If you're a rock 'n' roll fan, you already know Stewart Copeland. Drumming legend Copeland, Andy Summers and a guy named Sting romped to global stardom as the Police in the 1970s. So we were intrigued to learn that Copeland had teamed up with celebrated naturalist Martyn Stewart for a pioneering album, sharing the limelight, not with Sting, but with hyenas, owls and howler monkeys. Called "Wild Concerto," the album is based on Martyn Stewart's life work: an extraordinary collection of audio recordings of the world's living creatures. Some are now extinct or endangered, making "Wild Concerto" as much a manifesto as a music album. We had to hear more.

There's really only one way to start the day at the world's most famous recording studio. 

Stewart Copeland: Martyn in the flesh, at last. So great to see you. We've been so deep into our mission here.

Martyn Stewart. Stewart Copeland. This unlikely pair – the quiet naturalist and the intrepid rock star.

Stewart Copeland: I hope you have fun with this music.

We're here at Abbey Road to turn animal sounds into a concerto – here in the same studio the fab four made famous. No pressure.

Martyn Stewart: Unbelievable, the history in here is just- 

Stewart Copeland: Imagine McCartney running up and down those stairs. 

Stewart Copeland: This almost makes us Beatles 

But today it's the animal kingdom that gets its shot at stardom. It's superstar time for the wrens, bears, frogs – and hundreds more – while the humans play back-up. 

"Wild Concerto" is a groundbreaking album based on the unmatched audio archive of Martyn Stewart. He's crisscrossed the planet for decades collecting nearly 100,000 recordings of its wild inhabitants. Stewart Copeland wrote the music.

All he had to do was wade through 30,000 hours of field recordings to choose which animals would get the star treatment. The screaming piha was a natural.

Stewart Copeland: There's the bird in question. Here is the orchestral version of that bird.

Martyn Stewart: It's just brilliant

Copeland told us it was the raw sounds of the animals themselves that dictated what instruments he chose. Take this tune by some arctic wolves:

Stewart Copeland: First of all we have the wolves on their own. Beautiful, right?

Martyn Stewart: Still makes my hair stand on end,

Stewart Copeland: Okay, let's hear that with the orchestra. That's a trombone with the wolves. 

Stewart Copeland: They're not actual notes, but you put an instrument with them and those animals become Pavarotti

In the recording studio, the wolves howled into the musicians' headsets.

Stewart Copeland: Yup, we got it! I'm going to come out there, kiss and hug every single one of you. So pucker up babies! Thank you so much everybody. 

Stewart Copeland: You rock!

Copeland should know. You may remember his rock star days when he wielded drumsticks as if they were lethal weapons. As one third of The Police, Copeland banged his way to the upper reaches of pop stardom. The Police sold more than 75 million records. Singing along yet?

By 1986 the party was over, The Police were busted. But it didn't take long before Copeland's propulsive drumming landed him a new gig and put him on a glide path to becoming a composer.

Bill Whitaker: How did that happen?

Stewart Copeland: I blame Francis Coppola

Bill Whitaker: It's his fault? You blame him?

Stewart Copeland: Yes. Yes. His thing is to find the talent and give them rope. And he got a drummer from a rock band and hired me to score his movie because his concept was that it's all about rhythm.

Bill Whitaker: This is "Rumble Fish?"

Stewart Copeland: This is "Rumble Fish."

Copeland told us he knew nothing about film scores. But he knew rhythm. So he arranged barking dogs, clacking billiard balls and pile drivers in rhythmic loops making music for what he called "found sound."

More movies followed. Then he started writing classical music. Copeland told us he'd found a new love as he showed us around his Los Angeles studio stuffed with instruments. He says he noodles around on them all when he's composing. The drummer who had never followed a sheet of music had become a maestro.

Bill Whitaker: You loved the drums right from –

Stewart Copeland: – the power

Bill Whitaker: – the start. The power. What is it about the orchestra you love so much?

Stewart Copeland It's the beauty. You know my daddy raised me to be a jazz musician. But meanwhile, just quietly, my mother was playing Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy. And that hit me emotionally. Now I've got- I've got like in one ear I got Jimi Hendrix. In the other ear I've got Igor Stravinsky. And so they've always both kind of been there interacting in my brain. 

Bill Whitaker: We will hear these sounds in "Wild Concerto?"

Stewart Copeland: Yeah, as well as all these (hits percussion).

And these: (bird squawks)

A world away, different music was pouring into the ears of Martyn Stewart. He's been eavesdropping on nature now for more than 60 years. It started when he was 11. Armed with a tape recorder, he'd escape to the Bluebell Woods near his home in middle England. His first recordings? This Eurasian blackbird. What started as a boyhood lark became a career with a mission. 

Martyn Stewart: I always believe the reason I'm on this planet is to fight for the animals and the environment. And it's kind of my rent for being here -- I feel empowered to kind of give that message –

Bill Whitaker: And what is that message?

Martyn Stewart: We're losing some of the most precious species on earth. I can go back to places that have been monitored over a period of 20 years and the change is significant. And audio's done that. Audio is the barometer of the planet. If you wanna know the health of the stream or the river the dipper will tell you, the frog will tell you the health of the marsh and the birds will tell you the health of the planet.

At home in Florida, Stewart told us he still takes his microphone out every day -- like a doctor with a stethoscope, he listens to the rhythms of the natural world.

Martyn Stewart: I hear that white noise of the ocean – the cicada

These days he's deeply worried about a catastrophic decline in wildlife populations around the world. Stewart has the last known recording of the golden Panamanian frog – here in its digital form. The northern white rhino is also extinct in the wild. Other recordings give no hint of the danger he overcame to get them. Here's a howler monkey spoiling for a fight. And the crocodile that swallowed one of his microphones.

Stewart Copeland told us his favorite animal was the hyena, a rare recording from the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. 

Stewart Copeland: Well they have a very wide vocabulary. They make loving sounds. They make aggressive sounds.

Martyn Stewart: How does the loving sound sound?

Stewart Copeland: (makes sound)

Martyn Stewart: That's interesting.

Stewart Copeland: In fact, I'll share with you that my wife and I have adopted the hyena love sounds as a part of our relationship. Little kinky, but it works. And then they have the laughing hyena. They actually do. 

No surprise the hyenas got their own cut on "Wild Concerto."

Martyn Stewart: How'd you come up with the composition that enhanced the sound of the hyenas?

Stewart Copeland: I've asked the Lord above that question many times.

Martyn Stewart: And what did he say?

Stewart Copeland: He said "I don't know". Just see if you can make a living out of it.

Martyn Stewart: Just- just be you.

Martyn Stewart: This is just magic, it's magical.

Martyn Stewart told us working at Abbey Road was a revelation. He's used to being alone in wild spaces at the ends of the earth. So we wondered what had made Stewart share his life work with a rock star.

Bill Whitaker: What made you decide to do that?

Martyn Stewart: I'm living with cancer. It's – it's hard to talk about that stuff, Bill. But I got ill. And my niece, Amanda, who works at the BBC and she said "we have to preserve your archive." You need people to see what you have. 

Stewart told us his illness is not the only crisis he's dealing with. He fears more animals are facing extinction as the world keeps growing. Part of his audio archive has become a mausoleum to past lives.

Martyn Stewart: If we keep stealing from nature then the inevitable is going to happen. We're going to lose a lot more

Bill Whitaker What is the inevitable?

Martyn Stewart: Mass extinction. When you think about what we've lost in my life time, there's no change –

Bill Whitaker: It's not slowing down.

Martyn Stewart: And I don't know how to slow it down. But if you show people the beauty of something and get them to fall in love with that, maybe we can tip something. 

He says he hopes "Wild Concerto" will draw in those who wouldn't otherwise listen to a screaming piha or a go-away bird. Count Copeland among the converted.

Stewart Copeland: Okay, what's the walla walla walla walla? Here we go. What's that? Walla walla walla. 

Martyn Stewart: Which is the marbled frogmouth

Stewart Copeland: The marbled frogmouth. I remember that

Copeland told us he hopes "Wild Concerto" will immortalize those animal songs. A human tribute — a heartfelt elegy — to Mother Nature's orchestra. 

Produced by Heather Abbott. Associate producer, Paulina Smolinski. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Sean Kelly.