Episode 3 Elephant Diaries

Today on Elephant Diaries,

after the death of a much-loved, blind baby elephant, Ndololo,

the team are preparing for another rescue.

We've just heard from Daphne that another orphan has been brought

into the stockade up at Voi and I'm just hoping

that it's in a lot better condition than little Ndololo was.

Let's go and check him out.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

is an orphanage set up to rescue baby elephants who have lost their mothers.

The babies arrive here, often in a terrible state,

and it's up to the founder of the, orphanage, Dame Daphne Sheldrick,

and her team of highly skilled and devoted keepers, to give them another chance at life.

I'm up in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi,

following the stories of the little newly-rescued babies

as they struggle to come to terms with the loss of their families.

Every little elephant they save eventually goes on to a release site

down here in Tsavo National Park, and I'm following

the stories of these older orphans as they learn the skills they need to eventually go back to the wild.

'It's early morning and I'm headed for Voi, one of the Trust's two Tsavo release sites,

'but this time it's a tiny new arrival who I'm going to see.

'She was rescued late last night and head keeper, Joseph, has been looking after her.

'Her mother was killed by poachers.

'Alone and scared, she got herself stuck in mud.'

(This ele's so tiny!)

How long do you think she was stuck for?

Three days.

Because take a look... Her backbone... I can see it from here.

And round her ears, I mean, she looks very dehydrated.

This little elephant would've been with its mother up to this point.

Three months old... The first year, would not go more than a few feet from its mother's side.

That's its whole world,

relies on it for finding water, for getting milk.

She's milk-dependent for the next two years. Suddenly, no Mum!

Remember those times when you were a kid and panic set in?

Your whole world just in pieces because you suddenly realise,

"I'm lost!", and that's what that little elephant must've been thinking,

just sheer terror.

Because a little elephant of that age wouldn't have a hope in hell. It would be dead.

Without your mother, you're finished...

unless Joseph and the team are around.

Little Chyulu, as she's been named, is covered in sores.

They've been sprayed with purple antiseptic.

She's lucky to have been rescued nearby, but this is no place for a tiny baby.

She's got to get on an aeroplane and go to Nairobi.

They simply can't look after an orphan this small.

That's a job for Edwin, for Daphne, up in Nairobi.

Going all the way to the nursery will be a tough and stressful journey, but it WILL be worth it.

Up here in Nairobi, she'll be guaranteed a warm welcome

from this very friendly little gang of elephants.

Here, Edwin, the head keeper, and his team cater for the orphans' every need.

Look at these eles. They're on the move.

They seem to be ready to go somewhere. Well, that's because, these eles have a built-in clock.

It's quarter past two, and they know that is feed time for them.

All of these elephants are milk-dependent.

Now most of them take a bottle and they guzzle it down,

but there are a couple that are fussy eaters.

'Each of the young eles here

'gets two bottles of warm milk every three hours.'

Now this is one of the fussy eaters.

This is the other fussy eater.

They are the two smallest elephants

and what they do is they drink behind this blanket.

Now I know that looks completely barking mad,

but there is actually a very, very good reason why they like to use this blanket.

This is is sort of like the mother's stomach, isn't it?

Yeah. It's like the feel of the mother.

So in the wild they'd be feeding from their mothers all the time

and the mothers' stomachs would be hanging down with the elephant underneath,

so they have that constant touch with something and that's what the blanket is doing.

Edwin, how long do you reckon this elephant will have to feed like this?

For about eight months.

-So he's six, he has about two months more.

-Now which elephant is this?

-Zarura.

-Zarura.

There are two elephants that feed like this?

Yes, Zarura and Makena.

And they fight over the blankets, do they?

-Yes. If you've got one blanket here or both together, they will fight one another!

-Really!

Because both want the blanket.

The morning feed is over, but cheeky little Makena is heading back to her milk blanket and she's not happy.

There's only one blanket.

We could have a little bit of a tussle going on..

Oh...!

-Would that be like fighting for one mother in the wild?

-It will be.

Fighting for the teat?

Yea, they are fighting for the blanket and the blanket is the figure of the mother.

They are giving each other quite a whack!

It looks very rough for two little eles!

Yes. Especially Zarura is very rough!

Now stop it, you two! I'm not sure a wagging finger is really going to help in this situation.

Leave her alone!

Feeling battered and grumpy, Makena wanders off to find her adopted mother, Lualeni.

These two have a very close bond and are only ever apart for milk feeds,

and so a cuddle from her is just what Makena needs.

Hopefully, Lualeni will also be able to comfort little Chyulu when she arrives.

Here in Voi, a stressed little Chyulu could certainly do with some reassurance right now.

We've got to get her on an aeroplane,

and it's not going to be easy.

She might look little now at three months old,

but she probably weighs a couple of hundred kilos, 150 kilos.

It's going to take all of us to lift her up in this net.

And you can see she really doesn't want to come out.

OK. Out she comes, round goes the strap.

Joseph has got the strap.

D'you want her on her side?

ELEPHANT SNORTS

They've got the straps round her legs.

That's the key to keeping her restrained and she's obviously panic-struck

but there is no alternative. She has to go through this process.

Your can hear the keepers just talking to each other in Swahili,

but basically, it's keep calm and try and keep the noise right down

so as not to stress her more than we can.

With the vet supervising,

everyone is trying to keep the baby as relaxed as possible.

In her dehydrated state, it's too dangerous to give her a sedative, so it's vital she remains calm.

OK.

-ELEPHANT GRUNTS

-In we go!

Next stop, the airstrip.

Edwin and his team of keepers have arrived from Nairobi.

'Chyulu is in very safe hands as they have a huge amount of experience

'in flying rescued babies out from the bush.'

The main concern for the pilot is that Chyulu doesn't panic on the flight,

so without a sedative, it's down to their skill and experience

to make sure everyone stays safe, and so far it's all working.

-OK... Go!

-Don't drop her, don't drop her...

There we go... OK.

One very important passenger safely loaded.

Next stop Nairobi,

and the beginning of a whole new chapter in young Chyulu's life!

Throughout the journey,

Edwin watches very carefully

to make sure that she's not going into shock.

So far so good. We're about to touch down,

then we have, I should think,

a 15, 20-minute ride in a truck to get Chyulu safely to the orphanage.

At last, journey's end,

and everybody rushes to help little Chyulu into her stable.

She's arrived just before the other little orphans come back to their beds for the night.

And her neighbour, Loijuk, is desperate to know who has moved in next door,

but she'll just have to wait till the morning.

After all the excitement and trauma of the day, this is one exhausted little elephant.

Chyulu looks absolutely adorable with that blanket tucked over her.

She's finally fallen asleep.

Now whether the keepers get any sleep tonight, goodness only knows,

but Chyulu's going to need all her strength

because tomorrow is when she meets the other orphans, so I hope she really does get some sleep.

After a very peaceful night,

Chyulu's just woken from a long lie-in.

The other little orphans have been out for a couple of hours, but Edwin is so pleased with

Chyulu's progress, that they've been brought back to the stables to greet their new little sister.

Poor little Chyulu is feeling very shy, clinging to the keeper who looked after her during the night.

Mini-matriarch, Lualeni, is first over to try and reassure her.

I can see little Chyulu doesn't know what to do at the moment

because she's met a crowd, a group of other orphans here

and she's trying to follow the keepers.

She's afraid to join them.

Compared to our orphans who are being fed well, she's weak.

She's still weak and we need to take a great concern about her.

She's also a noticeably different colour to the Nairobi herd

who have regular baths in red, iron-rich mud.

But Edwin's decided that this little grey elephant IS strong enough to go out into the bush.

Just two days ago, Chyulu was a wild elephant.

Now she has a new loving family of people and baby elephants,

but they can never replace the family she lost because of the poachers.

Unfortunately, little Chyulu is not alone in her suffering.

I've come back to Tsavo National Park

to catch up with the older orphans

who are being slowly reintroduced back to the wild.

Despite their size, these are still very young elephants, all under 10 years old.

Each is still coming to terms with their own personal story of loss.

I suddenly feel very, very small.

And this elephant here, with that great rip in his ear,

the most distinctive of all these elephants, that's Burra.

And the reason for that tear in his ear is because he was caught up in a wire snare.

He was eight months old and his mother literally pulled him free but in doing so helped to actually

pull that snare tighter and tighter round his neck, through his ear, and that's the result of it.

Now initially, when he was brought into the orphanage, he didn't want to know.

His head was down, he had this terrible wound,

he didn't want to drink, and the keepers, struggled, struggled,

two keepers sleeping with him that first night when they got him to the orphanage in Nairobi.

And now he's just a lovely, gentle elephant.

Burra was lucky to have survived,

but the poacher's snare effectively robbed him of his family.

Snares are an indiscriminate and lethal menace, so to see

what's being done about them, I am visiting the local headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

They've joined forces with the Trust to tackle the poachers head-on,

but the scale of the problem is shocking.

Many little orphan elephants have lost their mothers to poachers.

Just take a look at this lot.

These are wire snares. This is how the poachers kill the animals.

And THAT is what it's gonna take to kill an elephant, a thumping great thick piece of cable.

The elephant puts its foot in, gets tangled up, pulls the snare tight,

can't get away because it's attached to a tree.

And when the poacher comes round

to check his snares he brings with him poisoned arrows.

These are wrapped up with plastic or hide because if I was even

to scratch my finger with that it could kill me.

And there's a type of snare for every kind of animal here in Tsavo

but I think the most chilling thing of all is right behind me here.

Take a look at this.

This is a tusk. What does it weigh?

11 kilos, that's about 25lbs.

That is a female elephant. I think she's probably 30-40 years old,

probably would have had five to ten calves in her lifetime,

and when the poachers killed her she would have had a small calf with her, for sure,

and that calf would not have survived.

To see how they're tackling the poachers, I am joining

one of the Trust's six desnaring teams for their daily patrol

to try and track down the snares.

Is there a lot of poaching? Alex is the team leader.

Last month we arrested a poacher who had 64 big snares.

Really? Big snares as in catching what kind of animal?

Big snares... I'm talking of targeting buffaloes,

-elephants, zebras and giraffes.

-Right.

-Yeah.

And they're basically meat poaching?

-Meat poaching...

-Right.

-Some for commercial purposes, and even others for domestic use.

-OK.

-Yeah.

Alex and the team have started to spread out a bit now.

They're sort of making a net because they think the poachers

are active in this area, and they want to just check every

particular part of it because if a poacher comes, he's not going to just put down one snare.

He's going to leave a whole net of snares to try and catch animals if he thinks it's a good area.

Oh, look at this!

-Now that...

-You see...

-..is a big chunk of wire.

This one can snare a giraffe

and most of the time they put this kind of snare in Acacia species, Acacia trees.

-And such kind of a wire can even trap an elephant.

-Yeah.

-The problem is of course that yes, it can break away from the tree...

-Yeah.

..but in doing it, it pulls the snare so tight...

-And most of them, they end up dying.

-Yeah.

Especially, if you imagine that the trunk has been trapped by the snare, it might be chopped off.

Even the leg. Can you imagine the kind of injury? A wire like that

would cut bone deep, and then infection, a lingering death...

-So it's a massive problem you're facing.

-Mm.

It's quite a big problem we are facing in this area.

Tsavo is a huge place so unfortunately the teams can't

find every snare. Recently, the Trust's veterinary team were called to a particularly horrific event.

A wild calf appeared to have a snare around her leg and was clearly in terrible pain.

The vet decides to dart the calf with an anaesthetic so they can treat the wound.

The mother tries desperately to keep her baby awake.

The team attempt to drive her and her family away temporarily so they can help the baby.

But elephant mothers are incredibly brave,

-MOTHER TRUMPETS

-and she stands her ground protecting her unconscious youngster.

The team are left with no choice but to dart the mother as well.

Unfortunately, in her final attempt to protect her calf, the mother collapses on top of her.

If the team can't get her off in the next five minutes,

the calf will suffocate.

It's a race against time to free the trapped calf,

but with the mother weighing around three tons, this is a massive task.

At last the calf is freed and vet David Ndere

can finally get a look at the wound.

As suspected, a wire snare is embedded deep in the leg,

causing unimaginable pain.

This injury is quite serious.

So what I'll do is, I'll take it out, clean this wound,

and give it a high dose of antibiotics.

Quite serious, quite deep. So this is the wire,

and once the foreign object is out this animal should recover quite well.

With her leg treated, it's time to bring the two elephants round.

This youngster was one of the lucky ones.

She survived the poacher's snare.

Last year, across Africa,

it's estimated that 23,000 elephants were killed by poachers,

and unfortunately the trade in ivory is on the increase again..

The good news is that we've had reports that the calf is making an excellent recovery.

Incidents like this really help to motivate the desnaring teams.

We're just being called to something.

Oh, yes, I can see it. Look!

You were right!

HE LAUGHS A different material.

-Yeah, different material?

-Yeah.

-But again, buffalo?

-Buffalo.

-I mean, that's strong stuff, isn't it, if you think how powerful a buffalo is.

But there's no way... If it gets itself tangled up in that

it's as good as dead. Even when there's not an animal caught up

in a snare, and I've seen animals caught in snares, and it is the most horrific sight, because this...

To die in a snare has to be about the most brutal death

that anything or anyone could ever have inflicted upon them.

And the trouble is, of course, you know, you go through that and then this just pulls tighter, tighter.

Just imagine, look at this. You pull it tighter, tighter,

You're desperate, struggling.

You're trying to get free, and at every moment as you get free,

that pulls tighter and tighter into your skin, just like a vice grip.

Now you can't breathe, now you can't swallow,

but you're still suffering and it'll go on for days.

We've pulled out a few snares today,

but it's estimated that every year

over 20,000 animals die in this way in Tsavo alone.

So it's essential that Alex and his team don't lose heart.

And Alex, if you even save one animal it's an amazing gift that you are giving, isn't it?

So knowing what I've seen today... That's eight animals' lives,

eight big animals probably, that you've saved, maybe even an elephant

from having its trunk torn off, from its leg, you know, mutilated...

I really admire that work. I think you are doing a fantastic job.

Thank you for that encouragement. We try to keep on doing it, day by day.

It's the usual early start for the orphans here in the Nairobi nursery.

They're up and out into the bush every day at first light, and as it's winter here,

the mornings can be pretty chilly,

but I'm here to check on the newest arrival.

Chyulu is very easy to spot within the herd at the moment.

Not only is she the smallest elephant, but she's the only one

that keeps her blanket on all day and there's a very good reason for that.

The biggest fear for the babies coming in is the fear of them catching pneumonia.

In fact 90% of all the babies that die in the orphanage, die of pneumonia.

And she could be susceptible to it because she was found in the mud and it's not that warm at this time

of the year, so we have to keep a really close eye on her and make sure she's warm all the time.

But I must say, at the moment she seems to be doing really well.

I'm also having an early start with the orphans down here in Tsavo National Park.

It's a glorious morning here at Voi and the elephants are just bursting to get out into the park.

But I can guarantee that one of the elephants will get left behind.

Her name's Mweiga and she's still way back up the top there.

It's actually pitiful to watch Mweiga moving

because every step seems to be painful.

She's probably got some kind of condition of her joints.

Just look at her! Just struggling to get down that hill.

She desperately wants to keep up with the rest of the herd,

but they must carry on feeding, they have to move ahead, and she just gets left behind.

Obviously we've got the keepers there to help her and encourage her

but she has to keep going. She's got to feed herself.

That's one thing she can't rely on the other elephants to do.

Yes, they can come back, they can reassure her,

but they have to look after themselves too.

Even just watching the way she places her feet, I mean, it seems as if every step is painful for her.

Despite her struggle, the Trust refuses to give up on Mweiga

and tries to provide her with a good quality of life.

You can hear her every so often there, just rumbling, talking to the rest of the herd...

"Where are you?"

Even though the rest of the herd have gone on ahead

and are busy eating, their innate compassion and kindness means they haven't forgotten poor Mweiga.

Fascinating to see the way the herd responded there.

They could hear Mweiga calling to them,

and then Mtumi coming in. Now that's the matriarch...

"What's going on here, is everything OK?" Just what she should be doing -

caring, looking after everybody's interests.

Out went the trunk, just reaching out.

Another little rumble of reassurance - "Come on, come on, keep up!"

But it's not just the other elephants who look out for Mweiga.

Joseph, the head keeper here in Voi, is extremely fond of this brave but fragile elephant,

and this is particularly evident at morning milk time.

Mweiga?

SUCKING AND GURGLING

Normally we stop feeding them when they're about three years old, but since Mweiga's been very weak

we have to give her extra bottle of milk as well as extra food.

Mweiga has a safe and loving home down here in Voi, being cared for by humans and elephants alike.

400km north in Nairobi,

the same can be said for Chyulu, who just goes from strength to strength.

She's formed a deep attachment to Loijuk, who lives in the stable next door to her,

and 18-month-old Loijuk has taken little Chyulu under her wing.

Normally, new babies who arrive at the nursery would be mothered by the mini-matriarch Lualeni,

but little orphan Makena never lets her out of sight, and spends most of her time sucking Lualeni's ear.

This really is the most incredible behaviour.

I mean, every time I see Makena, she's sucking that ear.

It's getting so damp, and the trunk right in!

But look at little Lualeni! Lualeni needs comfort too, don't you, darling?

Today in particular she seems very affectionate. She keeps finding me,

and look, putting my hand in her trunk and shoving it into her own mouth and sucking.

It's very easy to forget that Lualeni is still a young elephant

and needs a lot of comfort,

although she is also giving a lot of comfort.

Here in Voi, the older elephants are heading back to the stockade

for some creature comforts of their own.

It's been a long, hot day out in the bush, with temperatures up around

40 degrees, and for Mweiga, the journey home can be painfully slow.

You can see what an incredibly tough job it is for Mweiga,

just to get herself back up to the stockade each evening.

I mean, she's 7 going on 70!

Now Daphne has been brainstorming with experts from overseas to try and come up with some

kind of solution to Mweiga's problems so hopefully, in the not-too-distant future,

we may be seeing a different Mweiga on this journey back home.

I certainly hope so.

The little ones in the Nairobi nursery are also heading for their beds,

and with a drink of warm milk to look forward to, they're not hanging around.

Everyone has their own bedroom, but little Chyulu is hoping

that she can sneak into Loijuk's stable for the night.

Sleepovers, though, are strictly forbidden, and she'll

have to be content to chat to her beloved friend through the walls.

But poor Makena is not having a good end to the day.

She's on antibiotics for a bit of tummy trouble.

Unfortunately for Edwin, Makena doesn't like taking her medicine!

THEY CONVERSE

How was that, Edwin? Was that like always, or...?

Yes, a little wrestling!

Because she's very strong and she doesn't like it.

She's small but strong!

Makena's problem isn't serious, and she should be

fine in a couple of days, but in the next door-stable, Lualeni is keeping a concerned eye on her little baby.

Poor Makena could do with a cuddle but has to make do with her comfort blanket.

Unfortunately for Makena, life here at the nursery is always changing.

Elephants have to move on to the Tsavo release site

when they reach the age of two and very soon this is going to turn Makena's whole world upside down.

Next time on Elephant Diaries,

one of the elephants in Voi goes missing.

And there's an emotional farewell in Nairobi.

It's such a shame. The ears are going out, the trunks going up.

He doesn't know what's going on.

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