Reconnaissance Flight

Tuesday we did a massive recon flight of Tanzania's Coastal Forest Reserves. The idea is to fly over all the reserves listed on our system, check to see if reserves have been encroached on, and if they are indeed located in the same spot that our GPS identifies them.



Ready? Get out your map. We flew out across the Kilombero, then followed the Rufiji River all the way to the Delta (for the history buffs, check out the SMS Konigsberg). From the Delta we flew south all the way to the Rondo Plateau, then turned west, past Nachingwea. We flew around heavy rainstorms and in low over the Selous, buzzing a sand river below tree level, and giving a pod of elephants the fright of their life (though the baboons were unaffected).

As David brought the plane around for a final approach on a bush airstrip, I spotted herds of waterbuck and wildebeest, and within a hundred feet of touching down, we were stopped and out stretching our legs. This is the perfect camping/hunting concession - lots of water, cover, and animals. After stretching and capturing a few photos, we were back in the air before whoever owns this concession had time to arrive at the strip.


[in the Selous, looking east & downhill
toward the rain we just flew through]


[me, posing with Charlie Foxtrot Alpha]

Another hour found us in low flying down the middle of valleys in the Udzunga Escarpment, crossing mountain villages, and then landing back at Kibebe, having used an entire barrel of Avgas in a day.

The result? We discovered at least two of the reserves which don't contain coastal forest anymore, as they have been burned and cultivated in the past. Two other reserves are beyond rescue, as villages have encroached on almost all of the reserve and shambas (gardens) are being actively cultivated. The remainder are in quite good shape. The Rondo Plateau is particularly beautiful forest with good closed canopy cover, though it is threatened by logging.