Albuquerque – Amid the cacophony of cellphone ringtones these days, add these: the clickety-click-click of a rare Central American poison arrow dart frog, the howl of a Mexican gray wolf and the bellows of an Arctic beluga whale.
An environmental group hopes that the more people hear these sounds from threatened animals, the more they’ll wonder where they came from – and question the fate of the animals that make them.
“The point here is education and inspiration,” said Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity’s office in Pinos Altos, N.M.
The center is looking to the immediate attention that cellphones can bring to its cause. Already, 24,000 people have downloaded the rings for free from the center’s website.
Four in five voting-age Americans have cellphones, and that number is expected to keep growing. By 2008, as many as 30 percent of wireless users are likely to forgo their land lines, and nearly all cellphones will have Internet capabilities, according to a study by the New Politics Institute.
“With the ringtones, this is the tip of the iceberg,” said Peter Leyden, director of the institute, which studies the impact of cellphones on political and social campaigns.
Take, for example, the efforts of U2 singer Bono. He got thousands of people to sign up for the One Campaign, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting global AIDS and poverty, by asking fans to send a text message during the band’s concerts.
Peter Galvin, a co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, came up with the idea for the free ringtones of endangered and rare species as a way to educate people – especially the younger, technologically savvy generation.
