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VOICE ONE:
I’m Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.Today we visit Africa with a well known biologist and explorer.
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On World Environment Day last June, explorer J. Michael Fay beganexploring Africa from the air. Mister Fay is flying over one hundredsixty thousand kilometers of the continent’s wildest forests andmost densely populated areas. He and his pilot, Peter Ragg ofAustria, are making photographic records of fifty of the fifty-fourcountries of Africa.
The two also are meeting with African environmental activists andgovernment officials. Mister Fay wants to find places that could beofficially declared areas of conservation where wildlife can beprotected. And he also wants a closer look at the populated areas.
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Many people believe that Africa has endless undeveloped land.Michael Fay does not think so. He says humans are changing some ofthe world’s last totally wild areas. And he believes it is importantto save parts of Africa in their natural form.
Michael Fay was born and educated in the United States. He earneda doctorate degree in anthropology from Washington University inSaint Louis, Missouri. He went to Africa as an unpaid worker withthe Peace Corps in nineteen seventy-eight. That is when hediscovered the place that would guide his life’s work.
For more than twenty years, he has lived in central Africa. Thecontinent is now his home. It is also the heart of his work. MisterFay is an expert about plants and animals. He is also an expertphotographer. In his forty-five years, he has explored thousands ofkilometers of land. Michael Fay has survived many dangers. One verybad day, he was attacked and injured by an angry elephant.
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Mister Fay is now flying over Africa in a forty-year-old,single-engine airplane. The pilot, Peter Ragg, owns the plane. Hepainted it bright red. The National Geographic Society and theWildlife Conservation Society are paying for the trip. Both groupshave headquarters in the United States. The trip is called theAfrica MegaFlyover. It is expected to end next August. It is themost far-reaching study by air of the people, animals and plants ofAfrica.
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Michael Fay’s flying conservation project began June fifth withgreat ceremony at the Swartkop Air Force Base in South Africa. Onehundred eighty-two people celebrated the launch of the MegaFlyover.The United States ambassador to South Africa, Cameron Hume, wasamong the guests. So was Virginia Rathebe (Rah TEH bay), atraditional tribal healer. She offered good wishes for theexploration.
Other aircraft also lifted off with Mister Fay’s plane. Theyincluded members of the Bataleurs, a team of South African pilots.This group is named for a bird. Its members fly over Africa forenvironmental causes. The Bateleurs are supporting Mister Fay’sproject in a number of ways.
A South African Air Force helicopter also started with theMegaFlyover team. The helicopter carried twelve photographers. Theyrecorded the beginning of the air travels of Michael Fay and PeterRagg.
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J. Michael Fay has made many extended and difficult trips. Innineteen ninety-nine and two thousand, for example, he walked threethousand two-hundred kilometers across Africa. This project wascalled the Megatransect. His goal was to record every kind of plantand animal he found on his walk. A team of Africans walked with him.At times, National Geographic magazine photographer Michael Nicholsjoined the group.
Their explorations took them through the Central AfricanRepublic, Congo and Cameroon. The walk took fifteen months and endedin Gabon. Mister Fay chose areas to explore where few or no peoplelived. He called these places the Last of the Wild, or the Wildestof the Wild.
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Mister Fay’s travels showed the world that Gabon had areas thatneeded to be protected. After his visit, Gabon’s President OmarBongo officially opened thirteen national parks in the nation.Mister Fay’s Megatransect walk raised more than one hundred milliondollars. The money is aiding six central African nations to protecttheir wild areas.
He said the results of his walking travels caused him to starthis current flying trip. He said he wanted to do for all of Africawhat he had done for Gabon.
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As you might think, Mister Fay’s Megatransect walk was not easy.His team had to cross rivers and jungles. They had to deal with wildanimals, snakes and insects. Gorillas and elephants visited theexplorers. They watched the group before retreating back into thethick green jungle. Some of the members of the team suffereddiseases including malaria, hepatitis and pneumonia.
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An unusual map helped make possible both Mister Fay’s walkingtrip and his current air travels. He was able to use such a mapbecause the world changed dramatically during the nineteen nineties.Many years of tensions ended between western nations and the formerSoviet Union.After that, the American government released somesatellite images. Civilians now can map the whole world much betterthan before.
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The new information helped scientists in New York City make anextremely useful map. Workers at the Wildlife Conservation Societyand New York University created this Human Footprint Map. The mapgot its name because it recognizes areas of human activity.
It also shows land cover, roads, rivers and coastlines. It showsdifferent areas like deserts and wet lands. It shows electricalpower use at night. From this information, it has become clear thatpeople have used and changed most of the livable surface of theplanet.
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Michael Fay and Peter Ragg are following the Human Footprint Mapfrom their plane. They also are adding to it. They are takingphotographs with a digital camera every sixteen seconds. The imagesshow uses of land and kinds of soil. When these images are combined,they should make a complete picture of the Wildest of the Wild.
Mister Fay hopes to propose detailed conservation projects inAfrica from the observations. He will present these plans to theUnited States and other governments and organizations. His goal, asalways, is to help save the wild areas for the future of humanity.
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Mister Fay’s observations about Africa do not stop withconservation efforts. He observes crowded areas near nationalborders. Then he notes nearby unpopulated land.
The explorer says people without land traditionally move intoempty land. For example, he says central Africans are moving westeven though they may cross political borders. He believes thatborder crossings are causing conflicts in the Congo, Rwanda, Ugandaand Sudan.
Mister Fay says observations made possible by the Human FootprintMap have created a whole new science. He says this science can tellwhat group will attack another — and when this could happen.
The results of people moving to get natural resources may bepolitical, Mister Fay reasons. But he says the conflict is reallynot about politics. Instead, he says it involves use or misuse ofthe resources. For example, he charges that most of the wood cut incentral Africa is burned or wasted.
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Some of the most dramatic problems of Michael Fay’s MegaFlyovertook place during its early months. That is when the little redplane passed over wildlife protection areas, national animal parksand totally unpopulated areas in South Africa. By the time the teamleft South Africa for Namibia, it had equaled the distance betweenParis, France and Bangkok, Thailand.
Their plane has given the explorers some bad moments. Forexample, on an extremely windy day, the pilot was trying to land theplane. Mister Fay reported to the Bateleurs that the speed of theplane jumped from fifty to one hundred fifty knots. Then it slowedagain. He compared the flight to a rollercoaster ride at anamusement park.
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But the plane landed safely. If they continue to have good luck,the flying environmental explorers will finish their work in aboutnine months. By that time, Michael Fay should have a very good ideaof where to protect African land that is the Wildest of the Wild.
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This program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by MarioRitter. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.