I really love it when Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan get involved in unexpected projects. Unlike the Other Brother and his wife, I get the sense that Harry and Meghan have so many hobbies, interests and passions. This is a massive sidenote, but as I watched the Ken Burns’ The American Revolution docuseries, I got randomly mad that Meghan and Harry weren’t asked to do some voice work on the series. There was a need for British voices with knowledge of the British military too – Harry would have been a natural. Back on topic: Harry has written the foreword for a National Geographic-produced book about the Okavango Delta. Harry has written about this environmentally vital ecosystem before and he’s been an advocate for Africa’s flora and fauna for decades.

Prince Harry is speaking out in support of a region he considers his second home. The Duke of Sussex, 41, penned the foreword to the new book Okavango and the Source of Life by Steve Boyes, out March 3 from National Geographic. Featuring more than 100 photos and detailed maps, the book follows the National Geographic explorer on expeditions to the source of Africa’s famed Okavango Delta, a sanctuary of biodiversity.

The project highlights the work of the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project, which aims to protect an ecosystem that supports the planet’s largest elephant population, as well as lions, cheetahs and hundreds of bird species.

An excerpt from Harry’s foreword:

There are some places on Earth that are so vast, beautiful and alive, they truly open your eyes and mind. The Okavango Delta is one of those places, an enigmatic wetland that disappears into the Kalahari Desert and is home to the world’s largest remaining elephant population — a wilderness beyond comparison. This paradise has been my second home for more than 25 years, a place to escape and be enveloped by nature’s sheer magnificence.

Back in 1997, in Huambo, Angola, just a few miles from one of the sources of the Okavango, my mother walked through a live minefield being cleared by the HALO Trust, a humanitarian land mine clearance charity. That famous walk was a turning point in the fight against these lethal devices. By 1999, the use, production and transport of antipersonnel land mines had been banned globally. Today, there are more than 80,000 amputees in Angola, a tragic legacy of 27 years of the Angolan Civil War, which ended in 2002.

When I first visited the Okavango Delta, shortly after my mother’s death, the war was still raging around the Okavango’s headwaters. Africa’s largest tank battle since World War II was fought over a bridge at the confluence of the Cuito and Cuanavale Rivers, the Okavango’s two major tributaries in the eastern Angolan Highlands. This battle left behind one of the world’s largest minefields, effectively preventing all safe access.

Nearly 20 years later, in 2015, I heard about a National Geographic expedition supported by the HALO Trust that had found a way through the land mines to the undocumented source of the Cuito River. I was intrigued. There the expedition team found a crystal clear, acidic source lake sustained by vast, previously undocumented peatlands. The intact miombo woodlands surrounding the lake, seemingly endless, were bigger than the whole of England.

This book is the story of the expeditions and discoveries that followed. Over the coming years, a team of 57 scientists and local guides explored all the major rivers and tributaries of the Okavango Delta, traversing this vast landscape in dugout canoes, on motorbikes, on foot, and in armored vehicles. They discovered hundreds of new species and documented 29 source lakes in what the local Luchazi people call Lisima lya Mwono — the Source of Life, where the floodwaters of the Okavango Delta come from.

As wildfires rage and hurricanes tear apart entire peninsulas, we’re faced with a harsh reality: a climate crisis and a mass extinction that can no longer be ignored. Appreciating, preserving and protecting these last wild ecosystems is essential to our collective survival. The best way for us to understand where we came from, and where we need to get to, is by visiting places like the Okavango Delta — my source of life.

[From People]

One of the recurring themes in Prince Harry’s Spare was his spiritual connections to land, to animals, to things that grow and breathe and nurture. Just reading his words about tributaries and lakes and peatlands brought me back to his nearly religious devotion to this part of the world and his respect for the Okavango Delta. I love that he was asked to do this and that he writes about his connection to Angola, to the delta, to his decades of work within Africa. This is so cool.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Netflix, The Halo Trust Instagram, and National Geographic.