Ears Wide Open

Current Activities Highlights

Since February, it's been pretty much business as usual around here, keeping up with the ongoing flow of news items and public comment periods. A highlight has been a group of new potential interns, mostly college students who found AEI through our listing in the Orion Grassroots Network [WEBSITE]. With the help of some of these talented folks, I hope to have a Spotlight Report on wind power and incresed science coverage in the coming months.

Right now I'm gearing up for presenting the final plenary talk at the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board biannual noise reduction conference in Banff, Alberta at the end of this month. I'll be aiming to help bridge the participants from three days of talking about state of the art environmental sound reduction and hearing protection, back out into the landscape in which the ideas explored in the conference will be implemented. I look forward to learning more about what industry and regulators are doing in the field, and to meeting some key players in academia and Canadian regulatory agencies.

If you find the resources being generated by AEI useful, or if you feel our commitment to providing accessible, in-depth information on the impacts of human noise on wild habitats is an important contribution in this time of ecological crisis, then I ask that you consider helping us to generate the support we need to continue this good work. You can help by renewing your membership, by making a larger contribution, or by pointing other possible benefactors our way.

The Institute is seeking funding to keep me on salary so all these balls can continue rolling.....in October and March, we received two donations, totalling $25,000, which has allowed me to stay on full-time salary. The Board of Directors is aiming to find 5-10 family foundations and individual benefactors who are sufficiently aligned with the Institute's mission and approach to offer annual pledges toward our modest annual budget of about $50,000.

We've set up a brokerage account that allows us to receive donations of publicly-held stocks; this option is especially useful for those who hold securities that carry large capital gains burdens, as the donation is credited at the full current value of the stock, with no capital gains tax imposed.

Thanks to AEI's collaborative relationships and role as a source of information and resources for other organizations, agencies, and researchers, support of our work pays dividends far beyond the concrete work done here. If you know someone who may like to support this work, we would be happy to send you a concise letter of introduction to pass on to them.