtesy of Paul Sundberg
With more than one million acres of motorless wilderness, the Boundary Waters Canoe Park has become the second place in the U.S. to receive a Quiet Parks designation. Last year Glacier National Park became the first place in the U.S. picked for this designation.
Quiet Parks International (QPI) made the announcement on March 23.
In the press release, QPI states, “The award recognizes the BWCAW’s pristine soundscape and lack of man-made noise intrusions, a rare feat even in the United States’ most remote Wilderness Areas.”
Over the last two years, QPI volunteers collected and analyzed “soundscape and noise pollution data” in the vast park, and the results showed the BWCAW easily met the Quiet Park criteria.
“We are thrilled to award the Wilderness Quiet Park status to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness,” said Matt Mikkelsen, Executive Director of Wilderness Quiet Parks. “The BWCAW has a dependable noise-free interval of 15 minutes or more, which is a remarkable achievement. We hope this award encourages other wilderness areas to prioritize natural Quiet and inspires people to experience the beauty of the BWCAW soundscape. We would also like to express our gratitude to our partner, Save the Boundary Waters, for their work protecting this vast wild area from copper mining.”
QPI is an all-volunteer non-profit organization based in Los Angeles. It is looking at other reserves worldwide to designate as Quiet Parks. Serving as a model for other wilderness areas is the Zabalo River in Ecuador, which in 2019 became the first International Wilderness Quiet Park.
According to QPI, “Preserving natural Quiet is vital for maintaining the natural soundscape of the land, protecting the natural life and habitats that depend on it. Quiet Parks International classifies quiet areas into five categories: quiet urban parks, wilderness quiet parks, quiet trails, quiet stays, and quiet residences and communities. The organization encourages people to safeguard these areas by following the three core concepts of Listen, Learn, and Love.”
George Hampton, the founder of One Square Inch of Silence, co-founded QPI with Vikram Chauhan. The noted acoustic ecologist has spent more than 40 years traveling the world recording sounds of nature.
Hampton states on the One Square Inch of Silence website, “Silence is a part of our human nature, which can no longer be heard by most people. Close your eyes and listen for only a few seconds to the world you live in, and you will hear this lack of true quiet, of silence. Refrigerators, air conditioning systems, and airplanes are a few of the things that have become part of the ambient sound and prevent us from listening to the natural sounds of our environment…. “Our hope is that by listening to natural silence, it will help people to become true listeners to their environment and help us protect one of the most important and endangered resources on the planet, silence.”
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