Narrating the Howl
with Jeffrey T. Reed
@Jeffrey T. Reed
27 June 2026, 16:00 GMT/ 12:00 EDT/ 09:00 PDT
Narrating the Howl
In this lecture, Jeff Reed will introduce The Cry Wolf Project, a bioacoustics study of gray wolves within the twenty-two million acres of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Since their 1995 reintroduction, wolves have remained one of the hardest large carnivores to study - wide-ranging and largely nocturnal when they communicate. The project pairs landscape-scale passive acoustic monitoring with collar-worn audio biologgers, genetics, GPS telemetry, and long-term field observation, integrated through Grizzly Systems' software to build acoustic ethograms at a scale not previously possible. It has assembled one of the largest archives of wild wolf vocalizations to date, characterizing the wolf's twenty-plus call types and relating each to its context. Rather than decoding a fixed lexicon, the work studies the wolf communication as what Wittgenstein called "language in use” – in service of conservation.
Join us for an exploration of wolf bioacoustics and the tools helping researchers better understand one of Nature's most iconic sounds.
About the Speaker
Dr. Jeffrey Reed is a feral linguist living in the mountains of Montana. With a PhD in computational linguistics and ancient languages, he now listens to the living voices of the wild - from wolf howls to elk bugles - convinced that AI is an instrument, not an oracle, and that the oldest method, the one indigenous peoples practiced, remains the truest: to stop, and listen. Having worked for three decades in the tech world, Reed is the founder of Grizzly Systems, makers of GrizCam, a Ring doorbell for the backcountry, and The Cry Wolf Project, which pioneers low-cost tools for large-scale wolf research across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and beyond. A lifelong outdoorsman and conservation advocate, Reed also co-founded the Wild Livelihoods Business Coalition.
His forthcoming book, Howl: The Secret Language of Wolves (Little, Brown and Company), explores the science - and soul - of wolf communication.
