Mike Fay
Redwood Transect

Thursday, November 5, 7:30 p.m.
Eric Harvie Theatre
$18 in advance / $20 day of

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National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Wildlife Conservation Society conservationist Michael Fay has spent his life as a naturalist. His career in environmental exploration spans more than 25 years, and has taken him from the Sierra Nevada, to Alaska and Central America, to Central Africa’s savannas where he spent six years in the Peace Corps.

Fay began work on his Ph.D. in 1984 and first entered the forests of Central Africa, researching the western lowland gorilla. He surveyed large forest blocks and created and managed national parks in Central African Republic and Congo. In 1996, he flew over the forest of Congo and Gabon and discovered the last pristine forest on the continent. Fay walked the entire corridor on an expedition called the Megatransect, over 3,200 kilometers, surveying trees, wildlife, and human impacts on 12 uninhabited forest blocks. His work led to a historic initiative by the Gabonese government to create a system of 13 national parks in Gabon which protected 28,500 square kilometers.

Fay made the MegaFlyover in 2004, an eight-month aerial survey of the entire African continent. He logged 800 hours and took over 115,000 vertical images of human impact and associated ecosystems, many of which are now visible on Google Earth.

Most recently, Fay has turned his attention to the redwood forests in California, a unique North American ecosystem. On a year-long, 700-mile (1,125-kilometer) hike through California's redwood forests, Fay collected data and documented the state of the forest, helping to call attention to this one-of-a-kind ecosystem. The Redwood Transect was supported by the National Geographic Society, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Save-the-Redwoods League.

Among the oldest and tallest trees on Earth, California redwoods often exceed 300 feet (90 meters) in height and can reach diameters of 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) or more. Some of these trees are more than 1,500 years old.

Following the model of his Megatransect, Fay walked a transect from the southernmost redwood tree known to exist today to the northernmost tree, a distance of some 700 miles (1,125 kilometers). Along the way, Fay and independent researcher Lindsey Holm collected data critical to understanding the ecology and history of the redwood forest.

Using blogs and a tracking system on Google Earth, the project also connected a global community of people who can contribute information to a collective pool of data.

The Redwoods Transect began on September 3, 2007, and took about one year.

Read more about Mike Fay at National Geographic and his latest featured article The Redwoods Point the Way.

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Photo Credit: Mike Fay © Michael Christopher Brown