1 00:00:37,037 --> 00:00:41,440 I learned to look at the world through the eyes and ears of elephants. 2 00:00:43,176 --> 00:00:46,771 Some people, other elephant people, have told me 3 00:00:46,913 --> 00:00:49,507 that I think I am an elephant. 4 00:00:50,417 --> 00:00:53,181 In some ways, perhaps they are right. 5 00:00:56,556 --> 00:01:00,117 Like Africa, the elephants take hold of your spirits. 6 00:01:00,260 --> 00:01:02,387 They can possess you and persuades you 7 00:01:02,529 --> 00:01:05,657 to look at the world in a different light. 8 00:01:08,902 --> 00:01:12,269 There is something so grand about the life of an elephant 9 00:01:12,405 --> 00:01:16,239 its great size, strength, and age. 10 00:01:20,346 --> 00:01:24,783 Elephants have so many of the qualities we like best about ourselves 11 00:01:25,418 --> 00:01:29,684 dignity, loyalty to families and friends, 12 00:01:29,823 --> 00:01:34,021 compassion, and a sense of humor. 13 00:01:38,832 --> 00:01:41,824 Biologist Joyce Poole has taken a journey, 14 00:01:41,968 --> 00:01:47,372 without maps, into the heart of the African elephant. 15 00:01:49,175 --> 00:01:51,643 She came to know elephant like family. 16 00:01:51,778 --> 00:01:56,112 She discovered biological forces no one had ever suspected, 17 00:01:56,249 --> 00:02:00,208 and elephant voices no human had ever heard. 18 00:02:03,756 --> 00:02:06,554 For years, Joyce fought for their survival, 19 00:02:06,693 --> 00:02:12,063 never imagining that one day she would face a terrible choice. 20 00:02:19,772 --> 00:02:24,800 Joyce Poole would have to give the order to kill elephants. 21 00:02:32,919 --> 00:02:34,443 This is the story of a woman 22 00:02:34,587 --> 00:02:39,581 who loved elephants in a world that had no room for them. 23 00:03:36,082 --> 00:03:38,312 Looking back at how it all began, 24 00:03:38,451 --> 00:03:42,387 it seems as if Africa has always been my home. 25 00:03:44,190 --> 00:03:48,126 Joyce Poole's family came to Kenya in the 1960s 26 00:03:48,261 --> 00:03:50,752 when her father worked for the Peace Corps. 27 00:03:53,533 --> 00:03:56,331 She grew up in Africa. 28 00:03:59,839 --> 00:04:02,364 The family loved wild places 29 00:04:02,508 --> 00:04:06,535 and often camped in Kenya's Amboseli National Park 30 00:04:07,447 --> 00:04:11,042 I saw my first elephant as a child of seven, 31 00:04:11,184 --> 00:04:14,244 a huge bull in Amboseli. 32 00:04:14,387 --> 00:04:15,911 And I remember asking my father 33 00:04:16,055 --> 00:04:19,616 what would happen if he charged the car. 34 00:04:19,759 --> 00:04:22,125 And as my father said, 35 00:04:22,262 --> 00:04:27,461 "He'll squash the car down to the size of a pea pod," he came. 36 00:04:40,046 --> 00:04:41,445 I remember a lot from Amboseli. 37 00:04:41,581 --> 00:04:47,679 It was one of our favorite places, but I remember most the elephants. 38 00:05:04,203 --> 00:05:07,969 The swamps were home to a huge number of animals. 39 00:05:17,684 --> 00:05:21,381 But it was always the elephants that captured my imagination. 40 00:05:51,617 --> 00:05:52,845 At the age of 11, 41 00:05:52,985 --> 00:05:56,386 Joyce knew what she was going to be when she grew up, 42 00:05:56,522 --> 00:05:59,116 a wildlife biologist. 43 00:06:01,627 --> 00:06:06,929 When the time came to leave home, she went out to live among the elephants. 44 00:06:08,034 --> 00:06:10,161 Her journey would soon change the way 45 00:06:10,303 --> 00:06:13,295 the rest of the world thought about elephants. 46 00:06:14,273 --> 00:06:17,538 But in time, it would change Joyce, too, 47 00:06:17,677 --> 00:06:21,841 and turn all her dreams for the elephants into dust. 48 00:06:25,051 --> 00:06:29,579 It began in the shadow of Kilimanjaro on the Kenya border. 49 00:06:31,057 --> 00:06:34,254 Her new home was Amboseli National Park 50 00:06:34,394 --> 00:06:37,420 where she had first encountered elephants. 51 00:06:43,536 --> 00:06:45,595 Her mentor was Cynthia Moss, 52 00:06:45,738 --> 00:06:48,673 who had already embarked on the most comprehensive study 53 00:06:48,808 --> 00:06:51,936 of elephant society ever attempted. 54 00:06:52,078 --> 00:06:56,276 Using a photo book with pictures of the elephants in Amboseli, 55 00:06:56,416 --> 00:07:00,750 Cynthia taught Joyce how to identify individuals. 56 00:07:02,088 --> 00:07:03,112 Just keep your eye on Tuskless. 57 00:07:03,256 --> 00:07:05,087 Now look here in this picture, 58 00:07:05,224 --> 00:07:10,287 you would say M57 was older than M22 because of the angle of his head. 59 00:07:10,430 --> 00:07:11,829 Yes, Yes. 60 00:07:11,964 --> 00:07:13,727 He's much younger. 61 00:07:14,967 --> 00:07:18,630 The elephants also got to know the researchers. 62 00:07:19,906 --> 00:07:24,969 Babies played on camp as if under the watchful eye of their own aunts. 63 00:07:45,598 --> 00:07:48,999 At first, all the elephants looked alike to me 64 00:07:49,135 --> 00:07:52,400 large and gray with big ears. 65 00:07:53,372 --> 00:07:57,240 But Cynthia taught me how different each elephant really was. 66 00:07:57,910 --> 00:07:59,639 Elvira. 67 00:08:01,414 --> 00:08:04,440 Esmeraldo was born in 1948. 68 00:08:05,051 --> 00:08:10,512 Joyce gradually learned to recognize individuals by their familiar features. 69 00:08:12,558 --> 00:08:16,619 Vee was named for the Vnotches in her ears. 70 00:08:19,932 --> 00:08:22,992 Tuskless had no ivory. 71 00:08:23,970 --> 00:08:28,532 Joyce was particularly fond of jezebel a noble old matriarch 72 00:08:28,674 --> 00:08:33,168 with one tusk pointing skyward and the other straight ahead. 73 00:08:38,651 --> 00:08:40,551 Each new arrival was given a name 74 00:08:40,686 --> 00:08:44,782 that identified it as part of a specific family group. 75 00:08:59,038 --> 00:09:01,700 Cynthia Moss's work was already revealing 76 00:09:01,841 --> 00:09:06,141 that elephant families formed an unusually complex society 77 00:09:06,279 --> 00:09:08,941 dominated by females. 78 00:09:12,985 --> 00:09:17,786 But the lives of the males were still uncharted territory. 79 00:09:18,491 --> 00:09:20,618 Males leave their families as teenagers 80 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:24,252 and never again live in stable groups. 81 00:09:26,365 --> 00:09:29,357 Alone in her car, Joyce followed them. 82 00:09:29,502 --> 00:09:35,134 She was 19 years old and had no idea what she was getting into. 83 00:09:38,878 --> 00:09:43,212 To study the males Joyce needed to get as close as possible. 84 00:09:48,087 --> 00:09:52,490 But the shadow of a bull elephant was perilous place to be. 85 00:09:53,125 --> 00:09:54,990 A male that seemed placid 86 00:09:55,127 --> 00:09:59,996 could easily turn around and impale her car on his tusks. 87 00:10:02,535 --> 00:10:04,833 When I first started studying the males, 88 00:10:04,971 --> 00:10:09,032 there were many times when I had elephants corner me, 89 00:10:09,175 --> 00:10:10,199 tower over the car, 90 00:10:10,343 --> 00:10:11,776 and I thought it was all over. 91 00:10:32,298 --> 00:10:35,165 Showing who's boss is something male elephants do 92 00:10:35,301 --> 00:10:37,667 from the time they're youngsters. 93 00:10:47,580 --> 00:10:50,174 Most fights aren't dangerous. 94 00:10:51,684 --> 00:10:54,551 Size normally dictates rank 95 00:10:54,687 --> 00:10:59,715 and every male already knows where he fits in the social hierarchy. 96 00:11:01,427 --> 00:11:05,921 But every once in a while, fights turn deadly serious. 97 00:11:09,702 --> 00:11:12,865 What was it that changed all the rules? 98 00:11:15,408 --> 00:11:20,141 Joyce noticed several older males dribbling gallons of urine. 99 00:11:23,616 --> 00:11:29,646 Glandular secretions darkened the skin behind their eyes as if with tears. 100 00:11:32,825 --> 00:11:35,623 She saw one elephant who also seemed to be suffering 101 00:11:35,761 --> 00:11:39,754 from a fungal infection she'd never seen it before, 102 00:11:39,899 --> 00:11:43,130 so she named him Green Penis. 103 00:11:45,538 --> 00:11:50,237 But then other makes turned up in the same curious condition. 104 00:11:50,976 --> 00:11:54,036 Joyce soon realized there was a pattern. 105 00:11:54,180 --> 00:11:59,140 Each male had his own time of year when the symptoms appeared. 106 00:11:59,285 --> 00:12:03,551 And it appeared at the same time every year. 107 00:12:09,161 --> 00:12:10,355 In Asian elephants, 108 00:12:10,496 --> 00:12:15,900 these symptoms were already recognized as part of a male sexual cycle. 109 00:12:16,035 --> 00:12:18,333 African elephants are a different species, 110 00:12:18,471 --> 00:12:22,805 and the experts all said they did not have such a cycle. 111 00:12:24,477 --> 00:12:26,274 It took long months of tracking 112 00:12:26,412 --> 00:12:29,870 and recording the behavior of individual males, 113 00:12:30,015 --> 00:12:33,178 but Joyce proved the experts wrong. 114 00:12:35,321 --> 00:12:40,258 At the age of 23, she had discovered a driving biological force 115 00:12:40,392 --> 00:12:46,194 that every other researcher had overlooked: It's called musth. 116 00:12:47,266 --> 00:12:52,636 Musth is a heightened sexual and aggressive period or rut. 117 00:12:52,772 --> 00:12:59,109 And the word musth actually comes from the Urdu meaning intoxicated. 118 00:12:59,245 --> 00:13:05,650 Males start coming into musth on average around 28, 29 years old 119 00:13:05,785 --> 00:13:09,846 and their first musth periods only last a day or two. 120 00:13:09,989 --> 00:13:13,254 With time, they last longer and longer, 121 00:13:13,392 --> 00:13:17,021 and by the time they're in their mid to late forties, 122 00:13:17,163 --> 00:13:20,599 they stay in musth for three or four months at a time. 123 00:13:25,638 --> 00:13:29,039 How do you study six tons of intoxicated male? 124 00:13:29,175 --> 00:13:32,269 It takes art as well as science. 125 00:13:33,245 --> 00:13:36,237 They're predictably aggressive when they're in musth, 126 00:13:36,382 --> 00:13:41,684 and even though you feel you know an animal a 100 percent- 127 00:13:41,821 --> 00:13:43,379 when they're towering over the car 128 00:13:43,522 --> 00:13:47,117 and starting to put their tusk on thebonnet, 129 00:13:48,294 --> 00:13:52,060 you don't feel quite so sure of yourself. 130 00:14:02,308 --> 00:14:05,709 But over time, the musth males accepted her, 131 00:14:05,845 --> 00:14:09,281 and Joyce came to feel at ease with them. 132 00:14:11,217 --> 00:14:15,119 His name is Beach Ball because everything about him is round, 133 00:14:15,254 --> 00:14:20,886 his ears are round, his head is round, his tusks are round, 134 00:14:21,026 --> 00:14:23,460 his body is round 135 00:14:24,029 --> 00:14:26,156 and his penis is round. 136 00:14:31,437 --> 00:14:37,467 Beach ball, you be nice, you be nice. 137 00:14:39,211 --> 00:14:42,339 I hear you've been misbehaving out at headquarters 138 00:14:42,481 --> 00:14:46,850 knocking down fences and gates. 139 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:49,548 You be careful with my car. 140 00:14:49,688 --> 00:14:51,713 I've just fiixed it. 141 00:15:00,032 --> 00:15:04,833 Each of the males used to have a sort of a ritualized way of greeting me. 142 00:15:04,970 --> 00:15:11,500 Um, Agamemon used to come and put his tusks up against the windshield, 143 00:15:11,644 --> 00:15:16,172 and then throw his head back and forth over the top of the car 144 00:15:16,315 --> 00:15:19,250 with his front legs up against the bumper. 145 00:15:21,153 --> 00:15:26,682 And Alfred always, you know, put his trunk on the bonnet. 146 00:15:27,660 --> 00:15:29,594 And this one, I mean, he just, you know, 147 00:15:29,728 --> 00:15:33,494 he likes to sort of press up against the side of the car. 148 00:15:34,099 --> 00:15:36,192 He's very sensual. 149 00:15:53,152 --> 00:15:57,020 The old stories of aggressive behavior by "rouge" elephants 150 00:15:57,156 --> 00:15:59,556 suddenly made sense. 151 00:16:01,961 --> 00:16:07,058 Males in musth can be hostile, but mainly to each other. 152 00:16:11,236 --> 00:16:13,932 These fights captured by Joyce in videotape 153 00:16:14,073 --> 00:16:16,871 could end injury or even death. 154 00:16:24,049 --> 00:16:28,509 Who wins? Size is no longer decisive. 155 00:16:30,622 --> 00:16:34,922 The male who is closer to the pea of musth has the advantage. 156 00:16:39,565 --> 00:16:40,759 What they are fighting for 157 00:16:40,899 --> 00:16:45,495 is the right to mate with a female at the height of her cycle. 158 00:16:50,342 --> 00:16:53,778 The dominant male stays close to the female. 159 00:16:55,948 --> 00:16:59,782 Hormones in her urine tell him whether she's ready. 160 00:17:09,628 --> 00:17:12,859 When the time is right, they mate frequently, 161 00:17:12,998 --> 00:17:15,432 while her family surrounds them. 162 00:17:23,642 --> 00:17:27,203 Joyce was intrigued not just by what she saw, 163 00:17:27,346 --> 00:17:29,974 but by what she heard. 164 00:17:47,066 --> 00:17:50,433 She dubbed it "the mating pandemonium," 165 00:17:50,569 --> 00:17:53,800 a sound heard at no other time. 166 00:18:01,847 --> 00:18:04,680 Joyce's discoveries about musth made it possible, 167 00:18:04,817 --> 00:18:08,150 for the first time, to understand the complexities 168 00:18:08,287 --> 00:18:11,017 of elephant mating behavior. 169 00:18:14,293 --> 00:18:18,457 But now the focus of her research was shifting. 170 00:18:21,166 --> 00:18:27,332 Joyce was about to unlock the secret language of the elephants. 171 00:18:44,022 --> 00:18:48,186 The language of elephants was a complete enigma. 172 00:18:54,066 --> 00:18:57,866 Sometimes elephants are incredibly vocal. 173 00:18:59,371 --> 00:19:04,434 Other times they seem to communicate in silence freezing 174 00:19:04,576 --> 00:19:06,567 as if on command 175 00:19:09,314 --> 00:19:15,412 or suddenly racing off together with no apparent cue. 176 00:19:26,798 --> 00:19:31,565 Even a charging musth male barely made a sound. 177 00:19:33,605 --> 00:19:36,073 I kept hearing a sound like, you know, 178 00:19:36,208 --> 00:19:39,405 if you take a thick piece of cardboard and you go 179 00:19:39,545 --> 00:19:41,103 "whop, whop, whop" with it; 180 00:19:41,246 --> 00:19:43,305 and they were flapping their ears in a certain way, 181 00:19:43,448 --> 00:19:47,043 so I thought the sound was the ear flapping and it was a threat to me. 182 00:19:47,186 --> 00:19:49,677 And then I realized afterwards that, in fact, 183 00:19:49,821 --> 00:19:52,415 it was vocalization that was being made 184 00:19:52,558 --> 00:19:56,289 and the ear flapping was just in association with it. 185 00:19:56,962 --> 00:19:58,486 In the mid1980s, 186 00:19:58,630 --> 00:20:01,326 Joyce collaborated with Katherine Payne, 187 00:20:01,466 --> 00:20:04,060 and expert on whale songs. 188 00:20:04,203 --> 00:20:05,693 Together they were determined 189 00:20:05,837 --> 00:20:09,796 to uncover the secrets of elephant communication. 190 00:20:10,676 --> 00:20:14,134 We began making take recordings of the elephants. 191 00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:19,176 It turned out that we were only hearing part of what they said. 192 00:20:19,318 --> 00:20:23,277 The rest was at a frequency too low for us to hear. 193 00:20:26,959 --> 00:20:32,397 Sonograms revealed that humans miss twothirds of elephant conversation 194 00:20:33,532 --> 00:20:36,399 like whales, elephants were using a language 195 00:20:36,535 --> 00:20:40,596 that was mostly below the range of human hearing. 196 00:20:47,546 --> 00:20:51,949 Joyce slowly learned to decipher the sounds she could hear. 197 00:20:53,185 --> 00:20:57,849 She came to understand 33 different vocalizations 198 00:20:59,324 --> 00:21:03,226 calls that meant, "lets go," or "attack" 199 00:21:04,696 --> 00:21:08,393 or baby saying, "help, I'm scared." 200 00:21:15,741 --> 00:21:18,335 Females comforted their young with rumbles 201 00:21:18,477 --> 00:21:23,710 that were as specific as saying, "It's okay, we're here." 202 00:21:29,521 --> 00:21:32,718 It was a radically new way to think about elephants. 203 00:21:32,858 --> 00:21:35,725 What people used to believe was just stomach rumbling 204 00:21:35,861 --> 00:21:39,126 was actually a complex language. 205 00:21:39,264 --> 00:21:42,597 These were intelligent creatures. 206 00:21:49,775 --> 00:21:52,141 Now that she knew what the elephants were saying, 207 00:21:52,277 --> 00:21:54,939 Joyce knew when to be afraid, 208 00:21:56,682 --> 00:22:02,780 and when it was just play even when to talk back 209 00:22:17,069 --> 00:22:19,230 Anyone who's watched elephants would say, 210 00:22:19,371 --> 00:22:22,033 you know, what is it that makes elephants so much?" 211 00:22:22,174 --> 00:22:23,698 Why do you like elephants so much?" 212 00:22:23,842 --> 00:22:25,742 They're so funny. 213 00:22:27,245 --> 00:22:29,076 Why are they funny? 214 00:22:29,214 --> 00:22:33,378 Well, they're not just funny to look at, they're funny acting, 215 00:22:35,454 --> 00:22:37,945 they're clowns; not all of them, 216 00:22:38,090 --> 00:22:39,318 I mean, they've got different personalities, 217 00:22:39,458 --> 00:22:41,756 but some are real clowns. 218 00:23:35,046 --> 00:23:38,015 Joyce believed that elephants had emotions 219 00:23:38,150 --> 00:23:43,588 a whole range of feelings from joy to grief. 220 00:23:44,189 --> 00:23:46,054 She was moved to witness one family 221 00:23:46,191 --> 00:23:49,718 come across the bones of their own matriarch. 222 00:23:50,595 --> 00:23:54,292 And it was very different from the way elephants usually approach bones. 223 00:23:54,433 --> 00:23:59,894 They gathered around her bones in a defensive circle facing outwards 224 00:24:00,038 --> 00:24:04,634 and gave a very loud rumble that went on and on, 225 00:24:04,776 --> 00:24:07,677 and they really were standing over them 226 00:24:07,813 --> 00:24:12,182 as if it was a member of their family. 227 00:24:19,291 --> 00:24:25,958 And this whole just turning the bones over, ever so slowly and gently 228 00:24:26,097 --> 00:24:30,033 and, you know, feeling every little crevice, 229 00:24:38,143 --> 00:24:42,375 paying particular attention to the jaw and the skull, 230 00:24:43,648 --> 00:24:48,984 and then, you know, backing around and touching with the hind feet. 231 00:25:03,902 --> 00:25:07,133 Joyce witnessed the death of many elephants, 232 00:25:07,272 --> 00:25:11,641 but the loss of one of her favorites was especially painful. 233 00:25:14,913 --> 00:25:18,474 It was the elderly matriarch Jezebel. 234 00:25:34,833 --> 00:25:36,494 By the time Joyce arrived, 235 00:25:36,635 --> 00:25:41,197 Jezebel's tusks had been stolen and the corpse had been mutilated. 236 00:25:41,339 --> 00:25:43,432 Feet have been taken! 237 00:25:44,643 --> 00:25:50,707 She had been ill for a number of weeks and I think when she fell, 238 00:25:50,849 --> 00:25:54,717 she was tracked and her tusks were taken. 239 00:26:08,833 --> 00:26:13,236 The 1980s were ominous times for elephants. 240 00:26:17,976 --> 00:26:21,844 Amboseli had always been a sanctuary for them 241 00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:24,880 but throughout the rest of Africa, 242 00:26:25,016 --> 00:26:28,474 elephants were being slaughtered for their ivory. 243 00:26:33,091 --> 00:26:36,083 I just found it devastating that 244 00:26:36,227 --> 00:26:39,526 the more I was learning about these incredible animals, 245 00:26:39,664 --> 00:26:41,291 the faster they were being slaughtered. 246 00:26:41,433 --> 00:26:45,870 I just found that I had to try and get out there 247 00:26:46,004 --> 00:26:48,097 and do something about it. 248 00:26:50,809 --> 00:26:54,176 The world was at war with elephants. 249 00:26:54,312 --> 00:26:59,443 For Joyce Poole, it was time to join the battle to save them. 250 00:27:09,894 --> 00:27:11,384 In the late 1980s, 251 00:27:11,529 --> 00:27:13,963 poachers were killing thousands of elephants 252 00:27:14,099 --> 00:27:17,660 to meet the demand for ivory trinkets. 253 00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,832 They targeted the males for heavier tusks 254 00:27:24,976 --> 00:27:29,072 and hacked the ivories from their faces with machetes. 255 00:27:33,718 --> 00:27:36,380 When the Amboseli elephants project started, 256 00:27:36,521 --> 00:27:40,457 there were 167,000 elephants in Kenya, 257 00:27:41,726 --> 00:27:45,162 now there were just 25,000. 258 00:27:45,764 --> 00:27:49,063 In the vast area where the elephants once roamed, 259 00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:53,330 all that remained were gleaming white skulls of the dead. 260 00:28:03,682 --> 00:28:07,516 The social structure of the elephants was on the brink of collapse. 261 00:28:08,219 --> 00:28:10,813 Almost all the breeding males were gone, 262 00:28:10,955 --> 00:28:15,619 and many families unit consisted entirely of orphans. 263 00:28:19,397 --> 00:28:22,298 If the killing continued, experts predicted, 264 00:28:22,434 --> 00:28:25,926 Kenya's elephants would go instinct. 265 00:28:32,277 --> 00:28:36,543 To save the country's wild life, the government turned to Richard Leakey, 266 00:28:36,681 --> 00:28:42,415 a thirdgeneration Kenyan who was already famous as paleontologist. 267 00:28:42,554 --> 00:28:48,356 I am going to do my level best to eliminate the elephant poachers... 268 00:28:48,493 --> 00:28:53,328 In 1989, Leakey took over Kenya's Wildlife Service 269 00:28:53,465 --> 00:28:57,094 and immediately declare war on the poachers. 270 00:28:57,235 --> 00:29:00,534 He got off to a bold and controversial start. 271 00:29:00,672 --> 00:29:04,369 ...and it would be my hope that in the coming weeks 272 00:29:04,509 --> 00:29:08,468 the press will not ask for permission to fiilm dead elephants, 273 00:29:08,613 --> 00:29:11,741 but will have an opportunities to fiilm dead poachers. 274 00:29:14,986 --> 00:29:17,318 Leakey turned Kenya's Wildlife rangers 275 00:29:17,455 --> 00:29:20,447 into a crack antipoachering army. 276 00:29:23,695 --> 00:29:28,359 Now when poachers fire on them, they have orders to shoot back 277 00:29:30,802 --> 00:29:34,704 The first year the rangers killed 50 poachers... 278 00:29:36,608 --> 00:29:41,136 ...they unearthed huge caches of ivory from butchered elephants. 279 00:29:42,313 --> 00:29:45,749 Then Kenya did something that shocked the world. 280 00:29:45,884 --> 00:29:49,320 At Leakey's urging President Daniel Arap Moi 281 00:29:49,454 --> 00:29:53,584 burned three million dollars worth of ivory. 282 00:29:54,259 --> 00:29:59,356 It was Leakey's way to wake up the world to the horror of poaching. 283 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:04,425 It was a very emotional moment 284 00:30:04,569 --> 00:30:14,001 watching the tusks of 1800 elephants to go up in flames and smoke. 285 00:30:16,147 --> 00:30:20,675 But at the same time, I felt a great sense of relief 286 00:30:21,853 --> 00:30:25,880 because I believed that the elephants were going to have a reprieve. 287 00:30:31,229 --> 00:30:33,663 A few months later, the nations of the world 288 00:30:33,798 --> 00:30:38,758 banned all trade in Ivory with dramatic results. 289 00:30:44,309 --> 00:30:48,837 The next year, instead of losing 3,000 elephants to poachers, 290 00:30:48,980 --> 00:30:52,381 Kenya lost fewer than 50. 291 00:30:56,554 --> 00:31:02,686 But like any war ravaged society, the elephants would need decades to recover. 292 00:31:03,361 --> 00:31:06,023 They weren't going to get that time. 293 00:31:07,398 --> 00:31:11,198 In the very years that elephant population was being decimated, 294 00:31:11,336 --> 00:31:14,737 Kenya's human population had doubled. 295 00:31:16,608 --> 00:31:20,772 People and elephants were both hungry for the same land. 296 00:31:26,217 --> 00:31:28,515 The deal with the inevitably conflict, 297 00:31:28,653 --> 00:31:33,590 Richard Leakey needed someone who understood elephants. 298 00:31:36,294 --> 00:31:41,254 He asked Joyce Poole to run the National elephant program. 299 00:31:43,801 --> 00:31:48,704 It would mean leaving the idyllic world of Amboseli. 300 00:31:50,341 --> 00:31:55,108 It was difficult to leave Amboseli behind, but at the same time, 301 00:31:55,246 --> 00:31:59,307 I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime. 302 00:32:00,952 --> 00:32:06,390 I had been so privileged to spend so many years with elephants, 303 00:32:06,524 --> 00:32:13,362 to have learned so much I felt a sense of, almost of obligation, 304 00:32:13,498 --> 00:32:15,432 of giving them something in return 305 00:32:15,566 --> 00:32:18,091 and I felt that with the knowledge I had 306 00:32:18,236 --> 00:32:21,000 that perhaps I could make a difference. 307 00:32:24,542 --> 00:32:29,605 Joyce was convinced she could help the elephants fiind a place in modern Kenya. 308 00:32:32,150 --> 00:32:36,610 She didn't realize how difficult it was going to be. 309 00:32:41,926 --> 00:32:47,057 Joyce Poole had now entered the very heart of the conflict over elephants. 310 00:32:48,132 --> 00:32:49,690 At Kenya's wildlife service, 311 00:32:49,834 --> 00:32:53,793 she recruited a team of committed young Kenyans. 312 00:32:54,539 --> 00:32:56,837 They were eager to develop new programs 313 00:32:56,975 --> 00:33:00,934 that would help people and elephants live together. 314 00:33:04,349 --> 00:33:07,978 One of the first tasks that I had at Kenya wildlife service 315 00:33:08,119 --> 00:33:13,386 was to survey the country and fiind out how many elephants we had left. 316 00:33:18,696 --> 00:33:19,628 I would have loved for them 317 00:33:19,764 --> 00:33:22,096 to have been able to return to their old haunts, 318 00:33:22,233 --> 00:33:24,963 but there just wasn't the space anymore. 319 00:33:31,476 --> 00:33:34,536 I began to have this horrible vision of a future world 320 00:33:34,679 --> 00:33:38,376 where almost all of the land would be taken up by people 321 00:33:38,516 --> 00:33:43,385 and the only space left for elephants would be inside a few national parks. 322 00:33:47,558 --> 00:33:49,526 Other African nations had already 323 00:33:49,660 --> 00:33:53,596 confiined their elephants to national parks. 324 00:33:54,365 --> 00:33:57,493 Joyce hoped that would never happen in Kenya. 325 00:33:57,635 --> 00:34:03,164 She knew it would ultimately mean controlling the elephant population. 326 00:34:04,409 --> 00:34:07,207 Elephants need space. 327 00:34:07,879 --> 00:34:12,043 An adult eats 300 pounds of vegetation a day. 328 00:34:13,384 --> 00:34:15,045 As the population grows, 329 00:34:15,186 --> 00:34:20,123 elephants can have a devastating effect on park habitat. 330 00:34:23,528 --> 00:34:24,893 For other African nations, 331 00:34:25,029 --> 00:34:30,331 the solution is to compute how many elephants the land can sustain, 332 00:34:31,069 --> 00:34:32,934 and kill the rest. 333 00:34:35,873 --> 00:34:38,637 It's called cculling. 334 00:34:52,924 --> 00:34:56,155 I think cculling is totally unethical. 335 00:34:56,294 --> 00:34:58,626 I think it's barbaric. 336 00:34:59,897 --> 00:35:05,164 I suppose I imagine it like taking a group of humans and just deciding 337 00:35:05,303 --> 00:35:09,205 we're going to take out this family or we're going to take out that family. 338 00:35:14,912 --> 00:35:18,541 Joyce believed she could avoid cculling in Kenya. 339 00:35:18,683 --> 00:35:21,618 But now there was a new problem. 340 00:35:23,187 --> 00:35:27,055 Elephants were beginning to move out of the parks. 341 00:35:27,658 --> 00:35:31,185 And when they did, tragedy was waiting. 342 00:35:32,497 --> 00:35:37,298 The elephants could no longer go back to their old migratory routes. 343 00:35:39,570 --> 00:35:43,301 Settlers had planted crops everywhere. 344 00:35:45,676 --> 00:35:47,610 Families had staked their entire lives 345 00:35:47,745 --> 00:35:51,909 on what had once been prime elephant habitat. 346 00:35:53,317 --> 00:35:56,411 The elephants were just going back to their old haunts, 347 00:35:56,554 --> 00:36:00,957 but from the settlers' viewpoint, they were out of control. 348 00:36:01,092 --> 00:36:06,120 The radio messages came in from the stations, almost every day. 349 00:36:06,264 --> 00:36:09,233 Elephants were on the rampage. 350 00:36:09,367 --> 00:36:11,733 They were eating their way through cornfields, 351 00:36:11,869 --> 00:36:17,136 they were knocking down houses, and they were trampling people to death. 352 00:36:17,909 --> 00:36:21,970 Joyce knew she had to keep people and elephants apart, 353 00:36:22,113 --> 00:36:26,641 and it was a matter of life and death on both sides. 354 00:36:29,187 --> 00:36:33,385 She tried to protect vulnerable farms with electric fences. 355 00:36:38,729 --> 00:36:42,859 But the elephants learned to short circuit the fences. 356 00:36:46,370 --> 00:36:48,770 Elephants broke through here last night, 357 00:36:48,906 --> 00:36:52,239 and they went out into the shambas out here. 358 00:36:52,376 --> 00:36:55,174 Probably, one of the bulls was in charge of this 359 00:36:55,313 --> 00:36:57,713 and he must've broke in and they went out. 360 00:36:57,848 --> 00:37:02,615 Every day we have to keep repairing after every breakage 361 00:37:02,753 --> 00:37:06,211 and this is taking up resources. 362 00:37:09,293 --> 00:37:12,694 The elephants were always one step ahead. 363 00:37:12,830 --> 00:37:14,024 Under cover of dark 364 00:37:14,165 --> 00:37:18,693 they constantly found new ways to get through to the farms. 365 00:37:18,836 --> 00:37:19,860 In one night, 366 00:37:20,004 --> 00:37:25,704 an elephant could destroy a family's entire food supply for the year. 367 00:37:25,843 --> 00:37:30,507 If you can imagine having to defend your entire livelihood 368 00:37:30,648 --> 00:37:35,278 from some enormous beast that came in the middle of the night 369 00:37:35,419 --> 00:37:40,049 and weighed close to a hundred times what you weigh. 370 00:37:41,158 --> 00:37:42,989 You can't see it. 371 00:37:43,127 --> 00:37:48,497 All you have is a small torch and this 372 00:37:48,633 --> 00:37:52,330 this beast this monster can track you down, 373 00:37:52,470 --> 00:37:56,531 can smell exactly where you are 374 00:37:56,674 --> 00:37:58,437 and you can't see it. 375 00:37:58,576 --> 00:38:02,945 It can crush you in a matter of seconds. 376 00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:07,813 That's what so many people across Africa are up against. 377 00:38:12,223 --> 00:38:15,681 When the elephants come, the farmers have only rocks, sticks, 378 00:38:15,826 --> 00:38:19,853 and the sound of their own voices to defend their crops. 379 00:38:43,087 --> 00:38:48,115 In the morning, at least one family faces famine. 380 00:39:03,574 --> 00:39:07,066 As you can see for yourself, I have nothing left for my family. 381 00:39:07,211 --> 00:39:09,975 All the crops were destroyed by the elephants; 382 00:39:10,114 --> 00:39:14,915 the beans, the corn, the tomatoes, everything's gone. 383 00:39:15,052 --> 00:39:17,179 The children will sit and keep quite. 384 00:39:17,321 --> 00:39:21,781 They have nothing to eat. They'll just sit quietly. 385 00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:35,295 The close contact between people and elephants sometimes ended horribly. 386 00:39:38,175 --> 00:39:40,609 Many people are killed in Kenya every year by elephants. 387 00:39:40,745 --> 00:39:45,614 It's somewhere, probably between 40 and 50 people a year. 388 00:39:45,750 --> 00:39:47,718 Some areas are worse than others. 389 00:39:47,852 --> 00:39:50,013 I don't think that in most cases. 390 00:39:50,154 --> 00:39:52,987 I think that the elephant didn't intend to kill the person. 391 00:39:53,124 --> 00:39:55,251 But in some cases, they've defimitely gone out, 392 00:39:55,393 --> 00:39:58,988 tracked down the person and kneeled on them, 393 00:39:59,130 --> 00:40:02,327 which is usually the way an elephant would kill someone. 394 00:40:13,010 --> 00:40:16,878 The most effective way to control problem elephants was to shoot them, 395 00:40:17,014 --> 00:40:19,608 but local wildlife wardens lacked the equipment 396 00:40:19,750 --> 00:40:22,844 and training to do it properly. 397 00:40:24,388 --> 00:40:27,755 Many of the elephants that were being shot were the wrong ones, 398 00:40:27,892 --> 00:40:31,453 that it wasn't the elephant that had killed Mrs. Soandso, 399 00:40:31,595 --> 00:40:35,998 that it wasn't the elephant that had gone into the shamba and destroyed it. 400 00:40:36,767 --> 00:40:39,395 The elephants that were being shot were taking hours to die 401 00:40:39,537 --> 00:40:42,233 it just wasn't right. 402 00:40:44,642 --> 00:40:48,271 Joyce had to face a painful reality. 403 00:40:48,879 --> 00:40:52,076 She'd come of age learning how elephants live, 404 00:40:52,750 --> 00:40:56,345 and she accepted the need for some to die. 405 00:40:57,188 --> 00:41:02,091 But now she was going to have to give the order. 406 00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,054 I realized that elephants were going to have to be shot, 407 00:41:06,197 --> 00:41:07,892 that we couldn't allow elephants 408 00:41:08,032 --> 00:41:12,833 to go rampaging through people's farms and killing people. 409 00:41:12,970 --> 00:41:15,837 But if we had to kill elephants, 410 00:41:15,973 --> 00:41:19,170 I wanted to make sure that we at least we killed the right elephants 411 00:41:19,310 --> 00:41:21,870 the ones that were doing the damage. 412 00:41:23,214 --> 00:41:27,651 In 1992, Joyce established a special team 413 00:41:27,785 --> 00:41:31,846 and sent them into military training to become marksman. 414 00:41:31,989 --> 00:41:38,019 Their job was to kill problem elephantsbut to do it humanely. 415 00:41:40,064 --> 00:41:44,501 I think the question isn't how we can justify shooting elephants. 416 00:41:44,635 --> 00:41:48,628 I think the question is how can we justify not shooting them. 417 00:41:48,772 --> 00:41:56,406 I mean, when you've spent the night out in a maize field with people 418 00:41:56,547 --> 00:42:01,610 who are just having their whole livelihood destroyed right there 419 00:42:01,752 --> 00:42:05,620 and then, there is no other alternative. 420 00:42:08,492 --> 00:42:14,795 Now when villages suffered repeated attacks, Joyce sent her control team. 421 00:42:14,932 --> 00:42:18,561 They watched by night till the elephants came. 422 00:42:18,702 --> 00:42:19,691 We're going to wait for the elephants. 423 00:42:19,837 --> 00:42:21,930 They'll be coming in, probably, in an hour or two. 424 00:42:22,072 --> 00:42:23,004 We'll wait for them here. 425 00:42:23,140 --> 00:42:26,234 As soon as we hear them cutting into the maize, 426 00:42:26,377 --> 00:42:29,175 we'll cut into the maize above them and come around, 427 00:42:29,313 --> 00:42:30,871 and try and get in front of them. 428 00:42:31,015 --> 00:42:33,711 So if we can get them coming towards us, 429 00:42:33,851 --> 00:42:37,082 we can then pick out the ringleader and we'll shoot him. 430 00:42:37,221 --> 00:42:41,089 We've got to shoot one out of the herd to stop them from doing this. 431 00:42:41,225 --> 00:42:42,988 There's no other way we can stop them. 432 00:43:29,473 --> 00:43:33,000 I'm so happy now that this animal is dead. 433 00:43:33,143 --> 00:43:38,445 I've been up every night, waiting and looking after my crops. 434 00:43:42,219 --> 00:43:45,484 The elephants have been bothering us for the last five years 435 00:43:45,623 --> 00:43:47,488 and destroying our crops. 436 00:43:47,625 --> 00:43:52,824 Some of the farmers actually have not harvested anything from their fields. 437 00:44:00,104 --> 00:44:04,598 For now, this village's cornfields were safe. 438 00:44:06,377 --> 00:44:10,939 The killing of one elephant should keep the other away. 439 00:44:11,081 --> 00:44:14,881 Tonight the crops would not have to be guarded 440 00:44:15,519 --> 00:44:18,317 but what about all the other villages. 441 00:44:19,723 --> 00:44:26,185 In 1993 alone I gave the order to shot 57 problem elephants 442 00:44:26,330 --> 00:44:33,498 and each decision was difficult, but I knew it was the right thing to do. 443 00:44:40,711 --> 00:44:44,112 For these villagers, the monster that once terrorized them 444 00:44:44,248 --> 00:44:49,311 was now just thousands of pounds of meat in the morning sun. 445 00:44:56,827 --> 00:45:00,160 Today, it would fed their families. 446 00:45:12,276 --> 00:45:14,904 All over Kenya, deadly encounters 447 00:45:15,045 --> 00:45:18,446 between people and elephants were on the rise. 448 00:45:20,451 --> 00:45:23,818 Joyce Poole and Richard Leakey were under constant pressure 449 00:45:23,954 --> 00:45:26,718 to kill more elephants. 450 00:45:26,857 --> 00:45:31,453 I realized my worst fears were probably going to come true someday. 451 00:45:32,196 --> 00:45:37,031 Kenya was going to have to eliminate most of the elephants outside the parks. 452 00:45:37,601 --> 00:45:39,865 We would have to confiine the rest behind fences 453 00:45:40,003 --> 00:45:42,938 as other African nations had done. 454 00:45:44,141 --> 00:45:46,632 If elephants had to be confiined to parks, 455 00:45:46,777 --> 00:45:51,646 Joyce wanted to fiind a humane way to control their numbers. 456 00:45:53,117 --> 00:45:57,577 She had her team had a daring new idea. 457 00:46:00,257 --> 00:46:04,990 They were going to test a form of elephant birth control. 458 00:46:12,436 --> 00:46:15,496 Make sure you don't let them go back across the river. 459 00:46:19,209 --> 00:46:21,769 Critics ridiculed the whole pain. 460 00:46:23,347 --> 00:46:25,747 But Leakey gave her the go ahead. 461 00:46:28,819 --> 00:46:33,017 For the test, Joyce relies on exactly the sort of detailed knowledge 462 00:46:33,157 --> 00:46:37,685 of individual elephants that has always been her specialty. 463 00:46:40,063 --> 00:46:42,224 Just bring 'em over here. 464 00:46:42,366 --> 00:46:45,824 They are looking for a female who already has a baby, 465 00:46:45,969 --> 00:46:48,938 so they can be certain she is not pregnant. 466 00:46:54,845 --> 00:46:58,713 The marksman brings her down with a tranquilizer dart. 467 00:47:00,784 --> 00:47:04,880 Once again, Joyce is defying the experts. 468 00:47:05,656 --> 00:47:07,783 But this might be a way for elephants 469 00:47:07,925 --> 00:47:13,192 to survive in the crowded world of modern Africa. 470 00:47:17,367 --> 00:47:18,629 Once the elephant is down, 471 00:47:18,769 --> 00:47:22,967 Joyce and her team have only 20 minutes to do their work 472 00:47:29,513 --> 00:47:33,779 They inject the elephant with an experimental contraceptive vaccine 473 00:47:33,917 --> 00:47:36,784 which should sterilize her. 474 00:47:40,023 --> 00:47:44,460 Then they strap on a radio collar to track her progress. 475 00:47:55,706 --> 00:48:01,167 Joyce believes birth control for elephants may mean hope for the future. 476 00:48:01,311 --> 00:48:05,873 But it will take years to prove that the contraceptive works. 477 00:48:10,988 --> 00:48:17,587 Then just when they begin to get the first positive results, it's all over. 478 00:48:18,662 --> 00:48:22,029 Political infighting puts an end to their plans. 479 00:48:22,165 --> 00:48:25,362 I have given the best years of my life to public service. 480 00:48:25,502 --> 00:48:31,668 In march, 1994 his enemies forced Richard Leakey out of office. 481 00:48:31,808 --> 00:48:34,470 ...and the stress and the pain of being vilified 482 00:48:34,611 --> 00:48:36,511 by senior politicians and others 483 00:48:36,647 --> 00:48:39,275 is more than I think is good for my health. 484 00:48:39,416 --> 00:48:43,614 Under these circumstances I have today sent a letter to his excellency 485 00:48:43,754 --> 00:48:47,121 the president offering my resignation. 486 00:48:48,892 --> 00:48:54,455 Joyce and several of her colleagues resigned the same day in support. 487 00:48:58,869 --> 00:49:05,399 What was so devastating about it was that KWS had had such successes, 488 00:49:05,542 --> 00:49:12,141 and my own program... we had built up such an extraordinary team 489 00:49:12,282 --> 00:49:19,916 and we had really done so much and I feel that people knew that, 490 00:49:20,057 --> 00:49:23,515 people were on our side; yes, they wanted us to do more, 491 00:49:23,660 --> 00:49:27,061 but they realized we were doing the best we could 492 00:49:27,197 --> 00:49:31,497 and all of a sudden, Richard is force to resign... 493 00:49:32,703 --> 00:49:35,831 and everything is just left in limbo. 494 00:49:40,043 --> 00:49:44,207 Joyce didn't know yet where her life was going to take her. 495 00:49:44,348 --> 00:49:48,284 But elephants still had a hold on her spirit. 496 00:49:52,389 --> 00:49:55,825 She went back to visit Amboseli. 497 00:49:56,793 --> 00:50:00,456 She now had a daughter named Selengei. 498 00:50:00,597 --> 00:50:05,830 Joyce wanted to introduce her child to her old friends. 499 00:50:11,041 --> 00:50:14,067 We'd gone out one evening to watch elephants. 500 00:50:14,211 --> 00:50:19,444 And I saw Vee approaching us with her family. 501 00:50:21,385 --> 00:50:24,650 And then an extraordinary thing happened. 502 00:50:41,972 --> 00:50:44,907 It wasn't just any rumble, it was greeting rumble. 503 00:50:45,042 --> 00:50:51,003 And who knows what was going on in the elephants heads? 504 00:50:54,451 --> 00:50:58,251 I could only guess that they had remembered me 505 00:50:58,388 --> 00:51:02,552 and they were welcoming us back to Amboseli. 506 00:51:17,207 --> 00:51:22,645 For a few days, Joyce blended in with the familiar camp routine. 507 00:51:26,950 --> 00:51:30,852 Her old colleagues were still pursuing their research. 508 00:51:33,790 --> 00:51:37,658 Elephants would always be part of Joyce's life. 509 00:51:37,794 --> 00:51:39,056 But back in Nairobi, 510 00:51:39,196 --> 00:51:43,792 someone else was going to have to make the hard choice about their future. 511 00:51:43,934 --> 00:51:49,839 I think in the long term, let's say looking 50 years ahead, 512 00:51:50,674 --> 00:51:53,700 that elephants and people will not be able to coexist, 513 00:51:53,844 --> 00:51:59,111 that elephants will be confiined to national parks, 514 00:51:59,249 --> 00:52:04,152 many of them with barriers around them. 515 00:52:04,287 --> 00:52:07,745 And I think between here and now, 516 00:52:09,126 --> 00:52:15,531 it's going to be a very painful process to get where we're going... 517 00:52:16,466 --> 00:52:19,697 and that there'll be a lot of suffering on both sides. 518 00:52:21,538 --> 00:52:25,770 To save what she loved most in the wild, she had fenced it in, 519 00:52:25,909 --> 00:52:31,870 controlled it, even killed it and it hadn't been enough. 520 00:52:32,983 --> 00:52:42,016 I think that the dreams I had or even have for elephants can never be. 521 00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:46,527 There's not enough space anymore. 522 00:52:47,797 --> 00:52:52,928 And what space there is put aside for people. 523 00:52:53,069 --> 00:52:55,833 I think all we can do is look at each situation 524 00:52:55,972 --> 00:53:02,810 and do our best to protect what can be protected, 525 00:53:02,946 --> 00:53:07,406 look for solutions for the conflict. 526 00:53:07,551 --> 00:53:13,217 And where we can't do anything, we just let it go. 527 00:53:13,990 --> 00:53:16,686 It can't all be saved. 528 00:53:18,728 --> 00:53:20,423 It can't.