Michael Fay

Michael Fay "received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona and then spent six years with the Peace Corps as a botanist in national parks in Tunisia and the savannas of the Central African Republic. He went on to work with Peter Raven at the Missouri Botanical Garden, originally to do a floristic study on a mountain range along Sudans western border, before ending up completing his Ph.D. on the western lowland gorilla. t was at this time that he first entered the forests of central Africa where he still works. Doctoral work was curtailed several times while he surveyed large forest blocks and worked to create and manage the Dzanga-Sangha and Nouabale-Ndoki parks in the Central African Republic and Congo. In 1996, Fay started flying a small airplane low over the forests of Congo and Gabon and realized that there was a vast, intact forest corridor that spanned these two countries from the Oubangui to the Atlantic Ocean.

"In 1997 he decided to walk the entire corridor, over 2000 miles, systematically surveying trees, wildlife and human impacts on twelve uninhabited forest blocks. He further developed this project, titled the Megatransect, with the objective of bringing to the worlds attention the last pristine blocks of forest in central Africa and the need for protection. Mike has worked for the past thirteen years for the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx and for the past four years as an Explorer in Resident at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. He is currently focused on the redwood forests of Northern California, conducting an extended megatransect of this critically endangered ecosystem."


 * Trustee, WILD Foundation
 * Advisory Board, International Conservation Caucus Foundation
 * Winner of the 2007 Lindbergh Award

Related Sourcewatch

 * Congo Basin Tropical Forest Initiative
 * Personal Advisor to Omar Bongo