National Geographic: Heroes of the High Frontier Page #2

---

Neil was the first to ever glimpse,

not to mention film,

a newly hatched Harpy

chick in the wild.

But his exhilaration

almost proved fatal.

"I had just finished spending three

days in the blind

watching the chick hatch

and I was completely overwhelmed

with, with excitement;

and I started climbing down, using

the belts and the climbing spikes,

and I was just thinking about

other things,

I was daydreaming,

I was so excited that the chick had

actually hatched and I filmed,

in the early morning when the chick

was a tiny little baby,

and I just, I remember leaning

backward

and just falling into space

- and it was like slow motion.

I remember falling down and trying

to grab a hold of the, a palm tree,

crashing through the vegetation and

landing on my back

and then, then I couldn't breathe.

And I looked up and, uh, Wolfgang,

my, uh, associate was coming out of

the blind

and the eagle came and ripped off

a piece of his pants

and flew away with it

- he shot back up in the blind and

he said he'd come down in the dark.

Well, finally, they, they,

he climbed down

and they carried me out in the

stretcher and,

one week later, I was, I was climbing

again, that's how crazy I was."

Protected by luck and a motorcycle

helmet,

Neil suffered only a few broken ribs

from his 55 foot fall.

He continued to film, capturing the

parents hunting

like sharks among the green billows

of the canopy.

Sloths are a favorite prey

of the Harpy.

Usually, they eat part of the carcass

before bringing it to the nest

- but, this time, dinner is delivered

alive.

Neil, who had survived a fall

from five stories,

was felled by a tiny insect bite.

Infected by a parasite,

he was forced to leave.

I knew someday I had to go back

and complete the entire study

and actually document what happens

when that young Harpy makes its

first flight.

Neil was one of the first to venture

up into this high flung new frontier

but he and other pioneers

will soon climb into canopy's

all over the world.

The rainforest canopy is like an

eighth continent,

an archipelago of floating islands

that encircles the globe in a belt

above the equator.

Originally, it covered 12% of the

planet's land area,

but more than half of it has been

destroyed by logging and agriculture.

Yet, it remains home to more than

half of all the animals

and plants living on earth.

Canopy explorers are discovering

that each island of rainforest

has a nature all its own.

Malaysia's canopy is one of the

highest

and most unattainable in the world.

Like giant lollipops, trees rise a

hundred feet

before spreading their crowns into

the clouds.

From miles around, animals are

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes