Interview with Andrea Turkalo
How did your career and passion for the natural world lead to you spending over twenty years camped in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park?
My first overseas experience was in Tunisia where I worked in a national park studying vegetation and after a two year stint there I went to the Central African Republic in 1980 where I worked for two years as a lycee teacher of biology, then I had the opportunity to go to the northern part of the country where I worked in a national park - Gounda-Saint Floris. This was at the height of Sudanese poaching of elephants in the region and at that point I decided that I wanted a career in conservation. Several years later while helping my then husband with work on his doctoral thesis we came to the Dzanga area. No one had ever studied forest elephants using direct observational methods and Dzanga was the perfect site. It is all history from then.I was always attracted to wild places and spending time in the outdoors and never wanted to pursue the “normal” life I observed around me growing up. What truly changed my outlook on the world was joining the U.S Peace Corps which enabled me to live in other countries and learn not only other languages, but immerse myself in other cultures.
Do you have a single most influential or defining moment when you knew that you wanted to study forest elephants?
While working for the World Wildlife Fund in Bayanga, where I was doing public health with the local Bayaka Pygmies, I would go to Dzanga Bai where I realized it was possible to identify the individual elephants. This knowledge of the individuals gave me a sense of empowerment, and I realized that Dzanga was the place to study forest elephants, something no one had ever done.