The rainy season seemed to come with a vengeance last night in Franceville – beginning about midnight it just dumped water as can happen only in the tropics. By 9 am more than 20 cm of rain had fallen – that is a lot of rain. I was supposed to fly to Libreville this morning, but it was not looking so likely. Everyone was arriving at the office/case de passage soaking wet.

I was still scrambling together my gear and getting stuff put away that would remain in Franceville for assistants to use. But we headed off for the airport, hoping for the best. The airport seemed abandoned – almost no one around. We waited for half an hour or so, and then someone from the airline company did arrive and checked in my backpack – the plane was supposed to be coming from Libreville. Well, in fact, not yet. It either could not get out of Libreville because of weather, or was waiting for better weather in Franceville. In either case the plane did finally head for Franceville, to arrive about two hours later than scheduled.

They sat on the ground for only a short time, hoping, I suppose, to get turned around and heading back to Libreville before the weather got any worse – it was raining still, but the clouds had at least lifted slightly. So off we went, into the clouds.

 

About 30 minutes into the flight, nearly all of it within the cloud layer, the pilot really went into a descent and the co-pilot started punching away at what looked to be a GPS system on the dashboard of the cockpit (the door was open). Surely a passenger flight like this requires ability to fly with instruments? Suddenly we came out below the cloud layer – about 200 feet above the forest canopy! Fantastic view, but not exactly where one wants to be in a medium-sized plane.
We flew at this altitude for some ten minutes or so, eventually flying over a logging sawmill and staging area. Then the pilot pulled up into the clouds and made a hard turn – I assume all of this was to figure out where we were!

So now it seemed we were heading back to Franceville – the weather to poor to continue to Libreville? I could not really understand the French explanation but the other passengers were having a good laugh about it. I began making plans as to how to deal with another delay in Franceville and how to get more efficiently to Libreville for the next segment of fieldwork.

Another ten minutes and another pretty strong turn – what is going on? But when we finally broke through the clouds again there was the coastline north of Libreville – whew! All's well as lands well?

There was blood on the track – elephant blood. We knew this because it was pooled, red and wet, on leaves too high to be anything else. Immediately I was hearing (and thinking myself) ‘braconnage’ – poaching, but of course elephants must sometimes really get wounded from natural causes – sometimes. An animal bleeding, probably frightened, possibly in pain, can also be really dangerous, even if not an elephant.

Alertness and caution both went up a few notches. We didn’t yet know whether this unfortunate animal was in front of us or behind us. Not enough sign yet. We crept on. More sign appeared, and it was interesting to hear how the guide’s empathy for the victim came through in his interpretation of skid-marks and scuffs on fallen logs: ‘tombé’ – stumbled, ‘glissé’ – slipped. Maybe in fact he could see this sort of detail, but I think not. The elephant was somewhere behind us, having passed down the trail in the opposite direction not more than an hour or so before.

We continued along parallel to the Mpassa river, large and fast with the onset of the rainy season. I had been on this river before, upstream in the Batéké National Park. Here we are closer to where it joins the Ogoue River, the largest river in Gabon, and north of the national park in a buffer zone ‘administered’ by the community association of Kessala.. Forest elephants seem to use the ‘beaches’ along the river much as they do the more classic forest clearings, or bais. They come for minerals that can be acquired in water percolating up through rock formations under ground. At least so we think. They are behaving almost the same (although in some places they actually dive under water to do it), but everything is happening in the river bed with water rushing over.

At the fourth beach, where our ARU was located, we were treated to eight elephants sipping mineral water from a large sandbar out in the river. A big male was a little separated from three female family groups. Two pretty small babies were among them, one with its mother on the far shore, perhaps the water too deep to get out to the sand bar. With the air currents flowing across the elephants toward us, we had wonderful time to watch and wonder. It was hard to pull away and do the work that we came here for.

Forest elephants have some significant allies in the two managers of the Precious Woods forestry concession in Gabon. Ever since my first project there in 2007 they have been interested and willing to do whatever possible to facilitate the project logistics. Also they have been honest – their job is to extract valuable wood from these forests in such a way that the company can make a profit. But from the beginning they also said they were interested in aiding research that could help them minimize the negative impacts of logging.

They also control access to a string of forest clearings that may be among the most important in Gabon. This is because not only do these clearings have high visitation rates by elephants (and gorillas), but they are situated within a few dozen kilometers of Ivindo National Park and Langouè bai. Certainly the elephants of Ivindo come also to these clearings outside the protected area. Protecting this string of bais could be a keystone to conserving the population of elephants in Ivindo.

And it isn’t all talk. Recently Liz and I were analyzing the frequency of gunshots around these bais, and also were logging the common occurrence of vehicle sounds at totally inappropriate times of day – like 2 am. This is in an area far from any public access roads, but only a few kilometers from a big worker’s ‘camp’ (really a small village, with grocery, clinic, school). I mentioned some of these results to Jan, the guy up the tree in the picture, because at some times of year hunting of small game is legal in the concession and he would be able to tell me the seasons. Jan has helped me numerous times during work in the concession. His answer confirmed that much of the hunting activity was out of season, and involved the illegal use of high-power rifles. He was also shocked by the vehicle sounds and suggested I let the managers know of this immediately. I did this, and within a couple of days they installed GPS units in the two vehicles that stay at the worker camp. Surprise, surprise, there was a huge amount of driving going on when it should not have been. Now, thanks to the concern of these men, the illegal use has been stopped. My guess is that is will also reduce the illegal hunting – the recorders are finding that out right now.

A forest clearing, or a ‘bai’ to Central Africans, is a wonderful place to see some of the most spectacular wildlife in the Congo: forest elephants, of course, who may in fact create the clearings and who certainly maintain and enlarge them; lowland gorillas if the bai is grassy and a bit swampy; forest buffalo; sitatunga and bongo, both lovely forest antelopes; red-river forest hogs, with their ever-mobile tasseled ears; African grey parrots and goliath herons, to name only the most coveted of bird species; and poachers. Poachers come because they know the elephants come.

One of the most active bais in Gabon, and a favorite of mine because it is so lovely and intimate, was marred this trip by the carcass of a middle-aged male. Even in its crumpled, maggot-ridden state the former magnificence of this beast was clear. Who can do this sort of thing? Maybe we need to plaster the boutiques of Asia with this picture and ask how they can enjoy using a name stamp made of this male’s teeth?

Flying over the rainforest of Central Africa, peering through holes in a fairly dense cover of clouds - the stuff of which rainforests are made. Glimpses of varied shapes and colors, even some naked crowns waiting for the over-late rains. Rarely - surprisingly rarely, the gash of a red ribbon of road.

Strange - viewing the forest from several thousand feet above. The immensity of these forests is communicated well, but with a feeling of separation, of unreality that one doesn't feel down there under the blanket of green. There, the nose and ears and eyes are all flooded with the diversity of life. Give me the ground.

Imagine a desert. But not an American desert - an African desert. Nothing but bare earth, sand, hills, and ridges folded into the most complex and surprising forms. The dawn sun is throwing sharp black shadows that at the same time accentuate the ruggedness and patterns but also make an illusion and disruption that fools the eye. It seems there really is nothing there in this northernmost edge of the Sahara. Maybe my 37000 foot high flight-path deceives, but I can see no trace of green or yellow that might be something living and certainly no people have settlements there.

But a beautiful metamorphosis begins to transform this sight as I fly north, closer and closer to the Mediterranean. At first it is the hint, just the whisper of a wadi here and there that brings the thought that an understandable pattern does exist in a landscape that seems arbitrary, dramatic, confusing. More hints that sometimes water must come here, even if only once a century. The wadis become more numerous and deeper and eventually the bare hint of something growing shows deep in the shadows at the bottom of the grooves. And, with even this seeming insignificant ammelioration of the harsh landscape come signs of people - a five-cell pattern of mudbrick walls, open to the sky - a path winding up the side of a dusty slope. Soon there are real bands of green along the bottoms of the wadis instead of just occasional clumps, and now the grids of adjoining mudbrick walls have fifteen and twenty cells - but always up in the rugged hills away from the green.

I begin to see actual water glint once in awhile or a small muddy reservoir dug out of the dirt with nothing growing along the edges - only where the water is carried, perhaps, are there some sorts of crops to sustain the sparse populations. But the progression now is rapid. Suddenly, as we come over a low escarpment, the first real fields add a softness and coolness to the still overwhelmingly gray brown landscape. And these first identifiable fields are not old, with a long history of care. They are perfectly round spots of green, each with a single spoke of pipe bringing water - let the desert bloom.

Then a most beautiful sight rolls out below me - a mosaic of fields of such various color and texture, size, and shape that my eyes just feast on it. Geometric because of defined sharp boundaries and the crazy juxtaposition of different colors, and yet with no pattern at all because every shape imaginable is somehow fitted among all the others, the boundaries matching but the minds behind the layout inscrutable. Now the pallet of color is like the box of 500 crayons I craved as a kid. Deep maroon where the soil is damp and tilled and encouraging the seeds below to grow, next to deep greens and mustard greens and gray-brown dry fields. Every shade of ochre and buff, lemony greens and even some green so dark they almost seem blue. The gorgeousness comes from the extremes of stage in growth, soil preparation, and the shapes - the shapes. None of that gridded uniformity one sees flying over the midwest in America. Here some sort of gleeful abandon seems at work. How do you fit huge perfectly round 'let the desert bloom' fields against triangles and wedges and blocks?

An overlay of texture adds more to the feast. Perhaps fallow fields with tall grasses present a coarse look, with random patterns from clumps flattened by winds or rains, ridged from plows, swirled where tractors made grand sweeping turns. Stripes of maroon and green where new plants are emerging along the tops (or bottoms) of furrows, and velvet-smooth swaths of some lush herb or vegetable. Surprisingly there are few buildings visible for miles - commuter agriculture. The glint of the Mediterranean ahead, and as we come lower the textures and colors morph and resolve - an organic kaleidoscope - humankind's footprint on the earth.

 

The mission was to re-deploy two ARUs in a cluster of forest clearings not far from the boundary of Ivindo National Park. One of these clearings is the most active in Gabon, and we know this only because of our acoustic recordings. The other bai in this cluster, a few kilometers away, I visited for the first time in the summer of 2008.

I had intended to leave the main complex of the forestry concession by about 0800 hrs, but it was not to be. Nicolas, Carol, and Thomas were not up until 0745, so even petit déjeuner (breakfast) didn’t get started until after 0800. Our host was there (although he had eaten probably around 0600 hrs) and talk ensued. Finally I think we got started at about 0930, with more than an hour to drive to the trail-head. Backtracked yet again to recover a GPS unit that had been left behind (but that would be critical for the mission), so it was nearly 1100 hrs by the time we got out of the car and prepared to really begin.

Since our plan was to bushwhack directly from the first bai (Grande Milolé) to the second (Grande Saline), we had double the battery weight on the first leg. Nico, Thomas, and I carried about everything. It was a half hour walk to Grande Milolé and there we found no elephants, unfortunately. This is a very beautiful bai and I hoped to give Thomas and Carol a chance to see forest elephants. But at least there were no carcasses either (two elephants had been poached here last year). So we got started on getting the ARU down and the battery changed. I wanted Nicolas to get some more experience climbing into the trees and using the ropes, but of course this takes more time. Inevitably there are glitches in this work, and today was no exception. By the time we finally had the refreshed unit up in the tree again it was early afternoon and I was getting anxious.

As we came out of the forest again and into the bai we saw that a young male had arrived while we were working. Even with the breeze unfavorable, we managed to get around him a little and to get some good looks and photographs. Always a wonderful distraction!

Finally off we went with heavy packs to find a way to the second bai, just over 2 km away. It seemed that we started out well enough – at least the elephant paths out of Grande Milolé were large and I suppose headed in the expected direction. But in the end, instead of encountering the south edge of the new bai, we went all the way around the east side and approached from the north. I’m still confused as to why this happened (I was not in charge of the compass and GPS), but our guide seemed to think there were some difficult swamps on the straighter path.

There were seven or eight elephants in the clearing close to where we entered, and I thought I heard some more on the back side, beyond a line of trees. I got a few photographs, but it was after 1500 hrs already and we had not only the ARU to re-deploy, but a two hour hike back to the vehicle. So I left the others and got to work on the ARU.

It turned out to be a bitch of a job. The place I really wanted to place the climbing rope was close to some dead branches and I was afraid that the throw-line would end up tangled in it, so I went for the ‘better’ spot. I was feeling really pressed for time. We did not want to be in the forest still at 1830 hrs! I missed my ‘better’ target several times, then got it over the top of the fork near the ARU and decided to try it.

Not good! I got up to the ARU and was trying to get to the anchor bolt. I had the light hoisting rope over the branch through the ‘better’ spot when the smaller branch my support rope was over started to bend severely, right where it joined the larger limb, and my rope was slipping along it out away from the tree trunk. I started down – and the branch bent more, and more. As the rope slipped farther out, the branch bent more. I was afraid the rope would slip right off and drop me in a heap – kilometers from a vehicle if anything serious was damaged. But I got down – whew. My intention was to use the hoisting rope to re-position the climbing rope through the fork near the ARU – this would have worked. Unfortunately, I didn’t tell anyone else my plan, in the panic of getting down, and now one end of the hoisting rope was 5 meters up in the air and out of reach.

Now really anxious, I thought about just leaving without recovery. Our Gabonese guide said he would just climb the main tree (we had thrown the climbing rope through the main crotch, but this was too far to work on the ARU and still be tied into the tree). Nicolas was worried about this guy free-climbing. What if he got hurt? I debated a bit, then had him put on the climbing harness and tie in so at least we would (eventually) have a safety in case he fell. It worked. It was now 1630 hrs.

No time for the water samples that I wanted to obtain, but the main task was done. We loaded up and started back. God I was tired now. The anxiety associated with getting the job done drained away and my adrenaline boost with it. As we started back my legs and hips were protesting the 30 or so lbs of pack and I was feeling old because of that. I must have looked pretty grim at some points because Nicolas offered to take the pack – but he was carrying as much as I was, or close to it.

It was nearly 1800 hrs, 30 minutes to dark, when we got to Grande Milolé bai. There were elephants again, although I could not see them. A quick rest before loading up with 16 lbs of spent batteries each for the last leg out to the car. We were only just in time, too. Some places in the forest were so dark I couldn’t see obstructions in the path or the muddy holes where elephants had stepped. Just before real dark descended we broke out into the clearing by the car. Relieved. Tired. Accomplished.

Actually, not what you are probably thinking - not horrific, not exciting. In fact, bloody boring. I had visions of that movie (was it 'the Terminal'?) about someone trapped for years in an airport. the story is a lot more credible to me now.

At 10 pm I finally touch down in Libreville, Gabon, arriving from Douala, and head for customs formalities. I have a five year multiple entry visa (this is my fifth trip to Gabon in two years) and valid passport. But unbeknownst to me, I'm about to be made a lesson of.

They pull me aside and ask for a letter of invitation to Gabon! (Surprisingly, this is actually not that uncommon when first entering the Francophone countries of Central Africa.) I explain that I have been here four times before and did not need such a letter, and that immigration does not require such a letter (witness the dozens of people going by without one). No good. 'Sit over there'.

'Vous attendez' became the only phrase I could get out of them - for hours. 'You wait'. Fortunately for me they need me to claim my luggage and I see Justin Houdj, a taxi driver that I often engage in Libreville, outside waving at me. I point him out to my 'tender', who waves Justin into the immigration area. 'Ah!', I think, this will be it. Justin can verify that I work with WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and that I'm often here. Again, unbeknownst to either of us, this is perhaps the worst connection to have.

I spend an uncomfortable and cold night on a bench in the immigration area. No food or drink offered (but there is a filthy bathroom). I live only for Justin's promise that he will be back in the morning. All the next day WCS people struggle to get me sprung free. It turns out that some media outfit from France had done an unflattering story on how the president is handling the national parks. Something about frozen bank accounts in Europe as well (the president has more houses and condos than any sitting president in the world). So, they were targeting NGOs in the country, even though it was a local NGO that facilitated access for the media company.

Late in the afternoon, about 15 hours into my 'incarceration', they tell me I will be sent back to Cameroon on a 5 pm plane! My god. I have little cash and visions of interminable limbo stuck in Cameroon (where I wouldn't even have a valid visa) go through my mind. 'Vous attendez. Asseyez lá-bas! ' Time passes. I'm asked for my plane reservations and they see that my flight from Douala, Cameroon, to Libreville was a one-way fare. I'm booked to fly from Libreville to Casablanca, in Morocco, in late April. So now I am told I will have to stay in that space for another thirty hours and take the next scheduled flight to Casablanca!

A thought that occurs to me over and over: Why are you doing this? If they are so impolite and disrespectful, why spend money and effort to help them find ways to protect their elephants and other natural resources? To hell with them.

At last, a little after 5 pm, someone from WCS gets through to both the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and one of these calls the immigration official - I'm free!

Humiliating, frustrating, totally unenlightened! But before vilifying this system, is it any different for many coming into our country? Perhaps (hopefully) not so arbitrary - but are they treated fairly, like human beings? I don't know - I fear not.

 

As we approached the bai, Andrea was showing her nervousness that perhaps the elephants wouldn't be there because of gunshots heard the day before. We didn't hear any rumbling or trumpeting either. But when I peered through the legs of the observation platform I could see there were elephants. And were there elephants! Thirty of them, including a big male in musth. Not only that, but a dozen bongo, lots of sitatunga, and black and white colobus monkeys! I had reached the Mecca of forest elephant researchers - the Dzanga-Sangha Deep Forest Clearing. For the next six hours there was never a dull moment. Looking left or right or streight ahead, there were elephant families interacting, babies playing in the water, males being males.

Perhaps one of the coolest things was that elephants were so often close to the observation platform. Until now my experience has largely been elephants 100-300 meters away - at Langoue bai in Gabon, or on the savannah areas of Loango National Park, or much too close when on foot in the forest. It was such a blast to watch interactions unfolding right in front of me. With binocs I could see the details of mud in their folded skins.

But by far the best of all was sitting next to Andrea and, with her, watching the animals she knows so well. The 'Anemones' and the 'Penelope' families came into the bai - names that I have only known from the lab at Cornell. Wow! How different and how exciting to see them, more grown up, a new baby, a more experienced older daughter

Altogether different, to walk alone through the early morning forest, rather than second or third behind someone who has done this for years. With only a week of data collection left, I am thinking ‘Sample size, sample size. Do I have enough?’ Yet my collaborators are all later than usual showing up to get breakfast. So I decide to walk on my own the 3.5 kilometers to the bai in order to get a complete data point for the 08:30 scan sample.

As I start into the forest I admit to feeling my anxiety level increase. It is a dim and wet morning. The sky is overcast and the foliage drips from the heavy rains of the previous night. With eyes wide open, scanning this way and that and straining to see ahead, I can feel the surging adrenaline levels affecting my breathing rate and putting me on edge. With my ‘fight or flight’ mechanism primed, my brain is in overdrive and finds time to wonder whether someone really good at video games would do well looking for elephants in a Central African rainforest. Tuned as they are to subtle changes at the periphery of vision and hazards appearing anywhere, would their reflexes be better than mine? But then, in computer games the hazards usually have reasonable contrast to the background. Not so the big gray-brown beasts in this forest. For weeks I have been wanting to see them here in the forest—but perhaps not just now!

With 30 years of field experience behind me, it isn’t as though I haven’t done similar things many times before. I remind myself that I have been walking this path every day, to and from the bai, for six weeks. I know it well. As a biologist I know the heightened awareness and edginess I feel is adaptive—it doesn’t help.

I am using three of my senses to the max: vision, hearing, and smell. Sight is really the second line of defense after sound, because these big animals blend into the forest unbelievably well, and there are plenty of other large rounded shapes off in the forest to make one lose the edge—tree stumps and broken buttresses, the root balls of fallen trees.

Fortunately, elephants do make noise in the forest when they are feeding—when they are feeding. An elephant walking down the path—and these are, after all, their paths that I’m on—is very, very quiet. I don’t think a human could place a foot with such deliberate surety as does an elephant.
So, against the constant drip and patter of the damp foliage I listen for any rustle of leaves or branches. Every time I hear something against the background distraction I stop. Listen! Was it overhead? A group of monkey’s moving through the canopy? Or something potentially more dangerous on the forest floor? Respect for my Gabonese colleagues grows almost by the step: I know their ears and eyes are supremely tuned to this confusing, wild, visual environment of greens and browns and greys, and right now their absence is palpable. It seems that for six weeks I had been walking without really listening and looking—I had had the luxury of just absorbing the forest and its sounds and smells, confident that any risk would be caught first by my friend up ahead, or the one behind. Now, detecting that risk is up to me.

One can smell when an elephant has been on the path. A heavy barnyard sort of smell. But in the still air of the forest floor it is very hard to tell when it was there. Maybe hours ago or maybe a few minutes only. Four or five times I smell elephant—strong elephant. Each time I slow my pace and peer into the gloom ahead and to either side, straining to resolve a critical shape or hear a rustle of leaves. A scenario familiar to all of us flashes through my mind: you come home to a dark house; as a small kid you head upstairs to bed; then you make the mistake of checking behind some door or in a room you don’t need to enter and the psych-out begins. I know a little of that is happening to me here in the rainforest but it doesn’t exactly slow the heartbeat any!

Halfway to the bai I notice that my thumb is aching—I’m gripping my binoculars so tightly. But thankfully the edges of panic that I felt through the first few hundred yards of the trail are gone. Back there, close to camp, the perceived danger was higher because Thomas hangs out in that part of the forest. Thomas is a young adult male elephant who seems pretty mild-tempered, but the guys in camp don’t take him for granted nonetheless.
I notice the root ball of a fallen tree next to the path is kicked all over the place where an elephant had munched on roots. That wasn’t there last evening on the way home. Neither are there signs of pockmarks due to rain disturbing the fine texture of the displaced soil, so this is recent—very recent. I don’t smell elephant, but my adrenaline level is suddenly right back up where it was when I started down the path thirty minutes ago. Walking very quietly forward past the fallen tree my eyes are everywhere and my skin is prickly. Nothing. Nothing. I begin to relax and pick up my pace. I didn’t budget for too many delays along the trail and still have twenty minutes or so to go before I reach the bai.

CRASH! A dark shape in the corner of my left eye yanks me around in a spin—in an instant my brain records a too-small size and a yellow slash of pilo-erected hair. A yellow-backed duiker, a meter tall forest antelope—and at least as startled as I am—vanishes into the riot of vegetation and the gloom and the forest floor. Whoa! This actually isn’t much fun; again my heart is racing and the perspiration flowing. Two things pop into my mind: If it had been an elephant, surely I would have seen it from farther away? If it had been an elephant could I have had any chance of getting out of the way?
Finally, the path starts its descent to the bai and I am almost there. A roar echoes up the hillside and rolls over me—some young male elephant is in the bai and having trouble. This is my reward: there are elephants here and their rumbles are being recorded.

Morning coffee screaming for release, I climb up the stairs onto the platform just at 08:15. Made it just in time to scan around the clearing to count the number of elephants. Wisps of ground fog stir between me and the seven elephants quietly vying for a chance at the mineral pits, and beautiful filtered sunlight streams into the bai over the forest-cloaked hills to the east. What an amazing place. What a privilege to study animals in such a place. How lucky I am to (still) have a heart that can put up with a walk to work like no other!