The explorer, conservationist, and pilot flies over Africa to map, track, and preserve precious natural resources.

I caught up with J. Michael Fay on his satellite phone on April 26th a little after 9 p.m. … that was the time in Chad; it was just after 3 p.m. CST for me. He was about to turn in for the night. The weather’s been hot—97 degrees is a “cool” day in Zakouma National Park, Fay tells me. The rainy season is still about a month away, and water’s getting scarce, he adds, noting that about 30 elephants were splashing in a nearby watering hole. Just then I heard a faint roar in the background.

“Did you hear that?” Fay asks. “There are elephants screaming 40 feet behind me. They’re down there drinking. They just sit there and suck water for 15 minutes,” Fay explains. “There are also seed-eating birds called quelia over there. It’s like a public pool—everybody likes to hang out near the water.”

As one might expect of an explorer, the 49-year-old Fay is hanging out where he rests most soundly—under the night sky. “Since September 1999, I’ve slept indoors maybe 50 or 60 nights,” he recalls as he sits in a culvert under a bridge in the park. “Sleeping indoors gives me the heebie-jeebies. I like to see stars overhead and breathe the fresh air. I can see the Big Dipper real bright.”

Fay is National Geographic’s explorer in residence and a conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. On that starry evening he was with photographer Mike “Nick” Nichols working on a story about Chad, an “island of wildlife,” for National Geographic magazine. “I collect information about ecosystems,” Fay tells me. “I look for opportunities and needs—where things happen and where things should happen.”

For the last several years, he’s been doing that on a grand scale. In 1999 he collected data by land during a 15-month, 2,000-mile hike from the Oubangui River in Africa on the southern border of the Central African Republic to the Atlantic Ocean. On the trek, which was called MegaTransect, he hacked his way through the thickest and wildest forests on the planet. This area currently has very few human settlements due to the difficulty of living in that extreme environment, but Fay notes that it is only a matter of time before these prized harbingers of ecological diversity are stripped of their natural resources. Fay recorded the wildlife present on the land to help the government and conservationists know what wildlife they need to protect. “MegaTransect put the finger on 13 areas that needed to be national parks, which they are now,” Fay reports, referring to the national parks he helped established in Gabon. “The south and east are doing pretty well,” he adds. “I identified places that are really in need of protection.”

In 2004 Fay took his research to the skies during a project named MegaFlyover. Even though he’s been a pilot since 1991, he was a passenger for the seven months the project lasted, taking notes and snapping about three photographs a minute (for a total of more than 92,000 images) as he and his team flew across the many-splendored face of Africa in two red 1954 Cessna 182s. Data from the trip shaped plans to preserve some of what Fay calls the “garden spots of the planet.”

Both MegaTransect and MegaFlyover were part of the joint effort of the National Geographic Society (NGS) and the Wildlife Conservation Society to trace the human footprint and create an index showing the impact humans have had on nature using factors like population density, industrial infrastructure, and how much area is accessible by roads. Through his explorations, information gathering, and lobbying Fay works to change the way people think about the environment and convince them that all of us need to start acting like the planet’s resources are finite—because they are.

Fay isn’t an alarmist, and even if pressed he won’t preach the conservationists’ gospel or wag his finger at what you need to be doing to save the planet. But having seen some of the few wild, pristine places left on the planet and knowing that they’re shrinking fast, Fay commends all of us to consume consciously and be aware of the lasting impact of the gas-guzzlers we drive, the forests we decimate, the cities we overcrowd, and the nearby wilderness and rural areas we encroach upon. To Fay, conservation doesn’t equal total deprivation—it’s just about using resources wisely, if not more frugally.

Taking Risks to Help Save the Natural World After having lived in Africa for more than 30 years and spending countless hours in the air as well as on the ground, Fay is still awed by what he sees. “Oh my God! This place, it‘s really cool,” he gushes. “We’ve been seeing thousands of buffalo. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of cranes too,” he reports. “It’s an amazing and beautiful place.” As if working in such close proximity to large and toothy animals weren’t risky enough (Fay was gored by an elephant during the MegaTransect), he must also contend with the fallout of political unrest. Zakouma National Park is located in the southeast corner of Chad, only 200 miles away from the troubled region of Darfur in Sudan, and Fay has seen rebels walking through the park—and Sudanese soldiers going after them. As with real and perceived danger in any other place on the planet, it’s something you get used to and work around, he says. “It’s definitely a volatile situation, but we have a Cessna 182T here—and if something happens, we can fly away. You can fly for about seven hours if you lean it.”

Even though using two vintage Cessnas for the MegaFlyover meant twice the maintenance and twice the potential of something going wrong, it also meant there was a spare—one plane was always airworthy, Fay notes. “When one was ready for its 50-hour inspection or when we lost a propeller, a starter, an alternator, fuel magnetos, cylinders, valves, oil pressure—everything you can imagine—it was nice having a backup plane.”

For this assignment in Chad, Fay is using a new Cessna Turbo Skylane 182T with a glass cockpit, three-blade propeller, fuel injection, and Lycoming engine. Given the ongoing fighting in the area, he’s also taken other precautions. “We painted the plane white with black letters because all of the United Nation’s planes are white with black letters—so I figured nobody would shoot at us.” he explains.

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