Walking for Wildlife

National Geographic profile: Mike Fay

He’s a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He’s lived in central Africa for six years. Fay has focused on several major conservation projects in Africa and America. He was inspired to count all the elephants in the central African country of Chad – and he did this twice! He was able to walk nearly 3,000 kilometers across North America. He spends so much time outdoors that he hasn’t slept in a bed more than 50 times in the last ten years! This is definitely unthinkable to the average person.

A few years ago, he survived a plane crash! And on one trip, he came face to face with a very angry elephant which attacked him. Amazingly, his injuries weren’t life-threatening. Less dramatically, but just as seriously, he’s had malaria in Africa many times and on one occasion he nearly died. He has always been daring and open to do-or-die challenges.

Fay travels impressively light – he usually just takes a T-shirt, a pair of shorts and his favorite footwear, sandals. His most recent pair of sandals lasted 2,000 kilometers before they fell apart! He never travels without his penknife, a lighter and a sleeping mat.

With an obsession to be useful, Fay wants to show people how beautiful and precious the planet is so that they could be inspired to take care of it. And he succeeds. His work has drawn attention to conservation issues and made people act. After he started work on the elephant project in Chad, the number of elephant deaths fell significantly. And in Gabon, the government has created thirteen new national parks covering 26,000 square kilometers of forest.