This entire area lies within a logging concession. In the past 35 years the Congolaise Industrielle de Bois (CIB) company has harvested about 60 percent of the timber in the polygon. The only pristine forests are in the south, where Fay hopes to find elephants, buffalo, and other wildlife congregating in clearings. Even there the clock is ticking: “CIB will log the southern section of the polygon in the next ten years.”

But Fay also points out that this is not the first time humans have felled trees in this polygon. Many of the trees CIB is cutting grew after ancient people exploited the original forest.

“Humans have been in those forests for tens of thousands of years,” says Fay, “and modern man—agricultural, metal-wielding man—has been there for a few thousand years. So they were able to completely transform that forest once already.”