Dr. Neville Winchester, our acclaimed micro-arthropod expert who managed not only to climb the church forest trees, but is harvesting many new records and (doubtless) species from this unexplored place on the planet, writes about his experiences so far:
“On the boat and out into a monster of a lake… Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. Accompanied by vast flocks of sacred Ibis, punctuated with some 40 new species of birds (for us) as hammercops, gray herson, African spoonbills, etc — we landed on a church forest island. This is where you start to get a sense of history in Africa — the Ark of the Covenent os “quote… suspected to be here.” Keeping this short, the relics, birds, people and sense of exploration are incredible as we tackle canopy sampling an an effort to highlight the importance of conservation of these forests. Hippos, monitor lizards and more canopy adventures …. here we come. “