CALLICOON, N.Y. — Late last Sunday morning, Doug Stern and Lukie Strydom, farmers from South Africa, shuffled quietly in the parking lot of Lander’s River Mart, a combination gas station, convenience store and restaurant situated along the banks of the Delaware River in this western Catskill hamlet.
They’d come to talk to locals about natural gas and a thing called hydraulic fracturing — or fracking.
“We need to learn as much as we possibly can,” Strydom said.
Back home in South Africa, Stern and Strydom live on what’s known as the Karoo, a vast, semi-arid, ecologically sensitive region that has lately become the target of prospecting natural gas companies —Falcoln, Sasol, and Shell among them.
