Flight of the Rhino Natural World

In a remote corner of Zululand in South Africa...

..an extraordinary mission is underway.

It has been eight years in the planning.

It is ambitious...

..and it is risky.

This rhino is about to do something rhinos were never designed to do.

KwaZulu-Natal is on the Eastern shores of South Africa.

and is perhaps better known as Zululand.

This ancient region of rolling hills and rivers

was the hunting ground of the Zulu kings.

Once famed for its tribal battles, iMfolozi National Park

is now best known for being the oldest reserve in Africa.

It is also a stronghold for the rhinoceros.

These extraordinary ancient beasts have roamed our earth

for 50 million years.

But today, it's their horn that could be their downfall.

The rhinos use it to fight and defend themselves.

These are white rhino. They're grazers with a wide, flat mouth

to crop grass close to the ground.

But there is another rhino here, too.

Far more secretive...

..and extremely rare.

The Black Rhino has a distinctive hooked lip

to pull branches into its mouth.

This is a rhino with attitude.

Especially if they're taken by surprise.

There is one man who dares to walk amongst the black rhino.

They hide away deep in the reserve,

and have to be tracked on foot.

Bom Ndwanwe is a Zulu who has been getting to know these rhino

for 27 years, and he will play a vital role

in the preparation for a bold new project.

He monitors the black rhino population,

and records details of every male, female, and calf he sees.

To bring the rhinos out of the bushes,

Bom has a trick that appeals to their inquisitive nature.

Rhinos are short-sighted, but their sense of smell is superb.

Large, trumpet-shaped ears swivel

to locate direction of suspicious sounds.

Bom's bright hat lures the rhino in to take a closer look.

Bom's job is to identify which animals

might be suitable to become "flying rhinos".

Every Black Rhino is given a pattern of notches on its ears,

which corresponds to a number.

It's easier than giving them names when there are hundreds to follow.

But, of course, Bom has his favourites.

Many of the rhino here are like familiar friends to Bom,

but soon he will have to say goodbye to some.

He is sharing his lifetime of knowledge and experience

with Jed Bird. Their mission is to save the rhino from extinction.

How we find these rhino, mainly, the best way is like now, early morning.

The sun has just come up, so they're going to be almost

glowing in this light, so we just get onto a high point, like we are here.

Bom and I'll just scan and try and see.

There's usually a race between us to see who can find the first rhino!

THEY SPEAK ZULU

'In 2009 we started working together, and it's been great.'

I really have enjoyed working with him.

I'll go as far as saying there's no-one in this park

that understands black rhino as much as Bom does.

With Bom's help, Jed is in the final stages of preparation

for a bold project...

..to take a small group of black rhino from here,

to try and start a new population in a secret location.

Our black rhino removal process,

a lot of people think it's a short-term thing -

we just get up in the air, find an animal and take it.

I mean, this started in March,

we started ear-marking animals that were suitable for removal

based on their age, sex, the area they lived in,

cow-calf combinations, things like that.

They need a mother and calf for the relocation.

We've come over this little ridge, and they're literally right here.

They're just under that next tree.

So what we'll do now is let her relax a bit,

and we'll go to those trees over there.

Get into those trees, and we can view safely from that distance.

To identify them, they must get a closer look.

But, suddenly they find themselves surrounded.

There's another rhino right here!

Let's stay near this tree.

Just over this ridge is that little grey patch.

That's the back of another black rhino we've almost bumped right into.

Bom works his black rhino magic,

whilst Jed stays behind a gully for safety.

Here she comes.

They know this female well. Bom calls her "Mama Gogo,"

meaning grandmother, but she's far too old for the relocation.

The sores on her side are caused by a parasitic worm infection.

It looks worse than it is - it doesn't really bother them.

She, um... Keep an eye on her.

She knows more or less what we're about.

At that distance, she would have seen Bom clearly.

She's just coming to have a look, no real aggression.

Luckily, we've got this drainage line here,

so we can afford to be this close.

So it's a nice sighting.

It's still the one animal that makes me shake properly.

So it's nice getting this close and getting a proper look at them.

It's just days now till the relocation operation will begin.

It's a campaign in a war they can't afford to lose.

NEWSREADERS: 'South Africa faces a staggering increase

'in rhino poaching.

'More than 300 rhino have been poached...'

In South Africa, wildlife experts say the poaching of rhinos

is increasing at an unprecedented rate.

'The slaughter of rhino continues

'on a scale that's left conservationists speechless.'

'Rhino poaching has escalated,'

with at least 443 killed in the country this year.

All of this to take the rhino's horn.

Demand comes from the Far East,

as some believe it to have medicinal healing properties.

There is no scientific evidence to support this.

Lawrence Munro is one of the head rangers

and in charge of the anti-poaching team in iMfolozi.

He has seen rhinos through many crises over the years,

but this time it's different.

THEY SPEAK ZULU

Did you start east of here?

Yeah, we went down...

'South Africa has always experienced rhino poaching.'

However, from the beginning of 2008, it's as if somewhere in the world

a tap was opened and the floodgates opened

and we have experienced a rising tempo in rhino poaching

such as which we've never faced before, ever,

in our history of this game reserve, which is well over 100 years now.

Last year, more than 600 rhinos were killed across South Africa.

Some have predicted there will be no rhinos left in the wild

in less than 15 years.

It's a story that speaks for itself.

These are all skulls of rhinos that have been picked up

in the field from crime scenes.

These rhinos have been shot and poached for their horns,

you can see the row in front of me, particularly.

The horns have all been hacked off with an axe,

quite savagely right down to the base,

where they actually start to expose

the roots of the teeth and the top jaw.

This is often done with much haste,

the animal is not necessarily always dead when it happens,

and we find that, on our crime scenes,

these rhinos have actually haemorrhaged to death.

They haven't died from gunshots, they've actually bled to death,

because their horns are hacked off while they're alive.

If we can allow something like an icon like a rhino to disappear,

then I feel that we might be heading in to dangerous ground

in terms of the justification of our wild areas,

and to me that's what it's all about.

If we can save this guy, then we can save our wild areas.

This pristine Zulu wilderness has a dark side.

It may look like paradise,

but it's a war zone hiding an invisible enemy.

The rhinos are under attack.

It's a vast area. The guys are working round the clock.

It's dangerous. We've had armed confrontations with poachers,

we've killed some of them,

some of our rangers have lost their lives, and still it continues.

A carcass has been spotted from the air,

but it's three days old, and the poachers are long gone.

They've picked up a carcass of a white rhino

that obviously has been poached. The horns have been cut off.

So we're going to set up a crime scene and see what we can find there.

We've lost quite a few rhino in the last two weeks.

This particular area is seeming to be quite a hotspot at the moment.

A team of police, wildlife investigators, rangers and a vet

must be present when a poached rhino is found.

The area is swept for clues.

MACHINE BEEPS

They need to find a murder weapon.

Now they have found a bullet, it is officially a crime scene.

Is it a .306?

I think it's a .30.

You can have a look.

The park's vet, Dave Cooper, takes care of these rhinos in life.

But these days, much of his time is taken up determining how they died.

'It's a fatal shot. The animal wouldn't have survived long.'

These guys know what they are doing. They've got some background.

they know about hunting, weapons, calibres.

'We've had a report of another two elsewhere,

'and the two that they have found are old carcasses.

'They found these carcasses

'in response to shots that they heard last night,

'but it's not related to last night's event.'

You can just see it's happening, different areas,

different people, different weapons.

Yeah, it's...

You're not going to win a war like this. It's impossible.

It's probably 2% of this animal that they've taken, as a whole,

so you waste this beautiful creature just to take its horns.

It's just... You know, it doesn't...

I still struggle to wrap my head around it.

Sights like these are becoming far too frequent,

and they don't get any easier.

It's a mixture of sadness and anger.

Anger at the fact they've killed another animal

and we were not able to stop them,

sadness at the fact that an animal has gone down to human greed

and it has gone down in the most savage and inhumane way possible.

It's a reminder of how vital the relocation programme is.

Creating new populations elsewhere spreads the risk -

an insurance policy against extinction.

There's some nice cow-and-calf combination here.

This basin, this big, grey area, you know.

I think this year it's going to be five males, five females.

One of them needs to be a big bull, OK?

C442 has got a male calf.

Yeah. Yeah, four-year-old male calf.

Using Bom's data from the field, they choose a group of black rhinos

for their new breeding population.

It might seem a desperate attempt,

but relocating rhinos has been tried before, and worked.

In the 1960s, it was the white rhino

that was on the brink of extinction.

There were only a few hundred left,

and most of them confined to iMfolozi.

ARCHIVE: 'A sight as old as Africa itself,

'and as the old Africa vanishes, this scene may vanish, too.'

'The white, or squared-lipped rhino, a remnant of prehistory,

'is threatened with extinction.'

'The iMfolozi game reserve in South Africa

'is perhaps their last stronghold.'

The crisis was spotted just in time by Ian Player,

who was head warden at the time.

I realised something had to be done about the rhino in early 1960.

Well, you can imagine, I was about 30 years old

and here I am, responsible for a serious...

Well, it was the end of the rhino.

'Drug immobilisation presents opportunities to study and preserve

'the precious wildlife which remains.'

With a few brave and dedicated men, he launched Operation Rhino

to save the last remaining animals.

'Now it's over to Ian Player to catch that rhino.'

It was pioneering stuff.

Darting and sedating rhino was experimental AND dangerous.

'To be accurate, the heavy dart must be fired at close range,

'25 yards at most.'

When we first began, I had to crawl with this capture gun,

which was powered by a soda siphon

and had to crawl on my hands and knees towards the rhino,

and then from that we progressed to getting on to a vehicle.

That was beginning of another major step,

and from then on we darted from the vehicle,

but there were some very hairy rides!

'Perfect shot!'

Despite only basic technology,

they moved 300 rhino to start breeding groups

in zoos overseas and in parks throughout Africa.

They ended up saving the white rhino from extinction.

One of the most famous conservation success stories in Africa.

'You'd better hold on, fellas!'

'Lesson number one, to catch a rhino, have rope on hand and plenty of it!'

Those were the wild days, the way they did rhino capture back then.

I would love to have lived in that era, really,

cos the amount those guys learnt on a daily basis,

on how these animals react to drugs, you know,

how you can manipulate them, how you can catch them,

was just phenomenal.

The general process is pretty much the same,

you know, go out, find a rhino, immobilize it and put it in a box.

We've just become slightly more effective and quicker at it.

Ian Player's legacy was the inspiration for Jed and Bom's work,

and proof that it really can make a difference.

'So the first one moves on to a new destiny'.

Although the white rhino is now doing well in iMfolozi,

they must keep an eye on them,

as no rhinos are safe in this poaching crisis.

We've found these three white rhino in this wallow here.

The white rhino have been hit harder in the park than black rhino,

for various reasons,

mainly because there's more white rhino than black rhino.

They are a lot easier to approach, as you can see here,

white rhino are slightly less vigilant than black rhino.

They are a much more peaceful and laid-back rhino,

and a gentle wallow keeps them cool in the midday sun.

And Bom can't resist a bit of rhino banter.

BOM CALLS TO RHINO

He's coming now.

He's really in two minds, though.

He's had enough of us sweet-talking him.

In two minds, he wants to go, he wants to...

Ah, he goes.

I think let's leave him.

There are now about 18,000 white rhino in Africa,

though it still faces a war against poachers.

But the black rhino has reached crisis point.

In the last six years, their numbers have declined by 70%,

due to poaching.

Today, less than 5,000 black rhino remain in Africa.

If nothing is done, they will die out.

Their plan to move the females, males and calves

they have selected begins tomorrow.

Bom knows that saying goodbye to some of his rhinos

will give their species a better chance of survival.

The cooler South African winter is almost over.

The capture team assemble to move Bom's black rhinos.

'It's the highlight of the year.

'It's nice that it's the end of the year and end of our season,'

because we do a lot of good conservation work during the year,

but the black rhino range expansion project,

just working with these animals is, to me,

the cherry on the top of it all, and it really feels like...

like really good, big-picture conservation work.

They need to catch and move 13 black rhino in just five days.

The first on the list is a large male bull.

He lives in a territory that is accessible by vehicle,

so they decide to capture him first, before the airlift team arrive.

It's a waiting game,

whilst the small chopper scans the area to locate him.

They've darted this animal.

This black rhino, and we need to get there as quickly as possible now

before this animal gets in to a bad area.

Once that drug starts taking effect, they run, it's like a habit.

They find the thickest, worst patch of bush they can get into.

So...just need to make sure we get there as quickly as possible

to try and stop that animal getting in to a compromising position.

Jed depends on the helicopter team to guide him in by radio

to where the rhino has fallen.

Black rhinos are aggressive,

and this is risky for both the rhino and the team.

We can't get in to really assess the animal,

so quite critical, trying to get its nose clear and everything like that.

Looks like its breathing's looking good.

Manoeuvring a very large, feisty black rhino

into a small box isn't easy.

Just lining him up correctly with the box,

and it's critical that he goes into the box.

If he misses the box, we're in trouble.

So we're just lining him up nicely so we can guide him in.

We've just given him a partial antidote now,

and we'll give it about two minutes to kick in properly,

and then what happens after that, hopefully, is he's going to get

up in a controlled, quiet manner, and get in the box,

but it doesn't mean it's going to happen like that.

They can get up like jack-in-the-boxes,

and things can go wrong.

They can miss the box, and this is quite a tense period.

Staff will tense themselves up, ready to counteract anything

that might happen if the animal does go to the side.

It's one ton of meanness.

Compare that to the white rhino.

That's why we get a little nervous at this point.

But it went, actually, very well.

This one went well, but there's another 12 to go.

The next black rhinos present more of a challenge.

They live here, deep in the remote wilderness area of iMfolozi reserve.

It has no roads, no tracks, only rhino paths.

We hear the term "wilderness",

and think, "Surely the whole park is wilderness." It's not.

Wilderness is, in here in particular, 30,000 hectares, is a piece of bush

that has always been like that,

there's been very little human disturbance

within that 30,000 hectares

The only way in is either on foot or on horseback.

That is the only way.

There's no roads or anything, or any other means of getting in there.

And because we can't drive in there,

the best way to get those rhino out is by air.

This project took eight years to plan,

and was masterminded by Dr Jacques Flamand,

a vet who has worked with Zululand rhinos all his life.

The use of the airlift helicopter was ideal way of getting them out

without impacting on the area.

It was very exciting and, of course, once we had done it,

we were hooked, as it were.

HE LAUGHS

As soon as the first black rhino is darted,

the second, larger Huey helicopter flies Jed and the field capture team

in to the wilderness.

They must prepare the rhino for the flight of his life.

Their 40-mile flight takes 20 minutes in the air.

It's the longest they can hang a rhino upside-down.

Any more and the anaesthetic will start to wear off

and the rhino will wake up.

This waiting is always nervous times,

because this is the period that we're out of control.

We don't know what's happening to that rhino,

and we'll only know once the rhino's literally on the ground here.

We've got a southeasterly wind.

'A light breeze or a steady wind?'

Light breeze, light breeze.

'OK'.

I think I can hear those big... I can hear it.

ROTORS WHIRR FAINTLY

I can hear it coming!

The helicopter pilot needs supreme control

to lower his precious cargo gently into the arms of the ground team.

Their new home is a secret location.

He arrives oblivious to his extraordinary journey!

Now the team work quickly, before he wakes up.

They fit a radio transmitter inside his horn, so he can be tracked.

It doesn't hurt the rhino and will protect him.

It's important that when the rhino finally wakes up,

he is completely alone.

Let's go.

'We move all the people, vehicles, everything out of there,

'and then we give it the full reversal,

'the full antagonist to the drug that we've used to knock it down,

'and we move off.

'That animal then literally comes round,'

and there's no smell of people or vehicles or anything to charge.

We've seen them, they just stand up on their feet,

they stand there for a couple of minutes, look around,

take in the environment and usually just walk off.

It's a wonderful sight for Jacques and his team.

This is the culmination of eight long years of preparation.

This landscape used to have black rhinos a century ago,

and now they have returned.

For the future of rhinos...

You know, it's completely in our hands,

and I wouldn't like my generation

to be the cause of their disappearance.

It's a wonderful animal, and it would be nice for our children

and grandchildren to be able to see them.

In their natural habitat.

It's been a successful start to the operation.

Tomorrow brings even greater challenges,

as they will be catching black rhino from a wilderness area

much further away.

The reserve may appear tranquil.

But there are constant reminders of why the relocation is needed.

NEWSREADER: 'Last week, seven rhino carcasses were discovered

'in Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park.'

47 rhino have been poached in the province's state reserves this year.

In one horrific incident in the park,

an entire family of rhino are slaughtered by poachers.

I've never, ever seen that kind of brutality at a scene.

I mean, you can see what happened,

they would have found a group of animals,

shot, probably, the adult female first, really,

because it was probably being a nuisance.

The second animal was an adult female with the calf.

These poachers had shot the mother, taken her horns off,

and obviously, the calf's too small.

They would have chased it away, probably thrown stones at it and...

luckily, they didn't kill it. But, had we not found it,

it would have died anyway, they'd left it for dead.

Then the third animal was another adult female that had been shot,

horns removed. When we were doing the postmortem,

she had a perfectly-formed foetus inside her

that was maybe two, three months away from being born,

perfect little male rhino.

This calf's bond with her mother is so strong

she has remained by her dead body for several days now.

They dart her so she can be moved to safety.

What really stood out and was sad for me

is that little calf was starving,

and you could see where it actually tried to dig

and get under the mother to get to her teats.

That kind of brutality

and that complete lack of compassion for any living thing, I just...

I fail to understand it.

The rescued orphan is taken back to headquarters,

where Jed and the team will take good care of her.

The new orphan has been given some goats for company

and is causing havoc.

Traumatised by her experience,

the first 24 hours in their care is crucial.

Jed is trying desperately to get her to take milk.

It was very difficult, initially, to get her to feed.

We use just a little spray bottle with milk

and you just continuously spray her on her mouth.

And then, I think it was five, six, seven hours later,

she eventually tasted a bit of that milk

and then slowly figured out, you know, made the connection,

which was lucky for her,

cos she wouldn't have lasted much longer without feeding.

Focused on the urgency of their task, the airlifts continue.

They are now searching even deeper into the wilderness area.

They use Bom's ear-notch ident records

to look for specific animals they want to catch.

Their target is to catch and relocate three rhino each day.

First, is an eight-year-old male bull.

He has charged into thick bush and gone down awkwardly.

It's typical black rhino behaviour.

What are you doing? Wait, wait, wait, wait.

There really is only one way to get a rhino out of here.

Was in a very difficult wilderness area,

so when we pulled it through the branches of a tree

and up it went, it was just beautiful.

After four days, they have relocated seven

and they have another six to go.

Jacques checks the age of each rhino by feeling the wear on its teeth.

One after another, they are airlifted out of the bush

and then loaded into crates to finish their journey by road.

They are well on their way to capturing the perfect compliment

of males and females that will make up a new breeding population.

They are flown for 15 minutes, out of the wilderness,

to waiting vehicles, to complete their journey by truck.

Their new home is just too far to fly them all the way -

there are limits to how long a rhino can be left dangling.

We wouldn't do it on a conscious animal at all.

So the animals are sleeping.

Of course, that limits the time we have to hang it upside down,

because after half an hour, three-quarters of an hour,

the animal is starting to wake up,

so we wouldn't do it for an extended period,

we do it for ten minutes, up to 20 minutes,

we've done it without any ill effects.

Yesterday, we got three animals, today we need another four.

That's the maximum we can move at a time.

They'll come in form of two cow-calf combinations.

The chopper's out at the moment,

they've been flying for about half an hour,

looking for one of those cow-calf combinations.

So we're just all standing by here, waiting for that radio call.

So far, they have gone for single animals.

Now, they are dealing with two at a time, a mother and a baby.

This female has been chosen because her calf is 18 months

and old enough to be airlifted.

They must be darted together

if they are to maintain the bond between mother and calf.

Once the darts are in, they scramble to reach them.

They blindfold them and plug their ears

to dull their senses during the flight.

The mother flies first.

She must not be separated from her calf for long.

A visitor has arrived to witness mother and baby fly in,

and Bom has joined him to see the flight for the very first time.

Ian Player might have been the first to move rhino in this reserve,

but he's never seen anything like this before.

What a sight.

I had to stop myself from weeping when I saw that, I must say.

I mean it... That's an incredible sight,

that's human ingenuity at its best.

It's also a first for Bom.

THEY SPEAK IN ZULU

Go well, go well.

Most amazing, you feel the hair on them.

With Mum delivered safely,

the helicopter returns to collect her calf,

and the final flight of the rhino is made.

It's a great thing to watch. It really is, and at the end of the day,

the outcome is rhino conservation,

particularly black rhino conservation, which is...

It's feel-good stuff.

Their new home is a secret location somewhere in Zululand.

It's a three-hour road trip away and they must get there before sunset.

Getting their precious cargo out of the crates

can be the trickiest part of the operation.

It's time to release the mother and calf.

OK. All right, we'll do it.

She's still a bit...

Mum goes first.

The only way to get a rhino out of the crate is to walk her out.

She is sedated so she can be reunited with her calf.

And it's turning out to be the most dangerous part of the operation.

Dave suddenly realises he has met the mother before.

I know this animal. We used to call her Snotty, because she hung around

the bomas near the trails camp, and the trails guys would sleep

in their tents and listen to this sniffling beast around their tents.

So it's amazing, it's like...a reunion.

Now it's time to give them space,

whilst the entire area is cleared of trucks and people.

They can only watch from a distance.

They make sure the calf wakes up first

so he can remain with his mother.

This is the start of a whole new life for this mother and calf

in a wild and secret part of Zululand

that has not seen black rhinos for over 100 years.

Moving those animals, watching them get up in their new home,

knowing it's going to be a new founder population,

it's a great feeling and, yeah,

it really is the highlight of the year for me.

Back in iMfolozi, there is one person who might miss them.

Luckily, Bom still has enough black rhino to keep him on his toes.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd