NATIONAL GEOG RAPHIC CHANNEL Warlords of Ivory CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS

SEPTEMBER 2015

IVORY A smuggled tusk.

A hidden GPS chip.
A crime story.

Myanmar’s Colorful Language Threatened

Toughest Climb of Chameleons Buddhist Treasures
 september 2015 • vol. 228 • no. 3

30 92 110
Tracking Ivory True Colors Rescuing Mes Aynak
In Africa some militias fund opera- Scientists explore the chameleon’s In Afghanistan a fortune in copper
tions by trading elephant ivory. Can expressive color changes, trick ore lies buried beneath a trove of
a fake tusk help thwart them? tongue—and vanishing habitat. ancient Buddhist artifacts.
By Bryan Christy By Patricia Edmonds By Hannah Bloch
Photographs by Brent Stirton Photographs by Christian Ziegler Photographs by Simon Norfolk

130 Proof | Art From an American Backyard On the Cover An artificial tusk like this one was outfitted with a transmit-
Armed with a cell phone, a photographer ter and planted in the ivory market so that its travels—and traders’ illegal
catalogs the local flora and fauna. activities—could be tracked. Photograph by Rebecca Hale, NGM Staff

By James Estrin Photographs by Joshua White Corrections and Clarifications Go to ngm.com/more.

60 Point of No Return
Is Hkakabo Razi in fact the tallest mountain in Myanmar? Attempting to take its measure, a team
of climbers risked everything. By Mark Jenkins Photographs by Cory Richards

Above a sea of clouds, Renan Ozturk

pauses on a slope of Hkakabo Razi.
He was one of three climbers making
a summit attempt on the mountain,
believed to be Myanmar’s highest.

O F F I C IA L J O U R NA L O F T H E NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y
 FROM THE EDITOR

Wildlife Crime

Tracking Illegal Traders

It was one of those audacious ideas that had a touch of the crazy: Hunt the
elephant hunters.
First build a fake tusk, one that looked so good it could fool the experts—
in this case, poachers. Then hide a GPS device inside it. Finally track that
signal by satellite, and map the trail of the bad guys. Best-case results:
Expose the workings of the illegal ivory trade, which from 2009 to 2012
led to the slaughter of 100,000 African elephants. This barbarous racket also
exacts a devastating human toll, from looted
villages and kidnapped children to raped
women and dead park rangers.
That’s what inspired the National Geo-
graphic investigation reported in this issue,
the first in a series we’ll feature in the
magazine and at nationalgeographic.com.
The stories come from our new Special
Investigations Unit, which is the brainchild
of Bryan Christy, National Geographic’s
2014 Explorer of the Year and a passionate
warrior against wildlife crime.
“To protect wildlife and stop criminals,
people first have to know the stories,”
Christy says. “I don’t want anyone to be
able to say, ‘There’s nothing I could have
done,’ or ‘I didn’t know.’ ”
Start by knowing this: The thriving, global
Trade in ivory helps bankroll illegal wildlife trade—including sales of endangered species and products
the Lord’s Resistance Army, made from them—is worth billions of dollars annually. The trade not only
infamous for killings and abduc-
tions in east and central Africa. kills elephants, turtles, crocodiles, and other animals. It also brings big
Former LRA child conscript bucks to smugglers, crime syndicates, and terrorists. In a 2013 executive or-
Michael Oryem says he helped der aimed at combating wildlife crime, President Barack Obama called the
poach and hide ivory: Once
he escaped, he led U.S. and
surge in poaching and trafficking an “international crisis” that is “fueling
Ugandan forces to a cache. instability and undermining security.”
On this topic, Christy’s zeal—and that of photographer Brent Stirton,
whose moving work is highlighted here—is shared across the National
Geographic Society. Protecting wildlife is a top priority for this organization.
I like how Christy puts it: “I hate an unfair fight,” he says. “And the battle
to protect endangered species from commercial exploitation is the unfairest
fight I know.”

Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief

Warlords of Ivory, the premiere episode of National Geographic’s EXPLORER series, will air on August 30 at 8 p.m. on the
National Geographic Channel. The film will feature the work of the Special Investigations Unit, which is made possible by
contributions from individuals and institutions. Find out how you can support this mission at donate.ngs.org/HelpSIU.

PHOTO: BRENT STIRTON

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national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5
Embrace the Good in Life.

From Life is Good® founders and

brothers Bert and John Jacobs, this
whimsically illustrated book teaches
you how to harness their ten “super-
powers” that can help everyone of us
live with purpose and enjoy the ride.

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

nationalgeographic.com/books

Nat Geo Books @NatGeoBooks © 2015 National Geographic Society

 3 Questions
nationalgeographic.com/3Q

Why Animals Make

Us Better People
Jan Pol, the 73-year-old veterinarian and star of the Nat
Geo WILD channel’s hit series The Incredible Dr. Pol, grew
up in the Netherlands. He first visited rural Michigan as
a high school exchange student and then moved there
permanently after veterinary school. He and his wife, Diane,
started treating animals out of their home and today run
a busy practice—even when the Nat Geo cameras are off.
Learn more about Pol at facebook.com/TheDrPolOfficial.

Why is the interaction between humans and animals

so important?
I think that animals make us better humans. This is why
I am so active in 4-H. The children have to take care of the
animals before they can do anything else. It teaches them
responsibility. When Diane and I moved here 35 years
ago, our kids were small. We went into 4-H, and we still
are active in it. 4-H pushes children to take responsibility
for the animals. That includes nutrition, taking care of
them, and also vaccinations, grooming. All these things we
teach the children so they know. It all makes a kid a better
person later in life.

What are the best and worst parts of your job

as a veterinarian?
The best is that we help animals get better. Then through
that, we help people. The worst part is when we have to
put animals down. As I tell my clients, animals are not
afraid to die. And when the quality of life is gone, let them
go. I go to church. I believe in the hereafter. For me it
seems like there should be a heaven for animals too.

What’s the most crucial thing owners can do for pets?

The main thing is: Spay or neuter your animals!

New episodes of The Incredible Dr. Pol air at 9 p.m. ET/PT,

Saturdays from July 25 through September 26, on Nat Geo WILD.

PHOTO: CHRIS BUCK

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EXPLORE Planet Earth

Storm A novel storm formula is shedding new light on lightning. While researching cloud
behavior, the University of California, Berkeley’s David Romps and colleagues
devised what they say is the most accurate model yet for predicting lightning
Surge strikes. Then they used that model to project how strikes will multiply—and how
that could lead to more wildfires—if the planet continues to warm.
For a storm to produce the sudden electric discharge known as lightning,
liquid water and ice, plus updrafts fast enough to keep both suspended, must
be present. Romps theorized that by putting those factors into an equation, he
could calculate how often lightning would strike. He multiplied the measured
precipitation by the convective available potential energy, or how fast a
storm cloud can rise. His calculations using 2011 data matched recorded
lightning strikes 77 percent of the time. The conventional model was only 39
percent accurate.
The warmer the air is, the more storm-fueling water vapor it can hold. For every
degree Celsius that the world warms, lightning strikes may increase about 12 per-
cent in the U.S., Romps says. If carbon dioxide emissions continue at the current
rate, that could mean 50 percent more lightning strikes by 2100. —Lindsay N. Smith

PHOTO: MICHAEL SHAINBLUM

For people with a higher risk of stroke due to
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ELIQUIS® (apixaban) is a prescription medicine used to reduce the risk of stroke and blood clots in people
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Only your healthcare professional knows the specifics of your condition and how ELIQUIS
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What is the most important information I should • bleeding that is severe or you cannot control
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For people taking ELIQUIS for atrial fibrillation: • red or black stools (looks like tar)
Do not stop taking ELIQUIS without talking to • cough up blood or blood clots
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ELIQUIS can cause bleeding which can be serious, Spinal or epidural blood clots (hematoma).
and rarely may lead to death. This is because People who take a blood thinner medicine
ELIQUIS is a blood thinner medicine that reduces (anticoagulant) like ELIQUIS, and have medicine
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While taking ELIQUIS: If you take ELIQUIS and receive spinal anesthesia or
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• it may take longer than usual for any bleeding you closely for symptoms of spinal or epidural
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• unexpected bleeding, or bleeding that lasts a long ELIQUIS is a prescription medicine used to:
time, such as: • reduce the risk of stroke and blood clots in people
• unusual bleeding from the gums who have atrial fibrillation.
• nosebleeds that happen often • reduce the risk of forming a blood clot in the legs
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(Continued on adjacent page)

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 IMPORTANT FACTS about ELIQUIS® (apixaban) tablets (Continued)

• treat blood clots in the veins of your legs (deep the same time. Do not run out of ELIQUIS. Refill
vein thrombosis) or lungs (pulmonary embolism), your prescription before you run out. When leaving
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be sure that you will have ELIQUIS (apixaban)
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available to avoid missing any doses. If you are
children.
taking ELIQUIS for atrial fibrillation, stopping
Who should not take ELIQUIS (apixaban)? ELIQUIS may increase your risk of having a stroke.
Do not take ELIQUIS if you: What are the possible side effects of ELIQUIS?
• currently have certain types of abnormal bleeding • See “What is the most important information
• have had a serious allergic reaction to ELIQUIS. I should know about ELIQUIS?”
Ask your doctor if you are not sure • ELIQUIS can cause a skin rash or severe allergic
What should I tell my doctor before taking reaction. Call your doctor or get medical help right
ELIQUIS? away if you have any of the following symptoms:
• chest pain or tightness
Before you take ELIQUIS, tell your doctor if you:
• swelling of your face or tongue
• have kidney or liver problems
• trouble breathing or wheezing
• have any other medical condition
• feeling dizzy or faint
• have ever had bleeding problems
Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that
• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not
bothers you or that does not go away.
known if ELIQUIS will harm your unborn baby
• are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is These are not all of the possible side effects of
not known if ELIQUIS passes into your breast milk. ELIQUIS. For more information, ask your doctor or
You and your doctor should decide if you will pharmacist.
take ELIQUIS or breastfeed. You should not do both Call your doctor for medical advice about side
Tell all of your doctors and dentists that you are effects. You may report side effects to FDA at
taking ELIQUIS. They should talk to the doctor 1-800-FDA-1088.
who prescribed ELIQUIS for you, before you have This is a brief summary of the most important infor-
any surgery, medical or dental procedure. Tell mation about ELIQUIS. For more information, talk
your doctor about all the medicines you take, with your doctor or pharmacist, call 1-855-ELIQUIS
including prescription and over-the-counter (1-855-354-7847), or go to www.ELIQUIS.com.
medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Manufactured by:
Some of your other medicines may affect the way Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
ELIQUIS works. Certain medicines may increase your Princeton, New Jersey 08543 USA
risk of bleeding or stroke when taken with ELIQUIS. Marketed by:
How should I take ELIQUIS? Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
Princeton, New Jersey 08543 USA
Take ELIQUIS exactly as prescribed by your and
doctor. Take ELIQUIS twice every day with or Pfizer Inc
without food, and do not change your dose or New York, New York 10017 USA
stop taking it unless your doctor tells you to. If COUMADIN® is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company.
you miss a dose of ELIQUIS, take it as soon as you
remember, and do not take more than one dose at

© 2014 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

ELIQUIS is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.
Based on 1289808A1 / 1289807A1 / 1298500A1 / 1295958A1
August 2014
432US14BR00770-09-01
 EXPLORE

Us

Watson, age
six, recently
helped Mary-
land police
find a missing
student.

Dogged
Pursuit
When it comes to crime solving,
the bloodhound is such a pro its
evidence is admissible in U.S.
courts. Classified as a scent
hound—as opposed to a sight
hound, a fast dog that tracks prey
visually—the bloodhound has a
uniquely powerful NOSE that’s
been put to use trailing missing
people and criminals for centu-
ries. Its olfactory membrane is, by
some estimates, 40 times as large
as a human’s. Its loose facial skin,
including the pendulous FLEWS
and DEWLAP, droopy ears, and
abundant slobber all help a hound
“hoover up” odor molecules, says
Lisa Harvey, a biologist at Victor
Valley College in California.
Veteran hounds can track
a person’s two-day-old scent
through crowds, wind, and rain.
But they can be stumped. “They
can’t always tell the difference
between identical twins,” says
Harvey, whose research suggests
that the dogs may be sniffing
something related to a person’s
genetics. A human scent, says
National Police Bloodhound
Association President Doug
Lowry, “is like a fingerprint to
them.” —Eve Conant

PHOTO: REBECCA HALE, NGM STAFF

 PETS CHANGE LIVES

Pit Bulls
Become
Shelter Stars

Combining innovative thinking, sure they understand the ordi- a muzzle. Carol Knoepfler, a
pet behavioral science, and nance, which mandates that longtime NHS volunteer with
smart marketing, the Nebraska their pets be leashed, wear a four adopted dogs, chose to
Humane Society (NHS) managed muzzle, and be controlled by make pit bull Pearl her fifth so
to reverse what could have been an adult over 19 when out in that she could help transform
a serious ban on pit bulls and public,” said Denise. When her into a Breed Ambassador
other so-called “bully breeds.” a dog comes through for and “make a difference,” said
Denise Gurss, Director of adoption, they provide “basic Carol. “When she came to the
Shelter Training and Behavior, manners” training and all shelter, she was very stressed
said, “A lot of people hear ‘pit required equipment. “It’s out, but her nature was gentle
bull’ and think ‘dangerous.’ wonderful Purina ONE is and loving.” Pearl even “moth-
So we created the involved, providing food ered some orphan kittens” that
Breed Ambassador for all dogs in the shelter,” Carol fostered.
program.” Since she said. “Adopted
launching the dogs are also sent To help promote the breed, she
initiative in home with a supply, takes Pearl, proudly wearing the
compliance setting a high stan- vest, with her all over town—
with the city’s dard of nutrition.” to the law school where she
Breed Specific teaches, to parades, to an
Ordinance in The centerpiece of elementary school class—all
2009, the shelter the program is the Breed to demonstrate that this breed
has facilitated hundreds Ambassador training. All “bully makes “fabulous pets,” she said.
of adoptions—and proven breeds” are eligible for free “In many instances it’s the first
that these dogs can be obedience classes over six pit bull they’ve met.” Carol is
exceptional companions. weeks that enable them to take a true believer: “You’d never
a Canine Good Citizen test, know how soft, sweet, and
NHS covers all the bases. developed by the American cuddly pit bulls are until you
“Initially, our animal control Kennel Club. Dogs that pass get to know them. And once
officers talk to people on the are issued a Breed Ambassador you know one, you’re a Breed
street with ‘pitties’” and make vest and can go out without Ambassador, too!”

Created with Purina ONE by Purina ONE supports a network of shelter partners by providing
complete, balanced nutrition to help promote shelter pets’ whole
body health for today and tomorrow — as well as helping to
spread the word. To learn more, visit purinaone.com.
#ONEdifference
 EXPLORE

Planet Earth: By the Numbers

A Climate COFFEE RUST IN CENTRAL AMERICA

for Coffee This fungal disease has long attacked coffee plants at lower altitudes. Now shifting
temperatures are letting it climb to higher altitudes, where premium coffee grows.
By 2050 climate change could
halve the land that’s suitable
for growing coffee—one of the AS TEMPERATURE RANGES NARROW RUST CAN GROW AT
ON GUATEMALAN COFFEE FARMS … HIGHER ALTITUDES.
world’s most valuable traded
commodities, with some 100 85ºF
Average Cooler
highs
million people economically
dependent on the industry. As cli-
Average yearly
mate zones shift, new areas may highs/lows Elevation
have the right growing conditions, 70 2012 3,300 feet
but the land may be forested or 1980-2010

otherwise unavailable.
60
Rising temperatures also Average Fungus
lows
make plants more susceptible
to disease. Developing resistant 50
plant varieties could limit crop MAR JUN SEP DEC Warmer
losses, says David Laughlin of
World Coffee Research. But be-
cause the plant hasn’t been well THE DAMAGE

researched, a solution could take

The fungus invades through
time to brew. —Kelsey Nowakowski
the stomata, natural openings
on the underside of a leaf.

It then attacks the leaves,

causing chlorosis, also
THE GLOBAL COFFEE ECONOMY known as yellowing.

52
Infected leaves develop pustules,
which release spores that can
infect other leaves or plants.

Damaged leaves drop pre-

maturely, reducing the plant’s
photosynthesis and yield.
MILLION POUNDS OF COFFEE ARE
CONSUMED EACH DAY.

PRODUCTION BY VARIETY COFFEE GROWERS

Coffee is exported
by more than 50 19%
countries.
33%
TROPIC OF CANCER
57% 43% Brazil and VIETNAM
ARABICA ROBUSTA Vietnam account
Typically More for more than
better disease half the world’s BRAZIL
quality resistant production.
TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
 Belize and Panama
grow minimal
amounts of coffee.

GUATEMALA

-7% EL SALVADOR HONDURAS

-3%
NICARAGUA

-63% -20%
CENTRAL AMERICAN PRODUCTION
Low coffee prices that preceded the coffee rust epidemic led to less
rigorous management of diseased plants, which helped spread the fungus.

COFFEE PRODUCTION COSTA RICA

-39%
One bean equals 5,000 tons

2013 production 2012-2013 decrease

234,400 JOBS WERE LOST

TO COFFEE RUST
IN THE 2012-2013
GROWING SEASON.
That equals 12
percent of the
1.9 million-person
workforce.

COFFEE CROPLAND LOST BY 2050

-50%
Coffee can grow SOUTHEAST ASIA BRAZIL CENTRAL AMERICA
only within a narrow
temperature range,
so suitable land Arabica 72% may 62% 48%
could shrink in many be lost
regions by 2050.
These three areas
produce 71 percent
of the current crop.
Robusta 60% 59% 46% REDUCTION IN AREA
SUITABLE FOR GROWING
COFFEE BY 2050

GRAPHIC: ÁLVARO VALIÑO. SOURCES: WORLD COFFEE RESEARCH; FAO; INTERNATIONAL COFFEE ORGANIZATION; C. BUNN, CIAT, COLOMBIA;
SELENA GEORGIOU AND PABLO IMBACH, CATIE; JACQUES AVELINO, CIRAD/CATIE
 EXPLORE

Planet
Nat GeoEarth
Wild

How a Many invertebrates, such as salamanders and sea stars, can regrow a body part
if they lose one. That’s what biologist Michael Abrams expected to happen when
he removed two of eight arms from a young moon jelly (Aurelia aurita). But when
Jellyfish Abrams checked on the experiment, “he started yelling … ‘You won’t believe
this—you’ve got to come here and see!’ ” recalls Abrams’s doctoral adviser, Lea

Re-arms Goentoro of Caltech in Pasadena. Instead of regrowing limbs, the jellyfish had
rearranged its remaining arms so they were spaced equidistantly around its body.
For a young moon jelly, or an adult (below), being symmetrical is crucial for
movement and feeding. For Abrams’s test animal to achieve that, muscles
contracted in its body, which pushed and pulled the remaining arms until they
were once again evenly spaced. The scientists had stumbled upon a phenome-
non completely new to science, which they call “symmetrization.” It’s clearly an
important way in which jellyfish heal themselves—and, says Goentoro, it could
prove useful to scientists studying regenerative mechanisms. —Carrie Arnold

LEARN MORE ABOUT OCEANS In his new book, Pristine Seas: Journeys to the Ocean’s Last Wild Places, National
Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala takes readers to ten of the last wild places in Earth’s oceans. The book goes
on sale September 22 wherever books are sold and at shopng.com/books. On television, the latest Pristine Seas adventure,
Behind Russia’s Frozen Curtain, premieres on the Nat Geo WILD channel on Sunday, September 20 at 9 p.m. ET.

PHOTO: ALEXANDER
PHOTO: CREDIT
SEMENOV
HERE
IF YOU HAVE
DIABETES AND
SHOOTING
BURNING
PINS AND NEEDLES
PAIN IN YOUR FEET
OR HANDS,

ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT

LYRICA (pregabalin). ®

Diabetes damages LYRICA is FDA-

FOR SOME PATIENTS, LYRICA CAN nerves, which may approved to treat
PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT RELIEF FROM cause pain. diabetic nerve pain.

DIABETIC NERVE PAIN.*

*
Individual results may vary.

Prescription LYRICA is not for everyone. changes in your eyesight including blurry vision
Tell your doctor right away about any serious or any skin sores if you have diabetes. You may
allergic reaction that causes swelling of the face, have a higher chance of swelling, hives or gaining
mouth, lips, gums, tongue, throat, or neck or any weight if you are also taking certain diabetes
trouble breathing, rash, hives or blisters. LYRICA or high blood pressure medicines. Do not drink
may cause suicidal thoughts or actions in a very alcohol while taking LYRICA. You may have more
small number of people. Patients, family members dizziness and sleepiness if you take LYRICA with
or caregivers should call the doctor right away if alcohol, narcotic pain medicines, or medicines for
they notice suicidal thoughts or actions, thoughts anxiety. If you have had a drug or alcohol problem,
of self harm, or any unusual changes in mood you may be more likely to misuse LYRICA. Tell
or behavior. These changes may include new your doctor if you are planning to father a child.
or worsening depression, anxiety, restlessness, Talk with your doctor before you stop taking
trouble sleeping, panic attacks, anger, irritability, LYRICA or any other prescription medication.
agitation, aggression, dangerous impulses or
Please see Important Risk Information for LYRICA on the
violence, or extreme increases in activity or following page.
talking. If you have suicidal thoughts or actions,
do not stop LYRICA without first talking to your You are encouraged to report negative side effects of
prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch
doctor. LYRICA may cause swelling of your hands,
or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
legs and feet. Some of the most common side
effects of LYRICA are dizziness and sleepiness. Ask your doctor about LYRICA and visit LYRICA.com
Do not drive or work with machines until you or call 1-888-9-LYRICA (1-888-959-7422).
know how LYRICA affects you. Other common
side effects are blurry vision, weight gain, trouble
concentrating, dry mouth, and feeling “high.”
Also, tell your doctor right away about muscle
pain along with feeling sick and feverish, or any
IT’S SPECIFIC TREATMENT
PBP753612-01 ©2015 Pfizer Inc. All rights reserved. June 2015 FOR DIABETIC NERVE PAIN
 IMPORTANT FACTS



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September 2014 :?C#?::5C@=8C&A,
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 EXPLORE

Science

Shot to the Stomach

Most people prefer swallowing a pill to being poked with a
needle. But pills aren’t perfect. Intravenous injections get
medicine to the bloodstream faster, and some protein-based
drugs—insulin, for instance—can’t be taken orally. The stomach
starts digesting them before they can be absorbed.
Now researchers have come up with a better way for you to
take your medicine: Swallow the needle. From the outside, this
new pill “looks like any other multivitamin,” says chemical engi-
neer Carl M. Schoellhammer, “but once it reaches the stomach,
the outer coating dissolves, and it reveals the needles.” The
stainless steel needles, one-twentieth of an inch long, release the
drug when they penetrate the lining of the gastrointestinal tract.
Don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing. The GI tract doesn’t
register pain. And at a bit more than three-quarters of an inch The microneedle pill looks
long, this capsule is small enough to travel through the tract. So prickly without its coating (top,
shown to scale) and in an x-ray,
far the pill has been tested only on animals, with no signs of pain
but patients won’t feel it.
or injury. But passing the pill is slow going: It took at least seven
days for it to exit a test subject’s body. —Rachel Hartigan Shea

PHOTOS, FROM TOP: REBECCA HALE, NGM STAFF; CARL SCHOELLHAMMER AND GIOVANNI
TRAVERSO, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL/HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL/MIT
toyota.com/camry
 Basic Instincts
A genteel disquisition on love and lust in the animal kingdom

When Looks Deceive

As might be true in any big family, the Galloanserae clan has some gor-
geous and some plain-looking members, some promiscuous and some HABITAT/RANGE
monogamous ones. The avian superorder includes common pheasants, Farms and grasslands in North
peacocks, and swans among the 452 species of game and water fowl. America, Europe, and Asia
But the most colorful and randy Galloanserae males may not be passing CONSERVATION STATUS
on the best genes to offspring, according to a recent study. Least concern
“There have been lots of theories that the ornaments, the beautiful
OTHER FACTS
colors and big tails, are sported by the most fit males,” says evolution- The common pheasant be-
ary biologist Judith Mank of University College London. “We were longs to a bird superorder that
explicitly testing that theory” in the study, published in the Proceed- dates back 90 million years.
ings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mank and her colleagues analyzed genetic materials from six species
of birds of both dispositions. In the flashy birds they found a rapidly A promiscuous,
evolving genome marked by mild gene mutations; in the drab ones they flashy male may
didn’t find that. When females mate with flashy males, genetic flaws are attract females,
passed on that may affect the species’ prospects in the future.
The study confirmed that “there’s no link between flashiness and
“but
 he doesn’t
fitness,” says Mank. “A male may be attractive, but he doesn’t deliver deliver at the
at the genetic level. In a way, it’s false advertising.” —Patricia Edmonds genetic level.”

These male common pheasants

(Phasianus colchicus) were pho-
tographed at Cammack Gamebird
Farm, in DeWitt, Nebraska.

PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE

beyond® natural purées
are made simply — with human-grade
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national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5
Brazil
On the Brazil-Argentina
border, a blizzard of but-
terflies descends on the
banks of the Iguaçu
River. Mineral-rich ponds
that form when the
river is low attract these
pierids, which absorb
water and secrete the
excess—a process
known as puddling.
PHOTO: DANIEL PINHEIRO
 India
Dusted in yellow-green
powder, five villagers
in Nandgaon celebrate
Lathmar Holi, a playful,
pre-Holi festival rooted
in Hindu mythology.
The annual two-day
event includes mock
altercations between
the men and women
of two villages.
PHOTO: MANISH SWARUP,
AP IMAGES

O Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.

United States
Like pasta boiling in
a pot, four-inch-long
American eels bound
for Asian fish markets
wriggle in a glass dish.
This species—spawned
in the Sargasso Sea and
swept to Maine by the
Gulf Stream—lives most
of its life in freshwater.
PHOTO: HEATHER PERRY
 VISIONS

National Geographic Photography Contest

Best in Show
People from 135 countries submitted more than 9,000 images to last year’s National
Geographic Photography Contest, our annual collection of readers’ top shots judged
by the magazine’s photo editors and photographers. The judges selected winners
in the categories of People (this page), Places, and Nature (next page). The winning
images convey a sense of place and time, capturing unique moments in inventive
ways. “They were layered and nuanced and invited the viewer to think,” says Monica
Corcoran, director of both the photo contest and the Your Shot community. For the
photo below, grand-prize winner Brian Yen received $10,000 and a trip to National
Geographic’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

O To enter this year’s contest, go to ngphotocontest.com.

PEOPLE Brian Yen Hong Kong, China

On a hot day in Hong Kong, people crowded into an air-conditioned train. When the
lights dimmed, one young woman stood out, lost in the glow of her own digital world.
LOVE THEM LIKE FAMILY. FEED THEM LIKE FAMILY.® ACTIVATE YOUR FREE ACCESS

At Blue Buffalo, we think of our pets as part of our family. As a subscribing member, you have FREE digital access to…
That’s why all BLUE foods are made with the finest natural
ingredients featuring real meat and contain BLUE’s exclusive • The 127-year National Geographic archive
LifeSource® Bits packed with antioxidant-rich ingredients. • Monthly special issues on travel and more (below)
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LEGAL NOTICE

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metaxalone, your rights may be affected by and you
could get a payment from a class action settlement.
A settlement has been reached with Mutual Pharmaceutical Company, their share of the consumer portion of the net Settlement Fund in
Inc. (“Mutual”) in a class action lawsuit about whether Mutual and proportion to their qualifying purchases.
King Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“King”) acted unlawfully to keep generic How Do You Get a Payment? You must submit a claim form by
versions of Skelaxin off the market. Mutual denies all of the claims in October 31, 2015. Claims may be submitted online or downloaded
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of a trial. The lawsuit is not proceeding against King. instructions are also available by calling 1-866-267-0396 or by writing
Who’s Included? The settlement includes people and entities in the to In re Skelaxin (Metaxalone)Antitrust Litigation, PO Box 43278,
U.S. or its territories who purchased, paid for or reimbursed some or Providence, Rhode Island 02940-3278.
all of the purchase price of Skelaxin or its AB-rated generic equivalent Your Other Options. If you are included in the settlement class and
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November 4, 2005 and August 5, 2014 (“Settlement Class Members”). Settlement Agreement. If you stay in the settlement (i.e., don’t exclude
There are two groups included in the settlement: consumers and third yourself), you may object to it or ask for permission for you or your
party payors (“TPPs”). If you are a consumer and your insurance plan own lawyer to appear and speak at the hearing—at your own cost—
requires you to pay a flat co-payment (the same amount for Skelaxin but you don’t have to. Objections and requests to appear are due by
and generic metaxalone), you are not included in the settlement. September 28, 2015. More information about these options is in the
What Does the Settlement Provide? A $9 million Settlement Fund detailed notice available at www.skelaxinsettlement.com.
has been established by Mutual. After the deducting Plaintiffs’ Class The Court will hold a hearing in this case (In re Skelaxin (Metaxalone)
Counsel attorneys’ fees and expenses and the costs of settlement Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 1:12-md-2343) on November 2, 2015
notice and administration, 28% of the net the Settlement Fund will to consider whether to approve the settlement and Plaintiffs’ Class
be made available to consumers and 72% will be made available to Counsel attorneys’ fees of up to 33 1/3% of the Settlement Fund,
TPPs. Payments will be based on the qualifying amount of Skelaxin plus reasonable costs and expenses. If approved, these fees, costs
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and the total amount of purchases claimed. Consumers will receive payments to Settlement Class Members.

1-866-267-0396 www.skelaxinsettlement.com
 VISIONS

National Geographic Photography Contest

PLACES Triston Yeo Singapore

Yeo was in Budapest teaching a photography clinic. At a spa, he chose to use a mesh curtain
rather than push his lens through it. “The finished photo has a sense of voyeurism,” he says.

NATURE Nicole Cambré Brussels, Belgium

Traveling on the Tanzanian side of the northern Serengeti, Cambré watched a group of
wildebeests methodically cross the Mara River. While others waited, one wildebeest leaped.
 Fake tusks carrying hidden GPS devices expose
the trail of Africa’s elephant poachers.
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

30
Veteran ranger Jean Claude
Mambo Marindo sits beside
almost a hundred tusks seized
from elephant poachers at
Garamba National Park, in the
Democratic Republic of the
Congo. The park has lost all its
rhinos to poaching for their
horns. Now it’s under siege for
its ivory, mainly by rogue
soldiers from national armies
and by the terrorist group the
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Rangers practice their riding skills at Zakouma National Park, in
Chad. The park has four mounted ranger teams because horses
are the only way to effectively patrol during the wet season, when
the elephants head to drier land outside the park.
Ugandan soldiers with the African Union’s Regional Task Force hunt for
LRA leader Joseph Kony in the Central African Republic (CAR), pulling
themselves along ropes to cross rivers. Kony’s men jump back and
forth across borders, hiding in countries where governance is weak.
By Bryan Christy • Photographs by Brent Stirton

W
hen the American Museum I want Dante to design an artificial elephant
of Natural History wanted tusk that has the look and feel of confiscated
to update the hall of North tusks loaned to me by the U.S. Fish and Wild-
American mammals, taxi- life Service. Inside the fake tusk, I want him to
dermist George Dante got embed a custom-made GPS and satellite-based
the call. When the tortoise Lonesome George, tracking system. If he can do this, I’ll ask him to
emblem of the Galápagos Islands, died, it was make several more tusks. In the criminal world,
Dante who was tasked with restoring him. But ivory operates as currency, so in a way I’m asking
Dante, who is one of the world’s most respected Dante to print counterfeit money I can follow.
taxidermists, has never done what I’m asking him I will use his tusks to hunt the people who kill
to do. No one has. elephants and to learn what roads their ivory
plunder follows, which ports it leaves, what ships
it travels on, what cities and countries it transits,
A National Geographic Special Investigation and where it ends up. Will artificial tusks planted
This story launches the National Geographic Society’s
Special Investigations Unit, which will report on wildlife in a central African country head east—or west—
crimes. This project was made possible by a grant from toward a coast with reliable transportation to
The Woodtiger Fund. Asian markets? Will they go north, the most

36national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015 J. MICHAEL FAY, WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY

 storm. The result: Some 30,000 African ele-
phants are slaughtered every year, more than
100,000 between 2009 and 2012, and the pace
of killing is not slowing. Most illegal ivory goes
to China, where a pair of ivory chopsticks can
bring more than a thousand dollars and carved
tusks sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
East Africa is now ground zero for much of the
poaching. In June the Tanzanian government
announced that the country has lost 60 percent
of its elephants in the past five years, down from
110,000 to fewer than 44,000. During the same
period, neighboring Mozambique is reported
to have lost 48 percent of its elephants. Locals,
including poor villagers and unpaid park rang-
ers, are killing elephants for cash—a risk they’re
willing to take because even if they’re caught,
the penalties are often negligible. But in central
In May 2013 Africa, as I learned firsthand, something more
poachers with the sinister is driving the killing: Militias and terror-
insurgent group ist groups funded in part by ivory are poaching
Seleka massacred
26 elephants at Dzanga elephants, often outside their home countries,
Bai, a mineral-rich and even hiding inside national parks. They’re
watering hole in CAR. looting communities, enslaving people, and kill-
ing park rangers who get in their way.
South Sudan. The Central African Republic
violent ivory path on the African continent? Or (CAR). The Democratic Republic of the Congo
will they go nowhere, discovered before they’re (DRC). Sudan. Chad. Five of the world’s least
moved and turned in by an honest person? stable nations, as ranked by the Washington,
As we talk over my design needs, Dante’s D.C.-based organization the Fund for Peace, are
brown eyes sparkle like a boy’s on Christmas home to people who travel to other countries to
morning. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a kill elephants. Year after year, the path to many
tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory of the biggest, most horrific elephant killings
is a tooth and won’t melt. My tusks will have to traces back to Sudan, which has no elephants
act like ivory. “And I gotta find a way to get that left but gives comfort to foreign-born poacher-
shine,” Dante says, referring to the gloss a clean terrorists and is home to the janjaweed and other
elephant tusk has. Sudanese cross-continental marauders.
“I need Schreger lines too, George,” I say, Park rangers are often the only forces going
referring to the cross-hatching on the butt of up against the killers. Outnumbered and ill
a sawn tusk that looks like growth rings of a equipped, they’re manning the front line in a
tree trunk. violent battle that affects us all.
Like much of the world, George Dante knows
that the African elephant is under siege. A boom- Garamba’s Victims
ing Chinese middle class with an insatiable taste Garamba National Park, in the northeast corner
for ivory, crippling poverty in Africa, weak and of the DRC and on the border with South Sudan,
corrupt law enforcement, and more ways than is a UNESCO World Heritage site, internation-
ever to kill an elephant have created a perfect ally famous for its elephants and its boundless

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  37
In January 2014, while x-raying a Vietnam-bound container declared to
hold cashews, Togolese port authorities saw something strange: ivory.
Eventually, more than four tons was found, Africa’s largest seizure
since the global ivory trade ban took effect in 1990. DNA suggests that
some of the ivory is from the elephants killed in CAR in 2013.
 TUSK TRADE
During the past decade the trafficking of ivory has turned increasingly professional
and militaristic. Organized networks of poachers prey on elephants in regions where
instability and violence are rife. Ivory can rise tenfold in price as it moves through
African transit points to lucrative retail markets such as China and Southeast Asia.

Cairo

EGYPT
S A H A R A

MAURITANIA
AFRICA CHAD
SUDAN
MALI
NIGER Khartoum ERITREA
ENLARGED AT RIGHT
ia
SENEGAL Lake To As
Chad Oum Hadjer
GAMBIA BURKINA
FASO NIGERIA
GUINEA-
BISSAU GUINEA Songo
BENIN Tikem SOMALIA
TOGO KAFIA
Lagos KINGI
SIERRA GHANA CEN. AF. Addis Ababa
CAMEROON SOUTH
LEONE Accra REP. SUDAN ETHIOPIA
LIBERIA Juba
CÔTE D’IVOIRE Lomé Douala
To s

t
(IVORY COAST) Gulu KENYA
Eur
ope Ea
and le
dd
U.S . Kisangani UGANDA Mi
To
GABON
Nairobi
To Middle Ea

CONGO DEM. REP. Mombasa

Kinshasa OF THE TANZANIA
Zanzibar
CONGO
Dodoma
Dar es Salaam
st, South

Luanda
To Southeast Asia
and China
ANGOLA
east As

Pemba
MALAWI
ZAMBIA
ia,

MOZAMBIQUE
and C

ZIMBABWE
hina

Beira

BOTSWANA
NAMIBIA Pretoria
(Tshwane)
Maputo
Johannesburg

Bloemfontein Durban
0 mi 500 SOUTH
a
Cape Town AFRICA Chin
0 km 500 and
t Asia
theas
To Sou

Making a Killing
 Smugglers’ Trail
Ivory contraband is a rich source of financing Killings by armed groups against civilians,
for terrorist groups like the Lord’s Resistance December 2008 to June 2015
Army, which has conducted vicious attacks on
Lord’s Resistance Army 100
villages in central Africa. To trace the illicit trade,
killings fatalities
National Geographic commissioned the creation
of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that 10
Killings by other 1
were planted in the smuggling supply chain. groups connected to
poaching

LRA leader Joseph Kony, reported locations,

March 2006 to May 2015
ZAKOUMA NATIONAL PARK
Nearly 90 percent of the park’s Groups in Sudan:
elephants were poached Track of artificial tusks Elephants
Janjaweed
between 2002 and 2012. Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) Known range
Improved security in recent years Abu Tira
has prevented further killings. GPS location
Unidentified armed groups
DAY 53
DARFUR Last known tusk location,
as of June 2015
Site of Heban
massacre, 2012 Ed Daein
CHAD KAFIA KINGI
Controlled by Sudan, SUDAN
ZAKOUMA this disputed territory is
NATIONAL believed to be a safe
SATELLITE
PARK haven for the LRA.
Tree EVIDENCE
Smugglers held the
artificial tusks for three
BOUNDARY CLAIMED Location of
Songo weeks at this camp in
BY SOUTH SUDAN tusk in a
truck or tent Kafia Kingi before
DAYS 21 to 44
moving north.
Tent
Dafaq KAFIA
MANOVO- RADOM KINGI 0 ft 50
GOUNDA- NATIONAL
Kafia Kingi 0m 10
SAINT FLORIS PARK
N.P. BOUNDARY CLAIMED
BY SUDAN

BAMINGUI- DAY 16 Groups in South Sudan:

BANGORAN Tusks cross Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)
N.P. into South Sudan Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)
Unidentified armed groups

DAY 10 SOUTH SUDAN

Group in
Central African SOUTHERN
DAY 5 N.P.
Republic:
Seleka GARAMBA
CENTRAL NATIONAL PARK
LRA defectors say Kony
AFRICAN has ordered poachers
REPUBLIC Obo into the park with quotas
and delivery deadlines.
Mboki

DAY 1
GARAMBA
Tracking
of tusks
NATIONAL
begins
PARK
Kpaika
DEMOCRATIC Nagero
REPUBLIC OF THE
CONGO
0 mi 100 Dungu
0 km 100

VIRGINIA W. MASON, HEIDI SCHULTZ, AND BRAD SCRIBER, NGM STAFF

Kony first enters
SOURCES: ARMED CONFLICT LOCATION & EVENT DATA PROJECT; C4ADS; BRYAN CHRISTY; the DRC with 70
CITES ETIS TRAFFIC; DIGITALGLOBE (SATELLITE IMAGERY); IUCN/SSC AFRICAN ELEPHANT fighters on
SPECIALIST GROUP (RANGE DATA, 2012); THE RESOLVE LRA CRISIS INITIATIVE AND INVISIBLE
CHILDREN; UNEP/GRID-ARENDAL; WORLD DATABASE ON PROTECTED AREAS March 8, 2006.
After Lucienne Lanziwa’s husband died in an LRA attack on Garamba, she got a
modest stipend. Widows now get a sum equal to six years of a ranger’s salary.
Ranger Dieudonné Kumboyo Kobango, standing with his son, Genekpio, who
escaped soon after the LRA seized him, says, “I search for the LRA on every patrol.”

ocean of green. But when I ask a gathering of chil- own families are afraid that they’re devils, or for-
dren and elders in the village of Kpaika, about 30 ever soldiers, who might kill them in the night. It
miles from the park’s western border, how many is assumed that the girls were raped, so it’s diffi-
of them have visited Garamba, no one raises a cult for them to find husbands. Villagers some-
hand. When I ask, “How many of you have been times taunt returned children with the same
kidnapped by the LRA?”—I understand why. expression used for Kony’s men: “LRA Tongo
Father Ernest Sugule, who ministers to the Tongo.” “LRA Cut Cut”—a reference, Sugule ex-
village, tells me that many children in his di- plains, to the militants’ vicious use of machetes.
ocese have seen family members killed by the Kony is a former Roman Catholic altar boy
Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, the Ugandan whose stated mission is to overthrow the Ugan-
rebel group led by Joseph Kony, one of Africa’s dan government on behalf of the Acholi people of
most wanted terrorists. Sugule is the founder northern Uganda, and to rule the country accord-
of a group that provides assistance to victims ing to his version of the Ten Commandments.
of Kony’s army. “I’ve met more than a thousand Since the 1980s, and beginning in Uganda, Kony’s
children who have been abducted,” he says as we minions are alleged to have killed tens of thou-
talk inside his church in the nearby town of Dun- sands of people, slicing the lips, ears, and breasts
gu. “When they’re abducted, they’re very young, off women, raping children and women, chop-
and they’re forced to do horrible things. Most of ping off the feet of those caught riding bicycles,
these children are very, very traumatized when and kidnapping young boys to create an army of
they come back home.” They have nightmares, child soldiers who themselves grow into killers.
Sugule continues. They have flashbacks. Their In 1994 Kony left Uganda and took his

42national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

murderous gang on the road. He went first to set up camp in Garamba National Park, then
Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping home to some 4,000 elephants. From Garamba,
that continues to make him difficult to track. At Kony signaled his desire for peace with Uganda,
the time Sudan’s north and south were in a civil sending emissaries to neutral Juba, in southern
war, and Kony offered Sudan’s government, in Sudan, to negotiate with Ugandan officials while
Khartoum, a way to destabilize the south. For he and his men lived unmolested in and around
ten years Khartoum supplied him with food, the park, protected by a cease-fire agreement.
medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, His army farmed vegetables. Kony even invited
antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, foreign press into his camp for interviews.
and mortars. It was thanks largely to efforts by Meanwhile, flouting the cease-fire, his men
the group Invisible Children and its video Kony crossed into CAR, where they kidnapped hun-
2012 that Kony became a household name in the dreds of children and made sex slaves of women
West. In the United States, Presidents George W. they brought back to the park.
Bush and Barack Obama supported efforts Father Sugule introduces me to three young
either to arrest or kill him. The U.S. State De- girls, recent LRA kidnapping victims, who are
partment named Kony a “specially designated sitting on a wooden bench in his church. Geli
global terrorist” in 2008, and the African Union Oh, 16, spent longer with Kony’s army than her
has designated the LRA a terrorist organization. two friends—two and a half terrible years. She
When north and south Sudan signed a peace looks at the floor while her friends whisper to
agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cook-
host. In March 2006 he fled for the DRC and ies we’ve brought for them. Geli Oh perks up at

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  43
Margaret Acino was 23, pregnant, working in the fields near Gulu,
Uganda, when an LRA commander called for a razor and ordered
his boy soldiers to slice off her lips, ears, and nose. Seven surgeries
later she’s forgiven them. “It’s easier to live with things,” she says.
the word “elephant.” She saw many elephants in the Florida Everglades. For his Judas pig proj-
in Garamba National Park, she says, which is ect he built GPS satellite collars to enable pest
where the LRA took her. Tongo Tongo shot two control authorities in New Zealand to send feral
elephants one day, she says. “They say the more pigs into the bush and locate their invasive piggy
elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.” friends. We meet over Skype.
Kony’s force has declined from a peak of “You must be a real animal lover,” I say.
2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to “I’m not an animal lover,” he snaps. “I’m a
250 core fighters today. Killings of civilians have problem solver.”
likewise dropped, from 1,252 in 2009 to 13 in I laugh. “Then you’re just the man for me.”
After months of tinkering, Kermeen’s final
bespoke ivory-tracking device arrives in the
mail. It consists of a battery capable of lasting
Dead elephants finance more than a year, a GPS receiver, an Iridium
terrorism. “Ivory operates satellite transceiver, and a temperature sensor.
While Dante set about embedding Kermeen’s
as a savings account for tracker inside his tusk mold, a third team
Kony,” says the U.S. State member, John Flaig, a specialist in near-space,
balloon-based photography—images taken from
Department’s Marty Regan. at least the height of spy planes—was preparing
to monitor the tusks as they moved. Using Ker-
meen’s technology, he could adjust how many
2014, but abductions are rising again, and it takes times a day they tried to communicate with a
the arrival of only a few of the armed militants satellite via the Internet. We would follow them
to send fear ricocheting through communities. using Google Earth.
In village after village along the road between
Father Sugule’s church and what is now South “I Want Ivory for Ammunition”
Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant
fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were in Kony’s army, walked out of Garamba National
killed, militants took the ivory away. Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammu-
But where? nition, and a story. Onen is short and looks even
smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugan-
The Problem Solver dan army uniform that’s too long for him in the
To follow my artificial tusks from the jungle to sleeves. He sits on a plastic chair opposite me in a
their final destination, I need a tracking device clearing at the African Union forces base in Obo,
capable of transmitting exact locations without in the southeastern corner of CAR, where he is in
dead zones. It needs to be durable and small custody. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching
enough to fit inside the cavities George Dante operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters,
would make in the blocks of resin and lead that including Kony’s son Salim. The operation was
formed the tusks. Quintin Kermeen, 51, based in designed by Kony himself, Onen says. During the
Concord, California, has the credentials, and the summer Kony’s soldiers had killed 25 elephants
personality, I’m looking for. Kermeen started in in Garamba, and they were on their way back to
the radio-tracking business when he was 15 and Kony carrying the ivory.
has since built electronic trackers and collars for Around us stroll Ugandan army soldiers, who
wildlife from Andean bears to California condors make up the entire African Union contingent
to Tasmanian devils. He designed a GPS tracker based in Obo and are committed to finding and
that the U.S. Geological Survey embedded in live killing Kony. The soldiers embrace Onen as one
Burmese pythons to monitor the invasive snakes of their own, and in fundamental ways he is. He

46national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

was 22 years old the night in 1998 that Kony’s said they bury sealed buckets of water along
soldiers raided his village in Gulu, Uganda, and parched travel routes and bury ivory for safe-
pulled him from his bed. His wife, abducted keeping as well.
later, was killed. “They can get what they want today,” he said,
From the moment of his capture, Onen says, “and keep it there for two, three, or even more
he was a complainer. Being small, he balked at than five years.”
having to carry the heavy bundles that Kony’s The Ugandan military finally attacked Kony’s
militants ferry from camp to camp in their pa- Garamba camps in late 2008. The air strike,
trols across central Africa, and for his whining, dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder, included
he was beaten with a machete. But Onen got his support from the DRC, southern Sudan, and the
way. Instead of being made a soldier, he was des- U.S. But it failed to rout Kony or his leadership.
ignated a signaler—a radioman privy to Kony’s Kony’s response was immediate and savage. Be-
secret communications. ginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread
During the failed peace talks with Uganda, out in small teams and murdered civilians. In
while Kony hid in Garamba from 2006 to 2008, three weeks Kony’s brutes killed more than 800
Onen had been assigned to Kony’s lead peace people and kidnapped more than 160 children.
negotiator, Vincent Otti. Otti liked elephants, The UN estimated that the massacre displaced
Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. But af- more than a hundred thousand Congolese and
ter Otti left Garamba to participate in the peace Sudanese. On January 2, 2009, the horror bled
talks, Kony began killing elephants for ivory. into Garamba’s headquarters, at Nagero, where
Otti was furious, Onen says. “Why are you Kony soldiers burned the park rangers’ main
collecting ivory?” Otti demanded of Kony. building, destroyed equipment, and killed at
“Aren’t you interested in peace talks?” least eight rangers and staff members.
No, I want ivory for ammunition to keep Six years later, on October 25, 2014, Onen tells
fighting, was Kony’s reply, according to Onen, me, his poaching mission to Garamba was sched-
who was listening to transmissions. “Ivory oper- uled to deliver its ivory to Kony in Sudan. Kony
ates as a savings account for Kony,” says Marty was adamant in his radio transmissions. “Do not
Regan, of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of lose even one tusk,” he instructed the group, ac-
Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Kony’s cording to Onen, who said the plan was to carry
army had arrived in Garamba in 2006 with little the ivory to a rendezvous in CAR and then on to
ammunition left to continue its war, Onen tells a market town in Darfur called Songo, not far
me. “It’s only the ivory that will make the LRA from the Sudan Armed Forces garrison in Dafaq.
strong,” he recalls Kony saying. There, Onen says, Kony’s men trade ivory with
Instead of signing a peace agreement, Kony the Sudanese military for salt, sugar, and arms.
had his peace negotiator executed. The relationship is close: “SAF warns Kony if
From Garamba, Kony sent an exploratory there’s trouble,” Onen says.
team to Darfur to look into forging a new rela- As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad
tionship with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), he abandoned was still making its way north
who had supported him against Uganda, hoping from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. To me, it
to exchange ivory for rocket-propelled grenades seems reasonable to think that the radioman’s
and other weapons. Meanwhile, according to defection might have slowed the progress of the
Onen, Kony’s men hid ivory by burying it in the 25 elephants’ tusks headed to Kony.
ground or submerging it in rivers. His account Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Kony too.
was corroborated by Caesar Achellam, a former
intelligence chief for Kony who is now in the “You Are a Liar!”
Ugandan government’s custody. Achellam told An official in Dar es Salaam’s international air-
me that Kony’s men planned for the future. He port, in Tanzania—one of several countries I

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  47
Members of the Ugandan army’s dog-tracking team lift weights
at the African Union base in Obo, CAR. The dogs are Belgian
Malinois shepherds, famed for their use in military operations,
especially in tough conditions like the dense central African bush.
scouted for launching my tusks into the illegal airport, including the wildlife expert, returned
trade—squints at an x-ray screen as my luggage the next day to wish us bon voyage. “You did
rolls through his scanner. exactly what you were supposed to do,” I said,
“Open that one,” he orders. shaking their hands.
I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks It was reassuring to find the Tanzanian law
and hand him letters from the U.S. Fish and enforcers so vigilant, because the country is
Wildlife Service and National Geographic cer- plagued by perhaps the worst elephant poach-
tifying that they’re artificial. A crowd gathers. ing in Africa, and corruption is rife. In 2013,
Officials are pointing fingers and arguing. Those Khamis Kagasheki, then Tanzania’s minister
of natural resources and tourism, declared that
the illegal ivory trade “involves rich people and
politicians who have formed a very sophisticat-
All of central Africa is a ed network,” and he accused four members of
hand grenade, its pin pulled Tanzania’s Parliament of being involved in it.

by a history of resource Garamba’s Warriors

exploitation from abroad, All around me I hear the click-clack of automatic
weapons being loaded. I’ve flown from Garamba
dictatorships, and poverty. park headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside
the park to join an antipoaching patrol. I arrive
at what amounts to the park rangers’ northern
looking at the tusks think I’m an ivory trafficker. front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese
Those looking at the x-ray screen, which shows poachers and Kony’s army. Here a ranger unit
the trackers inside, think I’m smuggling a bomb. is permanently deployed to protect one of the
After more than an hour of animated debate, park’s most important assets: a radio tower that
they phone the airport’s wildlife expert. When was being built. Garamba is managed through
he shows up, he picks up a tusk and runs his fin- a partnership between the DRC’s wildlife de-
ger over the butt end. “Schreger lines,” he says. partment and African Parks, a group based in
“Exactly,” I say. “I had them …” Johannesburg, South Africa.
He points a finger at me, and yells, “You are a Since the 2008-09 attack by Kony’s soldiers,
liar, bwana!” (Bwana is Swahili for “sir.”) rangers have finished building a new headquar-
In ten years he’s never made a mistake, he ters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter.
says: The tusks are real. I spend a night in po- But ammunition is in perilously short supply—
lice custody, where I’m given a desk to sleep not even enough for basic training—and the
on. National Geographic television producer rangers’ largest weapon, a belt-fed machine gun,
J. J. Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. tends to jam every third round or so. The rangers
He asks for water for me and is led out of the I’m going out with have each been allocated a
building. When he returns hours later, he has handful of rounds for old and unreliable AK-47s,
three chicken dinners and several bottles of most of them seized from poachers.
beer, paid for by the police chief. The three We plunge eight hours through elephant grass
of us eat together (the police chief, a Muslim, so tall and thick it’s possible to get lost just 20
leaves the beer to us). In the morning, after offi- feet from the man in front of you—down grass
cials from Tanzania’s Wildlife Division and the ravines, up hills exposed to the enemy, across
U.S. Embassy arrive, I’m released. a murky, waist-deep pond. At the sound of a
Our airport incident was one of many hiccups twig cracking or the detection of an unexpected
with the artificial tusks. Several Tanzanian of- scent on the wind, a ranger in front of me, Agoyo
ficers who had presided over my arrest at the Mbikoyo, signals caution, and I drop with the

50national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

team into a collective crouch and wait silently. a time when it was possible to fly over the park
I make a mental note that Kony’s soldiers and and see 5,000 elephants in a single gathering.
other armed groups walk hundreds of miles from Now it was rare to see 250 in a herd.
Sudan into this endless grass curtain to kill ele- Froment uses the word “war” to describe the
phants. I wonder if Kony’s men are out there now. fight Garamba’s 150 rangers are in with poachers.
The recent death toll of elephants in Garam- Money is available to outfit the rangers with bet-
ba has been staggering, even by central African ter equipment, but buying new weapons requires
standards. Poachers killed at least 132 last year, formal approval of the Congolese army, some-
and as of this June, rangers had discovered an- thing Froment has been unable to get.
other 42 carcasses with bullet holes, more than Halfway through our patrol, we come upon
30 attributed to a single Sudanese poaching a clearing of burned grass beside the Kassi
expedition—a combined loss amounting to River, the site of a recent battle between Ga-
more than 10 percent of the park’s entire pop- ramba rangers and SPLA poachers, in which,
ulation of elephants, estimated now to be no rangers tell me, they killed two poachers. I find
more than about 1,500. a human skull fragment, and I nearly pick up
From March 2014 to March 2015, Garamba’s a live hand grenade near where the SPLA had
rangers recorded 31 contacts with armed poach- camped, mistaking it for a baby tortoise. It
ers, more than half of whom were with groups hadn’t exploded—yet.
traveling south from the direction of South Su- All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin
dan and Sudan. They included South Sudanese pulled by a history of resource exploitation from
armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. “The poach-
as well as defectors from those militaries and ing issue is a governance issue,” Froment says.
an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. Congo’s “We protect the elephant to protect the park.
own soldiers threaten the park’s southern bor- We protect the park to give the people some-
der, and villagers around the park sometimes thing of value.” He fights for elephants because
poach elephants too. And someone—it’s unclear he knows that without the animals’ presence, no
who—is believed to be killing elephants from one will support Garamba, and the park—which
helicopters, as evidenced by bullet holes in the he calls “Africa’s heart”—will be lost. Garamba is
tops of skulls and the removal of tusks by what a crucible within a crucible, a park under siege
can only be chain saws. in a country often in civil war in a region that
“My interpretation,” says Jean Marc Fro- has nearly forgotten peace.
ment, then director of the park, is that the On our patrol we don’t encounter any poach-
Ugandan military “is conducting operations ers or rebel groups. But time is stalking our team:
inside Garamba and at the same time taking Months later, on April 25, 2015, while on patrol,
some ivory.” But, he adds, the poachers could the ranger who led me into Garamba, Agoyo
be SPLA, which uses the same type of heli- Mbikoyo, was shot and killed by a gang of poach-
copter seen over the park. An adviser to the ers. In June three more Garamba-based officers
Ugandan military rejects the helicopter accu- were killed. The culprits are believed to have
sation, and suggests that the elephants might been South Sudanese, according to African Parks.
have been shot in the top of the head after they
were down. Planting the Fake Tusks
Having worked extensively throughout cen- After visiting Garamba, I arrange with a con-
tral Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in fidential source to put my tusks into the black
early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of market near Mboki, a small village in CAR mid-
elephant carcasses in the park. It was supposed way between Garamba and Sudan that has been
to be a short posting, but he saw too much death the target of attacks by Kony’s army and where
to leave. He’d grown up not far from Garamba at some people who have escaped from Kony have

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  51
found safety. According to data stored in a GPS in, rainy season out. During the rains the park
unit taken off the body of LRA commander Vin- is more lake than land, and elephants split into
cent “Binany” Okumu, who was killed in a 2013 two groups to escape the floods. One moves
firefight with African Union forces on his return north toward Heban, the other west toward
from poaching in Garamba, this village is on the central Chad.
path of ivory headed to Kony’s base in Darfur. The rangers on Heban hill had little reason
to be concerned for their safety. They were re-
Unwitting Targets lieving a ranger team that had raided a Sudanese
It was just after 4 a.m. on Heban hill, in Chad, poachers’ camp three weeks before and seized
80 miles from the Sudanese border and 60 miles more than a thousand rounds of ammunition;
northeast of Zakouma National Park, home to mobile phones holding photographs of bloated,
the country’s largest remaining elephant herd, dead elephants; a satellite phone with a solar
450 animals. Six antipoaching rangers and their panel charger; two elephant tusks; a pair of cam-
cook, the entirety of the Hippotrague (French ouflage pants; and a uniform with the insignia
for “roan antelope”) unit, were awake, dressed of Abu Tira—Sudan’s notorious Central Reserve
in camouflage uniforms, and preparing for Police, alleged to have committed mass killings,
morning prayers—devoted even in the darkness. assaults, and rapes in Darfur. The rangers also
It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the recovered a stamped Sudanese army leave slip
elephants they were guarding, had left the park granting three soldiers permission to travel
for higher ground. from Darfur to a town near the Chadian border.
Zakouma breathes its elephants. Dry season Zakouma National Park has lost nearly 90

52national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

 Zakouma’s Mamba Team 1 antipoaching unit includes driver Issa Adoum (brown
shirt). After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a
traditional community payment. “Diya is for accidents,” he says. Poaching has
been curbed, but rebuilding the park’s herd, now at 450, will take years.

percent of its elephants since 2002. Most— killing five rangers. A sixth, a young lookout,
up to 3,000—were poached from 2005 to ran down the hill, disappeared, and is presumed
2008. During those years Sudanese poachers dead. The team’s cook, also wounded, strug-
arrived in groups of more than a dozen armed gled 11 miles to get help. Later, when Labu-
men, camping inside the park for months at a schagne examined the trajectory of bullets at
time, killing, in one instance, 64 elephants in the scene, he concluded that the poachers had
a single hunt. When in 2008 the Wildlife Con- been trained in how to set up a cross fire, which,
servation Society introduced a surveillance combined with evidence found at the scene,
airplane, poaching declined, but Sudanese pointed to President Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan
marauders adapted, returning in hit squads of Armed Forces.
under six men, who infiltrated from outside The story typically would have ended with
the park on one-day hunts. They killed fewer the wanton killing of these park rangers pro-
elephants per hunt but were much harder to tecting elephants. But one of the murdered men,
track and stop. Now, says the park’s director, Idriss Adoum, had a younger brother, Saleh,
Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, “my biggest who resolved that, when the rains stopped, he
fear is that they’ll start coming in pairs.” and a cousin would hunt the killers in Sudan,
The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed where so many ivory roads lead.
that after the previous team’s raid, the poachers
had all fled home. But instead, that morning the Sudan’s Complicity
poachers were hiding among trees surrounding As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to ele-
the rangers’ camp. The poachers opened fire, phant poaching. In 2012 as many as a hundred

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  53
A welcome sight returns to Zakouma: babies. Thanks to stepped-up
enforcement, the park hasn’t lost an elephant to poachers since 2012.
Without the stress of poaching, the elephants started breeding again,
and more than 40 calves have been born.
Five of the six men in Zakouma’s Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant
poachers outside the park; the sixth is presumed dead. The family of Idriss Adoum
(second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite),
was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help.

Sudanese and Chadian poachers on horseback head of state indicted by the International Crim-
rode across central Africa into Cameroon’s inal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes
Bouba Ndjidah National Park. They set up and crimes against humanity. In presenting that
camp and in a four-month rampage killed up to case, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo un-
650 elephants. According to Céline Sissler- derscored Bashir’s control of the groups said to
Bienvenu, Francophone Africa director for the be behind Sudan’s ivory trafficking: “He used the
International Fund for Animal Welfare, who army, he enrolled the Militia/Janjaweed. They
led a group into the park after the slaughter, the all report to him, they all obey him. His control
poachers were most likely from Darfur’s Rizeigat is absolute.”
tribal group, with ties to the janjaweed—the vi- Michael Onen, the defector from Kony’s
olent, Sudanese-government-backed militias army, told me that the LRA and the janjaweed
that have committed atrocities in Darfur. Su- had battled over ivory, with one group robbing
danese and Chadian poachers were likewise the other, and that it was the janjaweed’s suc-
implicated in the 2013 butchering of nearly 90 cess in trading ivory that originally gave Kony
elephants—including 33 pregnant females as the idea to start killing elephants. The LRA sells
well as newborn calves—near Tikem, Chad, not to the Sudan Armed Forces, Onen said.
far from Bouba Ndjidah. Despite Sudan’s role as a safe haven for groups
That members of the Sudanese military trade known to traffic ivory, such as the LRA, jan-
arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions jaweed, and other poaching gangs, the country
about the highest levels of Sudan’s government. has drawn limited official attention as a poach-
In 2009 Bashir became the world’s first sitting ing state. The Convention on International

56national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna of the eastern corner of CAR. Then, like a bob-
and Flora (CITES), a treaty organization that ber in a fishing hole, a nibble. They shift a few
governs international trade in ivory—and its miles. Suddenly they move steadily north, about
continuing ban—has identified eight countries 12 miles a day along the border with South Su-
“of primary concern” when it comes to interna- dan, avoiding all roads. On the 15th day after
tional ivory trafficking: China, Kenya, Malaysia, they began to move, they cross into South Sudan
the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, and from there make their way into the Kafia
and Vietnam. Eight more are considered of sec- Kingi enclave, a disputed territory in Darfur
ondary concern: Cameroon, Congo, the DRC, controlled by Sudan.
Kafia Kingi is so widely recognized as a Kony
hideout that in April 2013 a coalition of groups,
including Invisible Children, the Enough Proj-
The artificial tusks follow a ect, and the Resolve, issued a report called
route LRA defectors tell me “Hidden in Plain Sight: Sudan’s Harboring of
the LRA in the Kafia Kingi Enclave, 2009-2013.”
ivory takes to Kony’s Kafia LRA defectors I spoke with consistently placed
Kingi base. By now the tusks the warlord in the Kafia Kingi area too. So did
the African Union military forces, whose CAR-
may be in Khartoum. based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony.
“It’s not a secret to anyone that Kony’s in Su-
dan,” says the State Department’s Marty Regan.
Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Nige- “It’s his sanctuary.”
ria. Three more are classified as of “importance A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo,
to watch”: Angola, Cambodia, and Laos. the Sudanese market town where Onen said
Sudan is not on these lists, even though Kony’s men trade ivory. In Songo the tusks are
Sudanese poachers are a primary reason ele- held for three days in what looks like a clearing
phants are killed in several of the countries outside town. Then they head south six miles,
listed by CITES as of primary or secondary back into Kafia Kingi. I order a satellite shot of
concern. Sudan is also a well-documented their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial
supplier of ivory to Egypt and is the recipient vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside
of substantial Chinese infrastructure invest- help interpreting it. According to Col. Mike
ment, which typically comes with Chinese Kabango, of the African Union forces, the im-
workers, a source of ivory smuggling in many age shows a large tent and two smaller ones;
parts of Africa. Ivory shops in Khartoum ad- to Ryan Stage, a remote-sensing specialist in
vertise in English and Chinese as well as Ara- Colorado, it shows a large truck and two small
bic. According to CITES Secretary-General tents. After three weeks the tusks turn north
John Scanlon, Sudan does not appear on these again, back into Sudan. Gathering speed, they
lists because CITES sets priorities based mainly continue north before abruptly turning east, in
on ivory seizures, and there have been few ivory the direction of Khartoum.
seizures linked to Sudan in recent years. Which Other roads also lead to Sudan. The relatives
raises the question: If ivory is poached by Suda- of murdered Zakouma ranger Idriss Adoum
nese, where is it going? tracked one of the alleged Heban hill poachers
to Sudan and arranged to have him brought back
A Kony Hideout to Chad to stand trial. Soumaine Abdoulaye Issa
My artificial tusks sit motionless for several had been in Darfur, he told a team of African
weeks, a pair of tear-shaped blue dots on my Parks investigators, when he heard about an ele-
computer screen, which displays a digital map phant poaching mission to Chad led by a member

58national geographic • S e p t e m b e r 2015

of the Sudan Armed Forces. Issa, who is Chadian, Kony’s plan is to obtain as much ivory as possible
said he joined the team of three Sudanese men “for his future survival should he not be able to
and that together they rode more than two weeks overthrow the government of Uganda.”
to get to Heban, where they killed nine elephants Ongwen also said that Kony intends to form
in four days. After Zakouma’s rangers destroyed a squad to establish contact with Boko Haram,
their camp and confiscated their equipment, the Nigerian terrorist group responsible for
the poachers were unable to return to Sudan, so widespread killings and the kidnappings of
three weeks later they went back to Heban hill hundreds of Nigerian women and schoolgirls.
and attacked the Hippotrague unit. Boko Haram also uses the bush as a base—
Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest, a game reserve south
poacher. He wasn’t contrite. In a public square in of Lake Chad. In March 2015 Boko Haram’s
Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to
“I know who betrayed me! I will escape from ISIS, and his group was renamed Islamic State’s
your jail, and I will kill him.” He did escape, and West Africa Province, giving that Middle East
a rumor in Zakouma is that he fled south to CAR. terrorist group a foothold in West Africa.
“We’ve heard he went to Seleka,” Idriss
Adoum’s son Issa tells me, referring to the vi- Where Next?
olent rebel coalition that overthrew the CAR As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out
government on March 24, 2013. If true, Sou- their last communication from a Sudanese
maine Issa will find poachers working with town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of
Seleka. Seleka and its rival, anti-Balaka, have Khartoum. I know which house they’re in: Us-
set fire to people, thrown them off bridges, and ing Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my
murdered people wantonly, turning CAR into screen. They’re in a place 2.2 degrees Fahren-
a lawless state—the kind of place where Kony’s heit cooler than the ambient temperature, so
group and other terrorist organizations thrive. perhaps they’ve been buried in the backyard.
In May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poach- So far they’ve traveled 600 miles from jungle to
ers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in desert in just under two months. Their path is
Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, consistent with the route Kony’s defectors tell
killing 26 elephants. Dzanga Bai—also known as me ivory takes on the way to the warlord’s Kafia
the village of elephants—is a mineral-rich mud- Kingi base. By the time you read this, my tusks
hole where the animals congregate. might have gone to Khartoum. Or possibly even
Earlier this year Kony suffered the defection shown up in illegal ivory’s biggest consuming
of his commander of operations, Dominic Ong- country: China.
wen, who told African Union forces that Kony’s Meanwhile, as leaders in Europe, the Middle
desire for ivory was reinforced by Seleka. “Seleka East, and the U.S. strategize about how to stop
rebels had a stock of about 300 ivory tusks that the ever expanding network of international
they sold, which enabled them to get the supplies terrorist organizations, somewhere in Africa a
that helped them overthrow President François park ranger stands his post, holding an AK-47
Bozizé in CAR,” Ongwen told African Union and a handful of bullets, manning the front line
forces, according to his debriefing. Ongwen said for all of us. j

“This assignment was exciting for me Brent Stirton has won numerous
because it wasn’t just another animal awards for his investigative photo-
exploitation story,” says writer Bryan journalism. His subjects for this story
Christy, who reports on wildlife traf- weren’t shy, he says. “They’ve been
ficking frequently for this magazine. through a lot, and they were comfort-
“It was the story of an unspoken war.” able having their lives revealed.”
BYBA SEPITKOVA

T r ac k i n g I vo ry  59
POINT
OF NO
RETURN
How a forgotten peak rising from
the jungles of Myanmar nearly broke
an elite team of mountaineers

A bone-freezing wind
whips the climbing rope
as Cory Richards moves
up an exposed ridgeline
during an attempt to
summit Hkakabo Razi,
said to be Southeast
Asia’s tallest mountain.
RENAN OZTURK

60
Mark Jenkins (standing)
and Renan Ozturk pause
for lunch within sight of
the snowcapped peak
of Hkakabo Razi (top left).
The climbers hoped
to be the first to measure
the mountain’s height
precisely using a GPS.
A bridge offers passage
over the Tamai River
en route to the mountain’s
base. The climbers spent
weeks pushing through
dense rain forest, avoiding
snakes and staving off
claustrophobia along the
dark, tunnel-like trails.

By Mark Jenkins

T
Photographs by Cory Richards

he wind slams into me, and I desperately grip my

ice axes to keep from being ripped off the mountain
face. I push my head against the snow, calm myself,
and look down. Beneath my crampons is a 5,000-foot
drop. It’s like looking down from the open door of an
airplane. I am roped to my two companions, with
nothing attaching us to the mountain. A fall here
would send all three of us plummeting to our death.
When the wind subsides, I pound an alumi- rope is supposed to be secured to the mountain
num stake into the snow and clip the rope to to catch a fall, but mortal predicaments like this
it. It wouldn’t hold if I were to fall but gives me happen often in mountaineering. When there
enough psychological comfort to continue. I are no good anchors, your partners become your
concentrate, methodically swinging my ice tools anchors, physically and emotionally. You must
and kicking my crampons. At a rock rampart I trust your life to their judgment and ability, and
place an anchor and belay my partners, Cory they entrust their lives to yours. This is the code
Richards and Renan Ozturk, across the chasm. of the mountains.
“Nice lead, dude!” Cory shouts above the roar Renan and I halt in a small rock recess over-
of the wind when he arrives. He climbs onward, looking the north face of the mountain. Through
slanting left, searching for a passage up through blowing spindrift we can see Cory traversing
the granite and snow. When Renan reaches me, another expanse of snow. It is too dangerous for
there is no room on my ledge, so he traverses Renan and me to keep moving. Again, we must
out to his own perch. Cory carefully tiptoes the wait. We huddle close, but we’re still freezing.
teeth of his crampons along a thin ledge above The wind swirls around our bodies, howling and
us and disappears from sight. biting at us like invisible hyenas. “My feet are
Renan and I wait, hunched against the wind. turnaround cold,” Renan says. What he means
We stomp our feet and painfully slap our gloved is that they’re close to frostbite.
hands. We are too far apart to talk. We just I wonder, for at least the tenth time on this
stand there, together but alone, on the side of expedition, whether this is the end of our quest
the snow-plastered cliff more than three miles to climb the highest peak in Myanmar—a jour-
in the sky. After a half hour we begin to freeze. ney that has pushed us to our physical and emo-
After an hour we can no longer feel our fingers tional limits. Far below us on the mountain, our
or toes. “I can’t take it anymore,” Renan yells other team members are pulling for us in spirit.
through his frozen beard. “My feet are gone. I Our base camp manager, Taylor Rees, is at the
have to start moving.” foot of the mountain. The previous day we left
We don’t know what Cory is doing above us, Hilaree O’Neill and Emily Harrington at camp
but we’re so cold it doesn’t matter. Renan starts 3, a tent nested on a snowy ridgeline, where our
climbing, then I follow. We’re all still roped to- weary team had a bitter argument over who
gether, so it’s crucial that none of us fall. The would try for the summit.

66national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

Stretched to the limit, the team—which included (left to right) videographer Renan Ozturk, author Mark
Jenkins, photographer Cory Richards, climber Emily Harrington, and expedition leader Hilaree O’Neill—
began running low on food on the hike out. “None of us anticipated we’d get that strung out,” says Cory.

I tell Renan to take off his boots and place Renan and Cory have dropped over the ridge
his feet underneath my down parka, against my to get out of the wind and discovered a stone
chest. He has socks on, and my chest isn’t exact- platform hanging above the south face. The
ly a furnace, but it’s the best we can do. sun is spread over the rock like honey. “Lunch
When Cory makes his way around a rock but- ledge!” I bellow, christening our aerie.
tress, we start moving. An hour passes before we Within minutes I’ve got our tiny stove roar-
finally regroup on a thin ledge. Our immediate ing. Renan takes off his boots and begins rub-
goal remains far above us—the crest of the west bing his toes. Cory gets out his camera and
ridge, glistening like the edge of a sword. begins snapping pictures. After more than a
“My lead,” Renan says. He begins climbing, week of climbing, this is the first time we can ac-
woodenly kicking his crampons into the snow. tually see the summit: a steep, shining pyramid
He disappears into the sun. The rope tightens, of snow. But we can also see what we have left
and Cory takes off. After he vanishes, I follow. to climb: a menacing, serrated ridge of rock and
When I reach the ridge and push my ice-crusted snow, guarded by a dozen dagger-like pinnacles.
face into the sun, it’s like poking my head into
heaven. The sudden warmth renews my hope. I “Let’s do an old-school adventure,” Hilaree had
pull my body onto the ridge, and a blanket of sun- said, “an expedition to someplace still remote
light envelops me. After the dark, soul-sucking and unknown.” It was the spring of 2012, and we
cold of the north face, it feels like rebirth. were coming off Mount Everest. Hilaree is the

TAYLOR REES P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  67
 Day 1
Day 2
Htang Ga
1,956 ft (596 m)
Shabyen
Daily mileage: 32 miles
1,734 ft (528 m)
8 mi (cumulative total to date: 40 mi)

Days 3-4 Pass

Gawle 5,787 ft (1,764 m)
2,118 ft (646 m) Day 7
28 mi (68 mi) Ngawa
Motorcycle leg of trip Days 5-6 3,515 ft (1,071 m)
On the first day of
Pangnamdim, 12 mi (91 mi)
ends; team is forced to hiking, Hilaree is
reduce gear from 28 almost bitten by a Tamai River
to 20 duffel bags. 3,230 ft (985 m)
white-lipped pit viper.
11 mi (79 mi)
Without enough porters,
the team has to reduce
gear again; duffel count
is now down to 13 bags.

ASIA
MYANMAR
(BURMA)
INDIAN

ELUSIVE
OCEAN
TIBET Dandalika
A Range
Y View direction
L A
H I M A
SUMMIT
Hkakabo Razi
19,296 ft
t After passing Ch
Lohi 5,881 m
Approach villages, the team
a Putao
ap utr route a Buddhist regio
Br a h m KACHIN The largely unexplored Dandalika Range, gets its first view
INDIA which traverses the borders of China, Myan- the mountains.
Myitkyina
mar, and India, has long been overshadowed
CHINA in mountaineering circles by the loftier peaks
of the Himalaya. Yet it contains a tantalizing
MYANMAR mystery. Rising from the remote jungles of
(BURMA) northern Myanmar, Hkakabo Razi—thought
Mandalay to be the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia—
remains unmeasured using a GPS. Last fall
Bagan
a National Geographic expedition embarked
(Irr
Ay e

LAOS
on a quest to climb the mountain and put
yarw
awad

Nay Pyi
Taw the question of its height to rest.
ady
dy)

T HA IL A ND
Bay of
Bengal Yangon
(Rangoon) Expedition high point
0 mi 100
18,841 ft
0 km 100

Day 17
Base camp
13,217 ft
THE JUNGLE TREK TO BASE CAMP Day
16
After their motorcycle approach, the team spent Day
two arduous weeks hiking through rain forest Day 15
riven by deep gorges, nine days climbing on Day 14 10,000 ft
Hkakabo Razi, and two weeks hiking out. 13
Days Day
Days 10-11 12
5-6
Day 7 Day 8 Day 9
Start Days 5,000
Putao Day 1 Day 2 3-4
1,469 ft

Motorcycle Villages Uninhabited

0 25 50 75 100 125 150 miles
 START Start of approach to
Putao base camp
1,469 ft (448 m) October 10-13, 2014
Kachin state government
tells the team members
they can’t leave the city.

*Scale varies in this

perspective. The linear distance
between the town of Putao and
the summit of Hkakabo Razi is
69 miles. The team’s actual
route was 151 miles.

Day 8
Gawai
3,819 ft (1,164 m)
12 mi (103 mi)

Day 9
Days 10-11 Dazhongdon
Dashutu 4,217 ft (1,285 m)
4,805 ft (1,465 m) 9 mi (112 mi)
6 mi (118 mi)

hristian
m enters
on and Day 12
Dahongdam
w of 5,971 ft (1,820 m)
11 mi (129 mi)
Team reaches the last
village; from this point Some suspect that Gamlang
the trail is more difficult Razi, a peak measured at
and dangerous. 19,259 feet in 2013 using GPS
Day 13 technology, actually could be
Gaman camp Myanmar’s highest mountain.
6,929 ft (2,112 m)
4 mi (133 mi)
Gamlang Razi
19,259 ft
HIGH POINT 5,870 m
A Burmese expedition may
have summited two months 18,841 ft (5,743 m)
Mark, Renan, and
ahead of the team, recording
Cory turn back.
a high point of 18,996 feet,
but they died during descent.
Camp 4
18,579 ft (5,663 m)
Camp 3
Hkakabo Razi** 18,108 ft (5,519 m)
Hilaree and Emily
go no farther.
Day 14
Pala camp Camp 2
8,225 ft (2,507 m) 17,305 ft (5,275 m)
6 mi (139 mi)
Japanese climber Takashi North
Ozaki made the first ascent
of Hkakabo Razi via its north
Face Climbing
face, in 1996, but did not route
The team members measure its elevation.
Camp 1
cross into coniferous 15,771 ft (4,807 m)
forest and meet
Day 15
retreating Japanese Japanese camp
climbers, who provide 9,015 ft (2,748 m)
ropes and stove fuel. 5 mi (144 mi) BASE CAMP
Uni Day 17
nha Day 16 13,217 ft (4,029 m)
bited
sec Confluence camp 2 mi (151 mi)
tion: 22 m 10,790 ft (3,289 m)
iles Taylor awaits
5 mi (149 mi)
climbing team.

MARTIN GAMACHE, NGM STAFF; CHARLES PREPPERNAU *All distances estimated from GPS points collected
story name here 70
**Documented elevations for Hkakabo Razi—Russian, 1986: 18,671 ft
SOURCES: MARK JENKINS; HILAREE O’NEILL, THE NORTH FACE; DIGITALGLOBE;
PLANETOBSERVER DEM; TAMOTSU NAKAMURA, JAPANESE ALPINE NEWS
in the field by expedition members. (5,691 m); American, 1972: 18,865 ft (5,750 m); ASTER GDEM V2,
2011: 18,878 ft (5,754 m); British, 1925: 19,296 ft (5,881 m)
 Balancing a 60-pound load,
a porter tightropes a
hanging bridge. The team
struggled to find locals to
haul gear. “We had about
35, we wanted about 60,”
says team member Taylor
Rees. Eventually, they had
to leave equipment behind.

The team’s route passed by religious sites such as the Mingun Pagoda, near Mandalay, in
central Myanmar. Construction began in 1791. The facade was later split by an earthquake.
toughest woman I’ve ever met. After summiting Porters take a break
Everest, she climbed its neighbor, Lhotse, with on a bed of bamboo
leaves. In some villages,
two torn ligaments in her ankle.
the team hired entire
We had a lot in common. Both of us had grown families, even grandpar-
up loving mountains. We were both married ents, to carry gear. Most
with two kids and trying to find a way to balance were Rawang people
family life with expeditions. And we were both who live in remote
valleys near the Tibetan
disillusioned by Everest’s commercialism and
border and rarely
crowds. We needed to get back to what made us encounter outsiders.
climbers to begin with.
But finding someplace truly remote is tricky.
A plane will take you to the North or South Pole,
you can hop a helicopter to the base camp of
Everest or Makalu, tourist boats cruise the Nile
and the Amazon. Real remoteness—somewhere
that requires days or even weeks of walking just
to reach—has almost vanished from Earth.
And yet I knew a place, a mountain that had
long held me in its thrall. But because of my
private history with it, I was reluctant to say
anything. Eventually, after bouncing ideas back
and forth—Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Ka-
zakhstan—my enthusiasm got the best of me.
“What about,” I hesitated, “Hkakabo Razi?”
Hkakabo Razi (pronounced KA-kuh-bo RAH-
zee) is said to be the highest peak in Southeast

The Rawang were not immune to the vagaries

of the jungle. A toddler was brought to us with infected
insect bites. A tribal elder told me, “Everyone here
either gets better on their own or dies.”
Asia. It is a jagged massif of black rock and white expedition before we left Kathmandu.
glaciers that rises improbably out of the steam- I had learned of Hkakabo in the 1980s, when I
ing green jungles of northern Myanmar. Locat- picked up a yellowed copy of Burma’s Icy Moun-
ed just beyond the eastern edge of the Himalaya, tains by British explorer Francis Kingdon-Ward.
on the border with Tibet, it was first measured It described his 1937 expedition into the region
by a British survey published in 1925 at 19,296 and his audacious attempt to climb Hkakabo
feet high. It is a peak so remote, few climbers Razi solo. He reached almost 16,000 feet before
have heard of it even today. Getting to the moun- being stymied by an insurmountable “granite
tain would require a two-week trek through wall…beyond my powers.”
dense jungle riven with plunging gorges and Kingdon-Ward’s “powers,” as I learned from
inhabited by venomous snakes. Hilaree was reading his many other books, were protean. A
hooked immediately. We were planning our brilliant botanist, lyrical writer, indefatigable

74national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

plant hunter, and purportedly a British spy, friend since high school in Laramie, and I’d met
Kingdon-Ward was one of those hard-as-iron Keith and Steve at the University of Wyoming.
adventurers in the mold of polar voyager Roald Since then, Mike and I had done several first as-
Amundsen or Amazonian explorer Percy Faw- cents in the Rockies and the first kayak descent
cett. Kingdon-Ward could tramp through jungle of the Niger River in West Africa.
for months on rice and tea, writing in his journal At that time the military junta controlling
at night beside a campfire. From 1909 to 1956, Burma—later renamed Myanmar—had declared
he made more than 20 expeditions into Central the north off-limits to foreigners. We naively
Asia, during which he survived a fall off a cliff and planned to avoid this obstacle by accessing the
one of the century’s worst earthquakes. Along the mountain from Tibet, illegally crossing the bor-
way he collected hundreds of plants and named der, traveling light and fast with no porters.
many, including species of rhododendrons and We flew to Lhasa with our rucksacks and
lilies that now adorn gardens worldwide. proceeded to sneak across eastern Tibet—also
I was entranced by Kingdon-Ward’s journeys closed to foreigners—hitching rides in the backs
and was determined to make the first ascent of of trucks and talking our way past checkpoints.
Hkakabo Razi. So in the fall of 1993, I enlisted It took more than a month just to get near the
my climbing buddies Steve Babits, Mike Moe, base of the mountain. Mike and Steve had to
and Keith Spencer. We called ourselves the return home, leaving only Keith and me to climb.
Wyoming Alpine Club. Mike had been my best We ran out of food on the north side of Hkakabo

P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  75
Stepping cautiously, porters
follow a narrow trail cut into
the side of a ravine. “One slip
and you were a goner,” says
Mark, who had previously
attempted Hkakabo in 1993.
“There are so many ways
to die before you can even
see the mountain.”
and had to descend to a Tibetan village. There we Near base camp,
were promptly arrested by the Chinese military, Renan, Emily, and
Hilaree found Buddhist
interrogated, and jailed. We signed a four-page
prayer flags. Following a
confession of “misconduct” and were deported. Himalayan mountaineer-
Two years later, to my chagrin, the Myanmar ing tradition, they burned
government granted Japanese mountaineer juniper boughs for good
Takashi Ozaki permission to climb Hkakabo luck. Weeks before,
two Burmese climbers
Razi. Ozaki was an unstoppable Himalayan
had disappeared on
veteran, having made the first full ascent of Hkakabo Razi.
the north face of Everest in 1980. (He would
die climbing there in 2011.) He made two failed
attempts on Hkakabo in 1995, but in Septem-
ber 1996, after two months of climbing, Oza-
ki summited with Tibetan-born mountaineer
Nyima Gyaltsen. He told the Asia Times, “I can
say absolutely that Hkakabo Razi is one of the
most difficult and dangerous mountains in the
world. I was never scared before, like this time.”
Ozaki published a detailed account of his
expedition, but he did not measure the summit
elevation with a GPS, which left the mountain’s
exact height undetermined.
Young and convinced of our invincibility,
Mike, Keith, and I talked about returning to
Hkakabo. (Steve had moved on to different ad-
ventures.) But it was not to be. Mike died on an

The past weeks spent with Cory and Renan have been
like looking back in time at myself and my two dead friends.
In these two younger men I see the same passion for climbing,
the same sense of being bulletproof we had 22 years ago.
expedition in 1995, along with his brother and Seconds later tons of ice crashed down. Keith
two others. A bowhead whale tipped over their was killed, his neck broken by the impact.
boat in the Arctic Ocean, and they all perished There was no reason why I lived and Keith
from hypothermia. Mike left behind a wife and died. We’d taken the safety precautions. He
three kids. None of us ever quite recovered. didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t do any-
Still, Keith and I continued doing expeditions thing to save myself. There was no moral, aside
and often ice climbed together. On January 2, from the inescapable truth that mountains are
2009, we were on the fifth pitch of an icefall dangerous, and occasionally inflict horror and
in north Wyoming. I was belaying him from a sorrow on those who dare to climb them.
small alcove in the ice. He was cheerfully climb-
ing 15 feet below me when we heard a deafen- Lounging on our lunch ledge in the sun
ing roar. A section of ice above us had cut loose. on Hkakabo Razi, slurping down hot noodles

78national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

with Cory and Renan, I am reminded of my lost don’t reveal the true difficulty of the climb. From
friends. Mike was funny like Cory, who’s kept us the lunch ledge, the route ahead looks more de-
going through some of the trip’s worst moments manding than what we’ve encountered so far.
with perfectly timed wisecracks. Keith was qui- Hkakabo’s west ridge is a two-mile-long saw
et like Renan, always taking in the grandeur blade—a series of stone towers separated by
around him, always the calm voice in the midst sharp cols of snow. Unlike on some mountains,
of crisis. During these past weeks I’ve spent with where you can shoot right up to the summit,
Cory and Renan, it’s been a bit like looking back we have been climbing up and down the jagged
in time at myself and my dead friends. I recog- ridgeline the whole way—up a tooth of rock,
nize in these two younger men the same passion rappelling down the backside, balancing across
for climbing mountains, the same determined a bridge of snow, then up the next craggy pin-
toughness, the same boundless ambition, and nacle. We try to identify a potential route, but
at moments the same sense of being bulletproof the spiked ridge weaves like a serpent’s tail so
that Mike, Keith, and I had 22 years ago. we can’t see all the obstacles. We do, however,
Our resolve replenished, we begin to study spot a notch that looks like the best location
the crenellated ridge before us that leads to the to bivouac for the night. We pack up and start
summit. Because the mountain has remained moving, trying to stay on the sunny side of
largely unexplored, we are climbing with little the ridge.
knowledge of the terrain. Even satellite images It takes us four hours to reach the notch. We

P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  79
Renan descends a slope
after finding the route
impassable. Negotiating
the region’s maze of
unmapped ridges and
false summits forced the
team to backtrack twice,
squandering precious
time and energy.
A snow-swollen couloir
threatens to envelop Hilaree
(at left) and Emily (below)
as they ascend its powdery
flank. The risk from
avalanches and rockfalls
increased as the team
moved higher up the steep,
fog-shrouded terrain.
Leeches would drop down onto our necks as we pushed
through wet branches or suck onto our legs during stream
crossings. All day we’d pluck their blood-engorged bodies
off our skin, leaving bites that didn’t fully heal for weeks.

are so fatigued that we can barely stomp out a I had wished for on the slopes of Everest—
tent platform. Our faces are rimed with ice from remoteness—was the very thing that threatened
breathing so hard. While trying to shove the our expedition from the beginning.
poles into our tent, the wind lifts it like a kite. We First we had to cross most of Myanmar. From
throw in our packs, guy it down, and pile inside. Yangon we took an overnight bus to Bagan, then
“The shiver bivvy begins,” says Cory as he a ferry up the Irrawaddy River to Mandalay,
zips the tent, closing off the screeching black- where we got on a train that bucked and swayed
ness that has descended on the mountain. as if it would derail at any moment. In Myit-
We knew this night was going to be misery. kyina we boarded a plane where a fellow pas-
At camp 3 we could see that the ridge became senger checked an AK-47 as carry-on luggage.
technical and treacherous. So we ruthlessly cut On arrival in Putao, the northernmost town in
the weight of our packs, bringing only bare es- Kachin state, we spent five days “under arrest”
sentials, hoping it would be enough to get us while our climbing permits were batted back
to the top and back down. We left our winter and forth among officials. Finally, we loaded our
sleeping bags and carried only the thin overbag gear onto a caravan of motorcycles and set off
shells. We have one stove, one fuel bottle, one for three days, crashing through streams and
pot, one spoon, two instant pasta meals, and the churning through mud until the trail became
three of us are crammed into a two-person tent. passable only on foot.
Sitting knee-to-knee, our backs pressed Then began the 151-mile trek to the base
against the tent, we set our stove on our boots of Hkakabo through the wet, dark jungle. The
and nearly asphyxiate ourselves boiling water dense forest canopy cast a dim green glow. For
from snow. One person holds the stove, another two weeks we moved along this tunnel-like track,
the pot. We are wearing everything we have. Only always rising steeply or plunging suddenly, from
our headlamps and runny noses stick out from one local enclave to the next, exactly as Francis
beneath the hoods of our parkas. Renan says lit- Kingdon-Ward had done 77 years earlier.
tle, which is normal. But even Cory is quiet. We slept in the bamboo homes built on stilts
We have been sleeping with each other for of the Rawang people. Although Kachin state is
weeks, like poor brothers in one bed. We know known for its jade and gold mines and for illegal
each other’s secrets. I know Renan is dealing logging, people this far north mainly raise pigs
with the betrayal of a friend. I know Cory’s strug- and chickens and grow little plots of rice.
gling to stay married and be a world-traveling On the first day trekking in the jungle Hilaree
photographer. They know I’m haunted by mem- was almost struck by a snake. She saw it coiled
ories of my dead friends, that this mountain is on the trail at the last moment and leaped over
my white whale. My thoughts drift to how close it. Poised to strike, the serpent’s flat head floated
we are to our goal and our team’s ugly fight and side to side, its black tongue squirting in and
the toll it’s taken on my friendship with Hilaree. out. We all kept our distance except Cory, who
knelt down and began snapping photos. “White-
Just getting to the foot of Hkakabo Razi lipped pit viper,” he declared.
took a month. The very thing that Hilaree and It was one of a dozen snakes toxinologist

84national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

Zoltan Takacs had warned us about before we encountered plenty of locals along this trail
came to Myanmar. If one of us were bitten, the willing to make $15 a day, twice the local wage.
venom could cause bleeding from the nose, eyes, But when we arrived in the fall of 2014, Hkakabo
gums, and rectum and could be fatal. We carried Razi had improbably become front-page news.
two antivenoms, one for vipers, the other for co- On September 10, 2014, three weeks before
bras and kraits, but Takacs had warned us that our team left the United States, an Associat-
relying on antivenom in the jungle was dicey. ed Press headline read: “Search for missing
Far less dangerous were the leeches. They climbers begins in Myanmar.” An eight-man,
would drop down onto our necks as we pushed all-Burmese expedition had set out for Hkaka-
through wet branches or suck onto our feet and bo to put one of its citizens atop the country’s
legs during stream crossings. All day we’d pluck highest peak. It was a matter of national pride.
their blood-engorged bodies off our skin, leav- On August 31, after two weeks of climbing, two
ing bites that didn’t fully heal for weeks. team members signaled from somewhere near
And then there were the spiders. We continu- the summit. They were never heard from again.
ally pushed through cobwebs the size of fishing An enormous search effort was mounted.
nets. Some held spiders baring fangs so large Porters were recruited from local villages to
they were visible from a few feet away. supply the search teams. Choppers buzzed over
The Rawang were not immune to the vagaries the jungle between Putao and the mountain.
of the jungle. In one village a distraught mother Then one of the helicopters, with two pilots
brought a screaming child to us, her tiny body and a passenger, disappeared. The search for
swollen from infected bites. Hilaree and Emily the climbers was suspended, and a search for
smeared antibiotic cream on her arms, legs, and the helicopter ensued. Nine days later, the he-
face. When I asked what would become of the licopter’s passenger stumbled out of the jungle
child, a tribal elder told me, “Everyone here ei- and led rescuers to the pilots: One was alive but
ther gets better on their own or dies.” severely burned, the other dead.
The legs of one of our youngest porters, After decades of quiet obscurity, Hkakabo
a schoolgirl of about 12, were so welted with Razi had claimed three lives in one month.
bites that her skin was as bumpy as a toad’s. Another American climbing team was partly
She was one of three girls of similar age whom behind this sudden Burmese attention to the
we shamefully hired, along with their brothers, mountain. The year before, Andy Tyson, a Teton-
parents, and grandparents, to carry our gear. based guide, had led an American-Burmese ex-
We hired anyone we could find. They all heft- pedition to a neighboring peak called Gamlang
ed loads with practiced efficiency. We’d recruit Razi. After studying modern Russian topo-
porters from one village to help us get to the graphic maps, as well as images from Google
next village up the trail. Some would work for Earth, Tyson had determined that Gamlang
a few days, others just for a few hours. Some- might actually be higher than Hkakabo.
times they’d abandon us without a word, slip- Tyson’s team made the first ascent of Gamlang
ping away in the night. Razi in September 2013. Using a survey-grade
The truth is, we had brought far too much GPS, they measured its height at 19,259 feet. Al-
stuff—cameras and lighting equipment, laptops, though this was still 37 feet lower than Hkaka-
extra batteries, even two drones to get aerial bo’s 1925 British survey height of 19,296, it was
footage—the paraphernalia of a modern expe- higher than the 18,671 feet that Russian survey-
dition. But it was all useless without enough ors had calculated in the 1970s and 1980s.
strong backs to carry it. So we began leaving bags “No one in Burma wanted to believe that
of gear in the villages we passed through until we Gamlang was higher than Hkakabo,” Tyson
were down to a quarter of our initial load. told me last year, noting that Hkakabo is a long-
At almost any other time, we would have revered symbol of national pride, and a foreigner

P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  85
calling its prominence into question embar- Renan, Cory, and I pass the spoon, each of us
rassed some Burmese. (Tragically, Andy Tyson gulping down hot soup, while the wind punch-
was killed in a plane crash in April.) es at the tent like a boxer working a heavy bag.
In fact the Burmese expedition had set out to When the pot has cooled, we hand it around
prove that Hkakabo Razi was still the country’s and swill the last of the liquid. We pack snow
highest peak. Before disappearing on the upper inside the pot, put it back on the stove, and
reaches of the mountain, their ill-fated climbers keep melting snow until each of us has a full
had transmitted a GPS reading of 18,996 feet. hot water bottle, which we will sleep with on
In my own research, I had contacted Rob- our chests. It is so cold we would prefer to just
ert Crippen, an Earth scientist for NASA. We stay locked together around the purring stove
discussed the various methods for measuring all night—screw the toxic fumes—but we don’t
Gamlang and Hkakabo. “The real bottom line is have enough fuel. We turn off the stove knowing
that errors of 30 meters [100 feet] or more might that the next hours will feel like several days.
not be evident, and this is about the difference in We arrange our ropes and packs underneath
these peaks,” he said. “So we have evidence, but ourselves and try to find some way we can all
no proof, for which one is higher.” stretch out. If we lie on our sides, it’s just possible.
The highest mountain in Myanmar would “Nothing I like more than spooning with two
remain a mystery until someone stood on the really smelly dudes,” Cory quips.
summit of Hkakabo with a GPS. We are so smashed together that none of us

86national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

 Blocked by tooth-like have been trying to hold it in for a couple of
rock spires, Mark turns hours. My back has been against the tent wall for
back from the ridge
so long the cold has penetrated through to my
leading to Hkakabo’s
snowy summit. To go on, chest. “I need to start the stove or something.”
the team would’ve had “Get in the middle, I’ll take the outside,” says
to spend a night without Cory. We trade places, and I don’t get warm, but
food, a tent, or sleeping I don’t get any colder. We stay in this position
bags. “We’d have lost
for as long as we can stand it. In the darkest,
digits, if not our lives,”
says Cory. coldest hour, I start imagining someone finding
our bony bodies lined up in the snow like crook-
ed logs. Finally, finally, daybreak comes.

Back in the jungle, two days before reaching

base camp, we met a bone-weary, hollow-eyed
Japanese team that was retreating from Hka-
kabo as if returning from the front lines of an
epic battle. We’d heard about them and had
been concerned that they’d summit ahead of us,
rendering all our efforts meaningless before we
even got to see the mountain. But they’d been
delayed by the rescue of the Burmese climbers.
Eventually, they had made their own attempt
via the west ridge, which was also the route we
intended to take.
Their team leader, Hiro Kuraoka, was injured.
He had slipped among the boulders and badly

If one of us were to slip off the ridge, the only way to

save his life would be for the next climber on the rope
to quickly jump off the opposite side, both men praying
in the millisecond that the rope wouldn’t sever.
can move without elbowing or kneeing each bruised his buttocks. Despite lying in a sleeping
other. We don’t expect to sleep. We expect to bag with a bulging hematoma on his backside,
suffer. We pull our balaclavas down over our Hiro was animated and generous, explaining
faces like knights closing their visors in prepara- their route in detail and showing us numerous
tion for battle. We put our mittens beneath our photos of the topography from various camps.
hips to insulate them against the snow. He said they had been stopped several hundred
Renan and I are on the outside, up against the feet from the summit by a razor’s edge of snow
frost-covered tent walls, while skinny Cory is in and sharp, insurmountable pinnacles.
the middle. It’s like being buried together inside Like two military platoons passing in the
a small tomb. We lie there for hours, each of us night, we exchanged supplies. We gave Hiro a
floating in our own dark thoughts. bottle of ibuprofen, and he gave us stove fuel
“I’m freezing,” I say in the black of night. I and ropes. His team was defeated but alive,

P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  87
Exhausted and disappointed,
Cory (left) and Mark sit by
the fire in Pangnamdim, one
of the last villages on the trek
out of the jungle. “We wanted
an old-school adventure, and
we got one,” says Mark. As
for success? “The mountain
always decides.”
RENAN OZTURK
All serious mountaineers have big egos. You cannot
take on the risks and constant suffering of big mountains
without one. We may talk like Buddhists, but don’t be
fooled, we’re actually hard-driving narcissists.

which in the end is all that really matters. Meru Central via the Shark’s Fin, a brutal climb
After nearly two weeks of trekking, we finally many thought impossible. And over 35 years
climbed out of the fetid jungle onto the rising of climbing, I’d done first ascents in Antarcti-
southern flank of Hkakabo. The tropical humid- ca and the Rockies, Alps, and Himalaya. These
ity gave way to a bracing alpine mist, and we dug experiences didn’t change any of the inherent
into our bags for fleeces and down jackets. We’d dangers, but it did mean we three were able to
all lost weight and were tired from the arduous move faster and implicitly trust each other with
trek. And we were running out of time. In plan- our lives as we tried for the summit.
ning the expedition, we had agreed to be home That night, at camp 3, Renan and Cory both
by Thanksgiving. In Kingdon-Ward’s time, the privately expressed concerns about climbing
end point of an expedition was rarely based on any farther with the entire team. We spent the
a preset date, but in our modern age, time is next day in our tents acclimatizing, and there
the least available commodity. We had just 10 was no way around the painful conversation.
days before we had to begin our hike out. I knew In his soft-spoken way, Renan noted that the
Ozaki had needed 25 days from base camp to climbing was going to get more dangerous. It
climb the mountain. was also pointed out that three people moving
Over the next week, we put in three camps fast had the best chance of summiting in the
up the spine of the west ridge, but under time brief time we had left. Emily readily agreed
pressure and faced with the difficulty of the that she was in over her head. But Hilaree was
terrain, relations among the team were fray- deeply offended and insisted that she should
ing. I was especially concerned when Hilaree go for the summit. I explained it was an issue
reached camp 2 dangerously hypothermic. of safety for the whole team, but Hilaree was
We got her warm, but it was a cautionary mo- wounded. “I’m going to say one thing,” she
ment. The next day, climbing to camp 3, neither said, her voice welling with emotion as she left
Emily nor Hilaree appeared comfortable on the tent, “[Expletive] you, Mark, for the vote
the steep, exposed faces of ice and snow and of confidence.”
moved slowly. Nothing is more damning in the mountains
In retrospect we should have expected this than hubris, yet hubris is fundamental to climb-
slower pace. Emily is a national sport-climbing ing mountains. All serious mountaineers pos-
champion but had little experience climbing sess big egos. You cannot take on the risks and
this kind of mixed terrain. Hilaree is a renowned constant suffering of big mountains without
ski mountaineer with some challenging alpine one. We may talk like Buddhists, but don’t be
climbing expeditions on her résumé. But Cory, fooled, we’re actually narcissists—driven, sin-
Renan, and I have deeper backgrounds in this gle-minded, masochistic narcissists. Nearly all of
type of environment. Cory had been the first us, on some mountain at some time, have defied
American to summit Pakistan’s 26,362-foot logic and refused to turn around, as Hilaree was
Gasherbrum II in winter—and survived an av- doing now. Some of us have been lucky enough
alanche in the process. Renan had been part to survive those misguided moments. This may
of the team that summited India’s 20,702-foot sound harsh, but I’m at a season in my climbing

90national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

career where openness and honesty trump polite “I’m scared,” Cory says. “I’m really [expletive]
silence, even with my friends. scared. I think we should turn around.”
We were all weary, light-headed from the thin His naked honesty is strangely comforting.
air, and fearful of what lay ahead, and the con- He’s saying what we all feel. But Renan and I
versations over the next hours devolved into aren’t ready to turn back. I lead down around a
shouting, accusations, and recriminations. snowcapped block, up through a narrow hallway
Eventually, Cory couldn’t stand the rancor and between two slabs of rock, hook along a crescent
said Hilaree could take his place on the summit of snow, and suddenly the entire route to the
team. Renan and I were concerned but reluc- summit appears before me. I am aghast.
tantly agreed to the new plan. We knew we had one more deep notch in the
At three the next morning, as we began to ridge to negotiate, but I see now that it is filled
rope up, with a freezing Tibetan wind howling, with massive stone teeth, like the jawbone of
Hilaree made the correct decision. She said it a dinosaur. It would take us hours, well into
was too cold for her, reasoning that if she had a the night, to climb through this wind-gnashed
second bout with hypothermia, she might en- maw. To summit would require another night
danger the team. She told Cory to go instead. on the mountain, but this time without a tent,
stove, food, or water. We would be perched on a
“Why do we do this?” Cory asks, struggling ledge on the side of the mountain in the wind in
like a contortionist to put his boots on inside the dark, and we would freeze to death. It is the
the tiny tent. “Really! Why?” His hands are too point of no return.
numb to tie the laces. “Because it’s so much fun,” I realize we will not reach the top. We will not
Renan says drily, pressing his elbows against the measure the height of Hkakabo Razi. We will not
snapping tent walls. solve the mystery of Myanmar’s tallest moun-
After 39 days of boats and trains, snakes and tain. I have been carrying a photo of Mike Moe
leeches; after clawing up the sheer faces of Hka- and Keith Spencer for the entire expedition. In
kabo’s west ridge; today is summit day. We each it, Mike and Keith are standing on a mountain
take slugs of steaming tea until the pot’s empty, wearing puffy down coats, helmets, and wide
then reluctantly crawl out of the tent into the grins. I so fiercely wanted to place this picture
battering wind. Spindrift is whirling around us. on the summit. But it is not to be. I paw out a
The sun is a distant cold ball. We click on our little hole and place the photo in the snow. I take
crampons, rope up, and start climbing. Our feet a GPS reading at our high point, 18,841 feet, then
and fingers are numb, but moving beats trem- climb slowly back along the ridge to Renan and
bling in the tent. Our blood starts pumping, and Cory. They already know our expedition is over.
warmth gradually returns to our cores. All we want now is to get down alive. j
Together we traverse the first of a series of
large rock spires. To either side, a mile below See a five-minute
us, is an ocean of clouds. If one of us were to slip excerpt from Down to
off the lance-like ridge, the only way to save his Nothing, an award-winning
film shot by expedition
life would be for the next climber on the rope
member Renan Ozturk
to quickly throw himself off the opposite side, and produced by Camp
both men praying in the millisecond of potential 4 Collective, available
oblivion that the rope isn’t pulled taut over a in the magazine’s digital
knife-sharp rock and severed. This is the depth editions and at ngm.com/
more. This expedition was
of trust required in mountain climbing. This is
sponsored by a grant from
how you transcend yourself and bond with your National Geographic’s
climbing partners. It is the reason we climb. Expeditions Council and
We gather on a little point of snow to reassess. The North Face.

P o i n t o f N o R et u r n  91
True
Colors
Chameleons communicate with color change,
hunt with lightning-fast tongues—and live
in some of Earth’s most threatened habitats.

“Where light is, chameleons change,” wrote Percy Bysshe

Shelley. The poet had the science right: Light-reflecting crystals
in skin cells give these panther chameleons their varied colors.

93
The better a juvenile
panther chameleon
can blend in with
its surroundings,
the safer it is from
predators. The
species is native
to Madagascar and
continental Africa.
Male panther chame-
leons face off, display-
ing intimidating colors.
If one doesn’t back
down, the confrontation
may escalate to hissing,
ramming, and biting.
 AFRICA Ambilobe
MADAGASCAR

MADAGASCAR
Antananarivo
INDIAN
OCEAN

0 mi 150

0 km 150
NGM MAPS

By Patricia Edmonds
Photographs by Christian Ziegler

F
 
or sheer breadth of freakish Scientists recently have made important dis-
anatomical features, the cha- coveries about chameleon physiology by watch-
meleon has few rivals. A tongue ing the lizards in captivity. Their future in the
far longer than its body, shoot- wild, meanwhile, is far from certain.
ing out to snatch insects in a When the International Union for Conser-
fraction of a second. Telescopic- vation of Nature (IUCN) released a new Red
vision eyes that swivel inde- List assessment of chameleons last November,
pendently in domed turrets. Feet with toes it ranked at least half the species as threatened
fused into mitten-like pincers. Horns sprouting or near threatened. Anderson is a member of
from brow and snout. Knobbly nasal orna- the IUCN Chameleon Specialist Group, as is
ments. A skin flap circling the neck like a lace biologist Krystal Tolley, a National Geographic
ruff on an Elizabethan noble. grantee whose expeditions in southern Africa
Of all its corporeal quirks, the chameleon have documented new chameleon species and
is most defined by one, noted as far back as vanishing habitats.
Aristotle: color-changing skin. It’s a popular In Afrikaans, says Tolley, chameleons have
myth that chameleons take on the color of what two common names. One is verkleurmannetjies,
they touch. Though some color changes do help which means “colorful little men.” The other,
them blend into their surroundings, the skin’s trapsuutjies, translates as “treading carefully.”
changing hue is in fact a physiological reaction That refers to the lizards’ odd, slow gait—but
that’s mostly for communication. It’s the lizard also could be read as a plea to conserve the
using colorful language, expressing itself about curious species and their home terrain.
things that affect it: courtship, competition,
environmental stress. ABOUT 40 PERCENT of the 200-plus known
At least that’s the belief today. “Even though chameleon species are found on the island of
chameleons have attracted attention for cen- Madagascar. Most of the rest live on the African
turies, there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding continent. Thanks to DNA testing, some chame-
them,” says Christopher Anderson, a biology leons that look nearly identical have been found
postdoctoral associate at Brown University and to be genetically distinct. More than 20 percent
a chameleon expert. “We’re still piecing together of the known species have been identified in just
how their mechanisms actually work,” from the the past 15 years.
explosive projection of the tongue to the physics Given their many odd traits, chameleons
of the varying skin colors. “have always intrigued naturalists,” Anderson

98national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

 Madagascar’s chameleons can be as tiny as Brookesia micra, its body less than an inch
long, and as large as a two-foot-long Oustalet’s chameleon, seen here by baobab trees.

says. Because the lizards often died on the bone surrounded by sheaths of elastic, collage-
journey from Madagascar and the African con- nous tissue inside a tubular accelerator muscle.
tinent to Western laboratories, early herpetol- When the chameleon spies an insect, it pro-
ogists could only guess at how live chameleons trudes its tongue from its mouth, and the mus-
worked. That yielded theories that seem laugh- cle contracts, squeezing the sheaths, which
able now, he says: “It was once thought that the shoot out as if spring-loaded. The tongue tip is
chameleon tongue projected because it inflated shaped so that it acts like a wet suction cup,
with air or filled with blood, like erectile tissue.” grabbing the prey. The tongue recoils; dinner
Anderson studies chameleon feeding in in- is served.
tricate detail. Using a camera that captures Scientists have more to learn about tongue
3,000 frames a second, he turned 0.56 seconds projection, Anderson says. His research sug-
of a chameleon eating a cricket into a 28-second gests that in some chameleons, it may go even
instructional video on projection mechanics. farther and faster than previously thought.
Stored in the lizard’s throat pouch is a tongue The understanding of chameleon coloration

c h a m e l e o n s  99
An insect succumbs
to a foraging Calumma
chameleon, whose
extremely sharp vision
allows it to project its
long tongue with
pinpoint accuracy.
also has changed over time—and dramatically Henn knows because the chameleon’s red bars
earlier this year, when Michel Milinkovitch’s get a little brighter.
research was published. Scientists had long Henn carries Ember on the stick around a
thought that chameleons changed color when corner to the cage inhabited by Bolt, an adult
skin cell pigments spread out along veinlike male blue-bar panther chameleon and the larg-
cell extensions. Milinkovitch, an evolutionary est lizard in Henn’s collection. When Henn
geneticist and biophysicist, says that theory opens the door, and Bolt sees Ember, the response
didn’t wash, because there are many green cha- is immediate. By the time Bolt has advanced a
meleons but no green pigments in their skin cells. few inches, his green bands have turned vivid
So Milinkovitch and his University of Geneva yellow, and his eye sockets, throat, and spiked
colleagues began “doing physics and biology spine have changed from green to red orange.
together,” he says. Beneath a layer of pigmen- Ember becomes redder—but as shows go, Bolt’s
tary skin cells, they found another layer of skin is far more flamboyant. For good measure, as
cells containing nanoscale crystals arranged in Bolt crawls nearer, his mouth gapes wide, dis-
a triangular lattice. playing bright yellow gums.
By exposing samples of chameleon skin to Henn retreats and puts Ember back in his
pressure and chemicals, the researchers discov- cage. Had he not, he says, Bolt might have tried
ered that these crystals can be “tuned” to alter to ram or bite Ember, whose skin almost cer-
the spacing between them. That in turn affects tainly would have changed to brown—the color
the color of light that the lattice of crystals of crying uncle. (A 2014 study concluded that
reflects. As the distance between the crystals chameleons developed this fade-to-drab sub-
increases, the reflected colors shift from blue to missive ability because their “slow-moving life-
green to yellow to orange to red—a kaleidoscopic style severely restricts their ability to rapidly
display that’s common among some panther and safely flee from dominant individuals.”)
chameleons as they progress from relaxed to Though all chameleons change color, some
agitated or amorous. species don’t change dramatically enough to
cow observers. However, almost all chameleons
AT AGE SEVEN, Nick Henn got his first chame- do have another technique for physical intimi-
leon. Twenty years later the hobbyist and breed- dation: They can make themselves look larger.
er keeps as many as 200 of them in the basement They narrow the width and increase the height
of his business in Reading, Pennsylvania. of their bodies by unfolding their jointed,
Rows of wire-mesh cages contain plants for V-shaped ribs to elevate their spine. They also
climbing and sandy floors where females can can look more massive by coiling their tails
lay eggs. Lights and misters simulate the lizards’ tightly and using their tongue apparatus to ex-
native climes. Arranging the cages is as tricky pand their throats. Turning this profile to its
as seating warring factions at a United Nations nemesis, the lizard looks significantly bulkier.
summit. To keep the animals from riling each In the cages where Henn keeps female cha-
other, Henn places females where they can’t see meleons, one named Katy Perry—salmon pink
males, and males where they can’t see females— because she’s ready to mate—is next door to one
or rival males. named Peanut, pink with dark bars because she
Ember, a young male panther chameleon, is has already mated and is gravid, carrying eggs.
a so-called red bar, a variety that’s native to the If Katy were approached by a male that im-
Ambilobe district in northern Madagascar. His pressed her with his courtship colors and bob-
torso has red and green zebra stripes plus an bing, swaying dance, she might submit to being
aqua blue racing stripe along each side. When mounted. If the same male approached Peanut,
Henn opens Ember’s cage and prods him to she would become intensely darker with bright
climb onto a long stick, he “gets grumpy,” which spots and open her maw menacingly at him. If

102national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

Color Coding
Color changes
take 30 seconds
to two minutes.

Chameleons can quickly change their appearance

in response to temperature, environment, and
mood. Scientists recently identified a key factor in
their ability to do this: The lizards can “tune” the
distances between nanoscale crystals in their skin
that reflect light, creating a spectrum of colors.
Panther chameleon
Furcifer pardalis

Under Its Skin

SUBMISSIVE NEUTRAL EXCITED
A chameleon turns darker when it needs to At rest, it’s typically green or brown to Vibrant colors can signal aggres-
demonstrate that it’s not a threat—such as match its environment. Blue and green sion or a desire to mate. Crystals
after losing a fight—by dispersing melanin, wavelengths reflect off tightly packed move wider apart, reflecting yellow,
a dark pigment, into its upper skin layers. crystals; red and yellow pass through. orange, and red wavelengths.

LIGHT Erythrophore
Xanthophore
These cells contain Cells with red pigment
yellow pigment. are usually in the areas
of skin that form stripes.

S
MI
D ER
PI IS
E RM
DE

Melanophore
The melanin in
these cells moves
up when the 150
chameleon is microns
submissive, down (About
when it’s excited. twice the
Iridophore
diameter of a
These cells human hair)
contain the
nanocrystals.

Crystal Power
The transparent nanocrystals,
made of the DNA building block
IN A RESTING THE CRYSTALS
guanine, form a lattice. Their thick- CHAMELEON, SPREAD OUT WHEN
ness, spacing, and refractive index CRYSTALS FORM A CHAMELEON IS
500
determine what color is created. A TIGHT LATTICE. nanometers EXCITED.

MANUEL CANALES, NGM STAFF; MEG ROOSEVELT. ART: SHIZUKA AOKI

SOURCES: DEVI STUART-FOX; RUSSEL LIGON; KRISTOPHER KARSTEN; MICHEL C. MILINKOVITCH,
JEREMIE TEYSSIER, SUZANNE V. SAENKO, DIRK VAN DER MAREL (INSET PHOTOS)
After these male
panther chameleons
fought over a female,
the victor still sports
fighting colors, while
the loser has taken on
a submissive dark hue.
Madagascar is home to more than 40 percent
of all chameleon species. Clockwise from top
right: An O’Shaughnessy’s chameleon sleeps
clinging to a branch. Rostral protuberances—
which help individuals of like species identify
each other and can be used as jousting
weapons—adorn the snouts of a long-nosed
chameleon, a Will’s chameleon, and a Parson’s
chameleon, one of the largest species.
he persisted, she’d hiss or try to bite him.
Both male and female chameleons are
polygamous. Most species are egg layers,
but some deliver live young in clear,
cocoon-like sacs. Chameleons do no par-
enting, so the young are on their own as
soon as they’re born or hatched.
To avoid the birds and snakes that
hunt them, chameleons have evolved
novel ways to hide. Most species are
arboreal; when they narrow their bodies,
they’re slender enough to hide on the op-
posite side of a branch. If ground dwell-
ing chameleons see a predator, Tolley
says, some “play leaf,” contorting their
bodies to look like crumpled leaves on
the forest floor.
Chameleons can hide from some
threats but not from the slash-and-burn
agriculture destroying their habitats. The
IUCN lists nine species as critically endan-
gered, 37 as endangered, 20 as vulnerable,
and 35 as near threatened.

TOLLEY AND HER TEAM have identified

11 new chameleon species since 2006, in
South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Massachusetts-born professor has
studied the lizards in Africa since 2001
and works for the South African National
Biodiversity Institute in Cape Town.
When a genetics study confirms that
a chameleon is a new species, “it feels
like you’re not just writing some ran-
dom scientific paper that nobody will
read,” Tolley says. “You’re accomplishing
something—this is going to be forever.”
In the next breath she notes that “at
the same time as thinking, ‘Wow, this is so
cool,’ it was awful. I keep envisioning the
little chameleons clinging to their branches
as that forest is getting chopped.” The entire life cycle of the
Labord’s chameleon lasts
Describing it, her voice breaks. “I could
roughly a year. Some chame-
not help thinking, I wish we’d never found leon species may live a dozen
them,” she says. “Because if this doesn’t years in captivity, but less than
stop, they’ll soon be extinct.” j half that in the wild.

108national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

 Panama-based Christian Ziegler Did your subjects for my biggest surprise was a
trained in tropical ecology before this assignment ever sad one, to realize how tiny
becoming a photojournalist. His surprise you? their remaining habitats are.
natural history, conservation, and sci- Every day, with their Chameleons, along with
ence images have won World Press amazing hunting behavior other creatures on Mada-
Photo awards and other honors. and strange beauty. But gascar, really need our help.
REBECCA HALE,
NGM STAFF

 109
Rescuing
Mes Aynak
Under threat of Taliban attack,
archaeologists are excavating a
spectacular Buddhist complex
before it’s obliterated by a huge
copper-mining operation.

110
The play of perspective makes an eight-foot-tall stone
shrine at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, appear much larger
than it is. Archaeologists have uncovered only a
fraction of the sprawling Buddhist complex, which
dates from the third to the eighth centuries A.D.
BODHISATTVA, SCHIST, 15.3 INCHES, 3RD-5TH CENTURY 11.4-INCH FRAGMENT OF 7-FOOT-TALL BUDDHA, CLAY, 5TH-6TH C.* DIPANKARA, AN EARLIER BUDDHA, SCHIST, 3RD-5TH C.

WARRIOR (ORIGINALLY ON A HORSE), CLAY, 4TH-5TH C.* FEMALE PATRON, PAINTED CLAY, 32 INCHES, 5TH-7TH C. HORSE, CLAY, 3.3 INCHES LONG, 3RD-7TH C.*

BUDDHAS IN TWO TIERS, SCHIST, 9.8 INCHES, 3RD-4TH C. COIN ISSUED IN NAME OF HUN KING KHINGILA, SILVER, 5TH C.* SEATED SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA, SCHIST, 11.2 INCHES, 3RD-5TH C.
The thousands of
artifacts that have come
to light reflect the wealth
that copper brought to
this religious and indus-
trial site. A sampling
includes a rare depiction
of Siddhartha Gautama
before he became the
Buddha (opposite, bottom
right) and the oldest
known complete wooden
Buddha (right), eight
inches tall, from about
A.D. 400 to 600.

MOST ARTIFACTS PHOTOGRAPHED AT NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFGHANISTAN, KABUL; THOSE WITH ASTERISKS PHOTOGRAPHED AT MES AYNAK, COURTESY AFGHAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY
By Hannah Bloch
Photographs by Simon Norfolk

A bout an hour’s drive along

the Gardez highway south of Kabul, beyond the
bustling shops, the trucks spewing diesel ex-
haust, and the clatter of donkey carts, there is
a sharp left turn onto an unpaved road. In a dis-
trict of Logar Province friendly to the Taliban,
the vicinity has been shaken by roadside bombs,
intermittent rocket attacks, kidnappings, and
murders. The road continues along a dry river-
bed, past small villages, paramilitary roadblocks,
sentry towers, and an empty, blue-roofed com-
pound cordoned off with concertina wire.
A little farther on, the view opens onto a tree-
less valley creased with trenches and exposed
ancient walls. Over the past seven years a team
of Afghan and international archaeologists,
supported by up to 650 laborers, has uncovered
thousands of Buddhist statues, manuscripts,
coins, and holy monuments. Entire monaster-
ies and fortifications have come to light, dating
back as far as the third century a.d. More than
a hundred check posts surround the site, which
is patrolled day and night by some 1,700 police.
The excavation is by far the most ambitious in
Afghanistan’s history. But the security wasn’t put
in place just to protect a few scientists and some The name of this place is understated: Mes
local workers. Buried below the ancient ruins is Aynak, “little copper well.” There is nothing lit-
a lode of copper ore that extends two and a half tle about Mes Aynak. In 2007 the Beijing-based
miles across and runs a mile or more into the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC),
Baba Wali mountain, which dominates the site. leading a state-backed consortium, won rights
It ranks as one of the world’s largest untapped to extract the copper here on a 30-year lease.
deposits, containing an estimated 12.5 million (China is ravenous for copper: It now consumes
tons of copper. In antiquity, copper made the half the world’s supply.) The company made a
Buddhist monks here wealthy; colossal deposits bid worth more than three billion dollars and
of purple, blue, and green slag, the solidified res- promised to provide infrastructure for this iso-
idue from their smelting, spill down the slopes lated, underdeveloped district, including roads,
of Baba Wali, attesting to production on a nearly a railway, and a 400-megawatt electricity plant.
industrial scale. The Afghan government hopes Afghan officials estimated that the mine would
that copper will help make the country wealthy provide a $1.2 billion infusion into the coun-
again, or at least self-sufficient. try’s fragile economy, dependent since 2002

114national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

on foreign assistance and now facing a seven- Stained by copper in the soil, a skeleton lies
billion-dollar annual deficit. next to a stupa at Mes Aynak. Whether the
individual lived when the monasteries were
Mes Aynak’s archaeological potential has
functioning or in a later era is unknown.
been known for decades. When the Chinese
deal became public, Afghan cultural heritage
advocates demanded that the place’s ancient to document as much as possible now in a sys-
treasures be excavated and recorded properly tematic way.
before they were lost to an open-pit mine. But Despite the heavy security, present-day dan-
the artifacts were already in danger: not from de- gers have delayed the mine’s development. The
struction by the Taliban, but from being plucked blue-roofed compound, built for Chinese en-
out piecemeal by looters, lost to science. “If it gineers, was abandoned after a series of rocket
will not be destroyed by mining, it will be de- attacks in 2012 and 2013. Land mines left be-
stroyed by looting,” says French archaeologist hind by the Soviets in the 1980s and explosive
Philippe Marquis, who directed excavations devices left more recently by the Taliban and
at the site from 2009 to 2014. Better, he says, al Qaeda pose yet another danger, and eight

Mes Ay nak 115

When this photo was taken in 2012, some 500 local
laborers were employed at the site, hurrying to rescue
its treasures before mining was due to begin. With
mining delayed, a smaller crew works today in an area
where insurgent influence is growing.
mine-clearing specialists were killed by the lead Afghan archaeologist on the project.
Taliban in 2014. (When Afghanistan was under In the first centuries A.D. the Gandharan
Taliban control, Mes Aynak was the site of an Buddhists revolutionized the region’s art, re-
elite al Qaeda camp where four of the hijackers fining an aesthetic sensibility that had syn-
who took part in the 2001 attacks on New York thesized the vestiges of earlier centuries of
City and Washington, D.C., underwent training, conquest. They were among the first artists in
according to the 9/11 Commission.) the world to depict the Buddha in realistic, hu-
Add to the security challenges the logistical man form—a Hellenistic innovation from the
complications—the lack of a railway to trans- days of Alexander the Great, who first marched
port the copper out of the region and a serious through Afghanistan in 330 B.C. At Mes Aynak
scarcity of water—and it’s no surprise that min- chapels have been uncovered with double-life-
ing, originally projected to start in 2012, has not size Buddha statues still bearing traces of their
yet commenced. In 2013 the MCC began to back red, blue, yellow, and orange painted robes;

Delays in the copper mining have given

archaeologists considerably more time to excavate.
The past they’re revealing presents a stark contrast
to the violence and disorder of their own time.

off from some terms of its contract, and the two caches of gold jewelry; fragments of ancient
sides have yet to renegotiate the agreement. manuscripts; and walls adorned with frescoes.
It’s unlikely that any extraction will take place One niche yielded a schist statue featuring a
before 2018, if then. rare depiction of Siddhartha Gautama before
The delays have given archaeologists con- he became the Buddha.
siderably more time to excavate than they had Cascades of copper coins from the third to
expected, though with a greatly reduced work- seventh centuries A.D. have also spilled from
force. The past they’re revealing presents a stark the site, collected from the floors of dwell-
contrast to the violence and disorder of their ings and from where they had been carefully
own time. From the third to the eighth centuries cached by the hundreds. Many bear the image
A.D., Mes Aynak was a spiritual hub that flour- of the second-century Kushan ruler Kanishka
ished in relative peace. At least seven multistory the Great. He may or may not have practiced
Buddhist monastery complexes, containing chap- Buddhism—but he welcomed it and other re-
els, monks’ quarters, and other rooms, form an ligious traditions in his empire, notably fire-
arc around the site, each protected by ancient worshipping Zoroastrianism, which originated
watchtowers and high walls. Within these for- in ancient Persia. Many of the coins found at
tified complexes and residences the archaeol- Mes Aynak depict Kanishka on one side and ei-
ogists have uncovered nearly a hundred schist ther a seated Buddha or a Persian deity, such as
and clay stupas, Buddhist reliquaries that were Ardokhsha, a goddess of fortune, on the other.
central to worship. The stupas range in size from “Kanishka’s coinage was valued from Rome
monumental to easily portable. to China,” says longtime Kabul resident Nancy
Mes Aynak was also a key economic center Hatch Dupree, 87, the U.S.-born grande dame
in Gandhara, a region spanning what’s now of Afghan heritage scholars. “There are 23 gods
eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Paki- and goddesses on Kushan coinage. This sym-
stan. Gandhara was a civilizational crossroads, bolizes tolerance. This was a time when people
a place where the great religions of Hinduism, were broadening their thinking.”
Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism met and where Though much is known about ancient Bud-
ancient Greek, Persian, Central Asian, and In- dhism’s links to trade and commerce, little is
dian cultures melded. It was the “center of the known about its relationship to industrial pro-
world,” in the words of Abdul Qadir Temory, the duction. This is where Mes Aynak may be able

118national geographic • s e p t e m b e r 2015

to fill in important blanks, hinting at a more Aerial shots taken in 2010 of a mound called
complex Buddhist economic system than has Shah Tepe revealed looters’ pits (left). Within
a year archaeologists had uncovered a grand
been previously understood. Unlike the far bet-
fortified building (right).
ter known Bamian—an ancient Buddhist pil-
grimage site and Silk Road caravan center 125
miles to the northwest, formerly home to two history, and for Afghanistan’s new generation,
colossal, sixth-century Buddha statues carved it’s very important to know about it,” he says,
out of a cliff face, blasted to rubble by the Tali- holding a small shovel while taking a break from
ban in 2001—Mes Aynak seems to have thrived digging. “Otherwise we are just famous for ter-
primarily because it was a copper extraction rorism and poppy production.”
and production hub, a Pittsburgh to Bamian’s
New York. The sacred monastic complexes are Mes Aynak’s landscape is completely defor-
right on top of the copper ore. ested today, and it’s possible that ancient copper
“I do not know of any other site where mon- smelting played a role in the area’s denuding—
asteries coexisted in perfect [symbiosis] with which in turn may have ended copper produc-
production or industrial centers,” says Ze- tion. Huge quantities of wood had to be burned
maryalai Tarzi, an Afghan archaeologist who to make charcoal, and up to 20 pounds of char-
first visited Mes Aynak with a French team in coal could be required to extract a single pound
1973. “These kinds of tight relationships be- of copper from ore. Enough was needed to heat
tween Buddhist monasteries and the industrial a fire to almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and
or commercial exploiters of natural resources keep a small furnace roaring up to several days.
have no precedent.” Thomas Eley, an archaeometallurgy special-
ist from Great Britain who did fieldwork at Mes
Puzzling out the full meaning of Mes Aynak Aynak in 2012, has detected a shift in its copper
will require decades—and a new generation of production over time from a relatively efficient
archaeologists. After earning his degree at Ka- form of smelting to a slower and more painstak-
bul University, Sultan Masoud Muradi, 24, the ing process—the opposite of what he’d expected
son of a Kabul construction worker, competed to find. But the more efficient process, known
to take part in excavations at the site. He’s proud as tapped smelting, also happens to be more
that he and his colleagues represent different fuel intensive. As the supply of trees for making
ethnicities and work easily together—no small charcoal dwindled, the smelters could have been
matter in a country riven in the 1990s by a hor- forced to fall back on the slower method.
rific civil war among mujahideen groups divid- Processing so much copper also required a re-
ed along ethnic lines. “We have 5,000 years of liable water supply to wash the ore and quench
white-hot ingots. That water probably came
Q Society Grant Satellite mapping of Mes Aynak was from mountain springs, shallow streams, and
funded by your National Geographic membership. ancient underground (Continued on page 128)

ICONEM-DAFA, COMPOSITE OF 300 IMAGES (BOTH) Mes Ay nak 119

 STORAGE ROOM
Large earthenware vessels
stored food and water.

DINING
ROOM

MONK CELLS

The Monks
of the Mines
The fortified Kafiriat Tepe monastery, depicted here as it may have looked
in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., was part of the ancient mining complex
of Mes Aynak, an affluent hub of Buddhism. The copper-rich region, 30 miles
south of Kabul, more recently served as an al Qaeda training ground and
a source of antiquities for looters. Archaeologists are trying to uncover and
Stone base
save what they can before the site becomes an open-pit copper mine.
A SI A

AFGHANISTAN 6.6-foot-thick
mud brick
INDIAN
OCEAN
Kafiriat Tepe
(Enlarged at right)

Baba Wa Kabul
li
Mes
City wall AFGHANISTAN Aynak
remains

Monastic MES AYNAK

complex

Defensive Baba Wali

tower
Shah
Chapel Estimated Tepe
extent of wall
SOUTHERN CHAPEL
Mining area Massive clay statues of
the Buddha, influenced
Urban area by classical Greco-
Siso K
hwa r Roman and Indian art
Slag deposit forms, are flanked by
smaller depictions of
devotees and bodhi-
SCALE VARIES IN THIS PERSPECTIVE. DISTANCE FROM N
KAFIRIAT TEPE TO SHAH TEPE IS 0.5 MILE (0.8 KILOMETER). sattvas, those on the
path to enlightenment.

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, RYAN MORRIS, AND EMILY M. ENG, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY. 3-D MODEL: ICONEM-DAFA.
ART: ROCIO ESPIN; JOSE DANIEL CABRERA. SOURCES: PHILIPPE MARQUIS; NICOLAS ENGEL; CATHERINE HEIM
 PR
IVA GODLY AND WORLDLY
TE Kafiriat Tepe provided private areas for monks and
AR
EA
public areas for general worship. Paintings in the
halls and chapels celebrate both secular and religious
powers. This suggests that the monastery was sup-
ported by the ruling elite, and could help shed light
on Buddhism’s social and political history.

PU
BLI
CA
REA

NORTHERN CHAPEL
CENTRAL DEFENSIVE TOWERS
COURTYARD

PRINCIPAL GATE
STUPAS
Holes left by looters
reveal that large stupas,
venerated monuments
housing sacred relics,
may have been built over
older, smaller ones.

STUPA COURTYARD
Skin often painted Prayer flags wave
pink or gold overhead as monks
and visitors circum-
Gypsum coating ambulate stupas
with enshrined
Clay body statues. Soldiers
stand guard along
Core of bound the defensive walls
twigs and grass
of the monastery.
Archaeologists have unearthed a neighborhood of
mud-brick houses, craft workshops, and possible
administrative buildings. Shah Tepe, looming behind,
was fortified but bore few signs of violence.
PANORAMA COMPOSED OF THREE IMAGES
Ancient faces—of the
Buddha, eight inches tall,
in gilded plaster (above), and
of local figures, in painted
clay (far right)—evoke a time
when Mes Aynak was a
crossroads of Central Asia.
The modern faces belong to
members of the dig team
working to save a piece of
their country’s rich cultural
heritage from oblivion.
 PATRON, 2.8 INCHES, 4TH-7TH CENTURY

PATRON, 5.9 INCHES, 5TH-7TH C.* PATRON, 2.8 INCHES, 4TH-7TH C.

PATRON OR BODHISATTVA, 3.9 INCHES, 4TH-7TH C.

irrigation channels called karez, which are still
used in parts of Afghanistan. One 30-foot-long
karez has been excavated in the northern sec-
tion of the site, probably part of a network of
such channels. The ongoing deforestation could
have reduced the area’s rainfall, making water
even scarcer.
A paucity of water remains a concern in this
drought-prone region, and a major obstacle to
future mining. Integrity Watch Afghanistan,
a Kabul think tank, reported in 2013 that vil-
lagers around Mes Aynak complained that the
water table dropped by more than six feet after
preliminary drilling. “When copper produc-
tion starts, it will require seven million liters
[1.85 million gallons] in one eight-hour shift,”
says Javed Noorani, who authored the Integ-
rity Watch report. “The area is already water
deficient.”

The archaeologists must cope with a prob-

lem not of scarcity but of overabundance: The rate
at which the excavation has proceeded risks out-
pacing the ability to store and protect everything
coming out of the ground. “Excavation is easy,”
says Omar Sultan, Afghanistan’s former deputy
culture minister and a Greek-trained archae-
ologist. “Safeguarding is the hard thing to do.”
More than a thousand of the most important
pieces have gone straight to the National Mu-
seum of Afghanistan in Kabul. “Unfortunately
we cannot accept all the artifacts,” says Omara
Khan Massoudi, for many years the director of
the museum. “There is no place for them.”
For now the thousands of Mes Aynak objects
that aren’t at the museum sit in temporary
storage at or near the site. Most have not been
analyzed or studied. Massoudi and Sultan talk mining delays could pose more dire threats.
of erecting a local museum someday, but more Mes Aynak’s security depends in large part on
likely, at least in the short term, there would be ensuring that local men, vulnerable to the lure or
a virtual museum and online reconstruction to coercion of the Taliban, stay gainfully employed.
preserve Mes Aynak’s memory after the min- Many resent having been displaced from their
ing begins. villages to make way for the copper mine. The
But first Afghanistan’s security challenges World Bank, which has been supporting the
must be resolved. And in the long term more archaeological work through a project with Af-
ghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum,
estimates that the mine will eventually provide
U.K.-based photographer Simon 4,500 direct jobs and many more thousands of
Norfolk specializes in landscapes. indirect ones, though there’s growing skepticism
Over the past 12 years he has ex-
plored through his work the meaning that the jobs will ever materialize.
of the word “battlefield” and the Over the years a few hundred men have been
many ways it can be interpreted. paid generously by local standards to wield
pickaxes and shovels or do other menial work Searching for treasure, looters ravaged this
at the archaeological site. But “if you have no larger-than-life-size Buddha. “Archaeology is
food or salary, when your children are hun- the only way to protect the site,” says Philippe
Marquis, who oversaw excavations until 2014.
gry, you’ll do anything,” says Habib Rahman.
“Maybe join the Taliban. They pay a salary.” In
2001 the gray-bearded, 42-year-old father lost that the Taliban have threatened some workers,
a leg to a land mine while herding goats. Now he accusing them of promoting Buddhism. Still,
walks with the aid of crutches two hours each there’s admiration for the achievements of the
way from his mountain village to wash pottery past. “My forefathers were Muslim,” says one
sherds at Mes Aynak. 36-year-old laborer and Afghan Army veteran
The hardscrabble lives of locals like Rahman who gave his name only as Javed. “But we know
are not likely to change much in the immedi- a lot of generations passed through this ground.
ate future. Many are ambivalent about the rich When I am working, I am thinking that here was
history they’re helping reveal, feeling no per- a civilization, a factory, a city, kings here. Yes,
sonal ties to a pre-Islamic past. It doesn’t help this is Afghanistan also.” j

Mes Ay nak 129

 PROOF A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL | proof.nationalgeographic.com

Fowler’s toad Anaxyrus fowleri

Art from
W

hen Joshua White was
growing up in southeast-
ern Indiana, he would lie
an American in his backyard for hours
observing ants and june
Backyard bugs. He encountered the little creatures with
a sense of wonder and struggled to understand
the mysteries of the natural world. He cap-
tured his entomological discoveries in pickle
By JAMES ESTRIN
Photographs by JOSHUA WHITE jars, Styrofoam cups, or his hands.
White grew up to become an artist. He re-
cently moved to North Carolina, where he still
spends considerable time much as he did in
childhood: walking near his house and care-
fully looking at his surroundings. What has

130
Praying mantis Mantidae

changed is that he now captures his tiny sub- but are rarely considered noteworthy. “You
jects with a smartphone camera that allows don’t have to travel to exotic locations to make
him to interpret them artistically and share an interesting picture,” he contends. “Beauty
them with viewers beyond his backyard. is around us all the time.”
His lifelong fascination with the natural White is convinced that most of us don’t
world is embodied in his project “A Photo- think often enough about the world we inhabit
graphic Survey of the American Yard.” Its “or what goes on under our feet.” The photo-
sepia-toned photographs and design layout graphs he shares—on Instagram and Tumblr
resemble the elegant, hand-drawn scientific as well as in museums and art galleries—gently
catalogs of species of the 19th century. demand that attention be paid to beings that
Though Charles Darwin traveled great are, in many ways, the bedrock of the physical
distances to observe and sketch plants and ecosystem. Though these creatures are often
animals that existed in nearly inaccessible regarded as inconveniences or pests, White’s
locations, White documents the plants and images ask us to recognize not only that they’re
animals that are abundant in everyday life here but also that they’re crucial. j
Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia fulgida Horsefly Tabanidae Centipede Chilopoda

Clematis flower bud Clematis Toad Anaxyrus Canna lily fruit (dissected) Canna

Garden snail shell Gastropoda Crow garlic Allium vineale Stone fly Perlidae

Deer mouse Peromyscus Acorn Quercus Asteraceae

Jack-o’-lantern mushroom Omphalotus Eastern gray squirrel Sciurus carolinensis

Holly seedling Ilex Clematis (petals removed) Clematis

White’s guides on
his photographic
safaris are his dog,
Coco, and his
daughter, Virginia,
who proudly points
out possible
subjects. When
plants, insects,
and small animals
catch his eye,
White carries
them home and
photographs them
Carolina horse nettle Solanum carolinense Cricket Rhaphidophoridae
with his iPhone
on a white back-
ground. After
converting the
photos to black
and white, he adds
a filter, aptly named
Earlybird. All fauna
shown were found
dead except the
Fowler’s toad; White
photographed it
quickly before set-
ting it free.

Common burdock Arctium minus Bottle gourd Lagenaria

Passerine eggs Passeriformes

Annual honesty Lunaria annua Wild grape vine tendril Vitis

Clematis (petals removed) Clematis

White’s subjects are neither rare nor exotic, at least

not in West Jefferson, the small town in the North
Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains where he lives. But
he wonders whether in 50 years some of the flora
or fauna he’s photographed will be endangered or
extinct because of climate change. Though mainly
interested in the beauty inherent in his subjects,
White says he hopes the photos remind viewers of
their own childhood encounters in the natural world.

A m e r i ca n Ya r d  135
 In the Loupe
With Bill Bonner, National Geographic Archivist

Armed Guard
Maynard Owen Williams photographed Tehran’s Bagh-e Melli
gate—then an entry to the Ministry of War complex—while
working on a story for the October 1931 National Geographic.
The 1906 structure echoes traditional Persian architecture, but
a look through the loupe reveals a modern twist: Decorative tiles
showing machine guns adorn the facade.
Today the gate still stands, and the machine guns remain.
The tile-work flags on either side of the guns, though, have been
painted over to conceal the central image of a lion and sun, long-
time symbol of Iran’s rulers. —Margaret G. Zackowitz

PHOTO: MAYNARD OWEN WILLIAMS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

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