On African journeys that began with an overland trip from Egypt to Tanganyika in 1961, I traveled widely in East and Southern Africa (Botswana), the last great redoubt of large wild creatures left on earth. Not until the winter of 1978 did I reach West Africa - specifically Senegal-Gambia and Ivory Coast - accompanying a primatologist, Dr. Gilbert Boese, on an informal survey of what was left of West Africa wildlife, from the Sahel region, south of the Sahara, to the Guinea forest to the coasts, the continuing eastward to Zaire, hoping to join an expedition in search of the rare Congo peacock, and enjoying two meeting with Gorillas along the way. These journeys compromise the first two sections of this book. In 1980, I joined a safara into remote regions of the Selous Game Reserve, in Tanzania, and in the winter of 1986 I returned to Central Africa, accompanying ecologist David Western, director of the New York Zoological Society's Wildlife Conservation International, on the expedition described in the main section of this book. We planned a survey of the Congo Basin - Central African Republic, Gabon, Zaire - with the primary aim of determining the status of the small forest elephant, whose ivory was beginning to replace the larger ivory of the bush or savanna elephant in the world markets; we also hoped to shed some light on the elusive and mysterious "pygmy elephant," which had been reported from these central forests for nearly a century... (taken from the book's prologue)
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