American conservationist Mike Fay is a man on a mission: to save Africa’s remaining wild places from further human depredation. To do this, he and co-pilot Peter Ragg will criss-cross the African continent to measure how heavily the human ‘footprint” has been imprinted in 93 major eco-regions.
They will do this by tracing a gradient from areas of highest human activity to those showing the lowest human influence, recording data using digital, still and video photography, a global positioning system and a computer to measure vegetation, land use, livestock, wild animal populations and human activities.
They will also conduct extensive interviews with people wherever they go, both those making use (or misuse) of resources and those who work to protect ecosystems and biodiversity. And they will use the results of their survey to spark conservation action so that what remains of Africa’s untouched wilderness areas may be preserved for future generations.
Fay is not new to this kind of work. As National Geographic readers may recall, over 15 months between 1999 and 2000, he walked an incredible 3 000km megatransect through the rain forests of central Africa from the Congo to the coast of Gabon. Because of the awareness this project raised, the Gabon government proclaimed 13 huge protected areas. Prior to Fay’s megatransect, there had been no protected areas in Gabon. Fay’s great trek also helped raise over $50-million from US government and other sources towards conservation and sustainable development in central Africa.
Now Fay and Ragg have embarked on an even more ambitious project, which is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of New York, and supported logistically by South African environmental air force, The Bateleurs.
The mission will start by overflying the Kruger National Park and Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park from north to south, then zig-zag down the southern African coast, including the St Lucia Wetlands Park and the Wild Coast. Taking a loop around Africa’s southern tip, they will inspect the Cape’s floral kingdom, then head up the West Coast to the Richtersveld National Park and on into Namibia, before turning east again, overflying Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, before hopping across to transect Madagascar.
Returning to the African continent, they will continue northwards, hoping to reach Gibraltar in about 15 months time. The route and timetable will depend on many variables, especially the cooperation of individual African states as well as a network of contacts at grassroots level.
The information gathered during the course of this epic journey will be fed back continously to the WCS, which will use it to generate world-wide media coverage as well as to raise funding for enhancing conservation efforts in Africa, particularly in previously unprotected areas.
‘We’re talking balanced management, effective utilisation of natural resources and the sustainable involvement of people on the ground,” says Fay. ‘We’re not talking politics.”
Getting a bird’s eye view
On a sunny June morning at Swartkops Air Force Base outside Pretoria, I joined a crowd of guests to watch as bead-draped sangoma Virginia Rathebe blessed two classic small Cessna planes, painted the bright scarlet of a mature Bateleur eagle’s face, and their two pilots, scientist-explorers Mike Fay and Peter Ragg, who were about to embark on the first leg of a journey across Africa to map the continent’s wildest places and to measure how heavily the human ‘footprint” falls upon the land.
But before the Cessnas took off, their guard of honour, the pilots who fly for local environmental NGO, The Bateleurs, fired up even flimsier aircraft — microlights — which, close up, resemble three-wheeled motorbikes tenuously suspended from the delta wings of hang-gliders. As with the earliest planes, the pilots must swing the double fins of their propellors by hand to fire the engines. The Wright brothers would have been amazed.
In a microlight, there is no protection from the elements, except for the shade cast by the wings. Swooping low over hills and treetops in one of these must be the closest thing to getting a true bird’s eye view of the world. These mechanical bateleurs waft human eagles up into a rarified world of cloudscapes and air currents.
With big wingspans and stumpy tails, microlights even resemble their namesakes, Terathopius ecaudautus, the scientific Latin derived from the Greek, meaning something like ‘marvellous face without a tail”.
Bateleur is French for a tumbler or acrobat, because the feathered ones perform spectacular maneouvres during their aerial courting displays.
Historically, bateleur eagles ranged over all of Africa south of the Sahara, and also eastwards across Arabia. Today, however, out of South Africa’s 800 bird species, bateleurs are one of the 26 most threatened, a fitting symbol for a band of dedicated human aerial environmentalists who fly with a serious purpose — to monitor and guard the environment in Africa.
Flying at low altitudes, the Bateleur pilots can see things not always visible at ground level, especially the human malpractices that leave scars on the landscape — clearings cut in forests, silting of beaches and lakes, erosion, illegal mining and quarrying, animal carcasses left behind by poachers. These sightings are then reported to the right authorities. The Bateleurs also fly missions on behalf of NGOs or individuals who are deeply concerned about wildlife and wilderness.
The Bateleurs are registered as a Section 21 company, that is, not for gain, and run by volunteers who donate their personal time. They rely on sponsorships to fund fuel and other costs. You can help support them by becoming a member. Visit www.bateleurs.co.za for details.
Earthyear will follow the adventures of Fay and Ragg in the months to come.