Congo Trek

Imagine traveling 1,200 miles through the thickest African rain forest imaginable, where lowland gorillas and forest elephants still roam unafraid of humans. Now imagine doing the entire journey on foot. For Wildlife Conservation Society conservationist Michael Fay, who began such a walk in September, the yearlong project will provide much needed data about a largely unexplored ecosystem.

Called the “Central African Megatransect Project,” the study is chronicling the last great undeveloped region in Africa — the contiguous block of forest that lies across Congo and Gabon. Recording both species diversity and human threats to the forest, Fay and his team of Pygmy guides will traverse areas so remote and inhospitable, humans may have never set foot.

“We want to come up with a document of what these forests look like, what they contain. Some 50 years from now, when there are four-lane highways and big cities where there are only villages now, this will be a very interesting historical document,” said Fay.

Fay began the journey in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in Congo, which WCS helped create in 1993. His research team will eventually travel southwest to the Atlantic Ocean, recording what they see along the way. So far he has encountered everything from pristine wilderness, where chimpanzees stare rather than flee, to active poachers’ camps which is , unfortunately, part of a new wave of human migration into the forest.

The WCS project, which is being cosponsored by the National Geographic Society, features regular on-line dispatches that Fay is sending directly from the field, along with digital images and sound. His series of reports can be viewed by going to www.nationalgeographic.com/congotrek.