Sentient Futures
Extending Silent Trails into park and trail stewardship, acoustic sensing, and more-than-human coexistence.
The organizing inquiry
Park and trail systems are shared habitats. Management decisions, trail design, visitor routing, maintenance schedules, and budget allocations, directly shape both human well-being and the lives of the plants, animals, and soil communities that make these landscapes home.
As municipal, provincial, and state land management budgets face sustained pressure across Canada and the United States, managers increasingly need tools that support ecological stewardship without introducing heavy-handed surveillance, extractive tech stacks, or unnecessary digital infrastructure.
Quiet as ecological habitat
Sentient Futures builds directly upon the field work of Silent Trails, treating acoustic quiet not merely as a human amenity or recreational luxury, but as an essential habitat condition for non-human species. From avian communication and territorial mapping to mammalian stress levels and foraging success, acoustic intrusion is an ecological pressure.
Practical directions
- Ecological & Acoustic Sensing: Lightweight, low-impact monitoring approaches to measure soundscapes and trail pressure without tracking individual humans.
- Decision Frameworks for Land Stewards: Practical guidance for trail managers balancing heavy recreational demands with wildlife corridors and sensitive micro-habitats.
- Coexistence Over Extraction: Replacing the paradigm of parks as recreational consumption zones with models of mutual care and shared habitat.
Collaborative context
This work is being developed by Tara Tiger Brown through the Sentient Futures Project Incubator, guided by mentors and allies in ecological systems, trail stewardship, and relational technology design. It bridges academic research at UBC with real-world trail systems in British Columbia.