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As an elephant lover, their success story as well as their conservation is very close to my heart. The Wild Earth Impact Foundation has been invited to document the game capture of elephant bulls and the relocation from the Marakele Game Reserve to the Mapula Game Reserve. We've been very fortunate that over the years we've had a wonderful collaboration with Marakele and Madikwe and beyond that we've done some amazing white rhino, black rhino, and now elephants. So, yeah, it's it's momentous. It's epic for us. You know, with conservation as a whole it's got a lot of challenges to face. So, specifically with elephants they're facing more and more challenges.
We have, you know, the same or more elephants now on less and less habitat year by year. So, to be able to move elephants from one property to another and, you know, creating safe habitat for the species is really special. Stick with us and let's see what happens. It seems like the elephant has got a bit of a cut just underneath the trunk. The vets are making 100% sure that it's not something that could become a problem. So, the vets are administering some form of antiseptic whatever cut he's got doesn't get infected. We're just taking care of that animal throughout the anesthetic procedure.
They are monitoring the breathing. Heart bleeding is never a good We try and pick a healthy animal before we dart. But it's it's it's it doesn't look too serious. This is what happens to bulls in the wild, in nature. I'm moving two bulls today. Two bulls today and two tomorrow, yeah. Two tomorrow, okay, perfect. What are the benefits Doing so much here? My name is Kester Vickery. I'm from an organization called Conservation Solutions.
We specialize in translocating wildlife from one protected area to another. You know, Kester's super professional. His equipment's really nice, and like the team from Marataba and Mabula and the Lapalala guys this morning, it's just really epic to work with everybody. Catching elephants is a very complex process, and all of this, while we're working with the elephants, we want to keep them immobilized and asleep. Uh we're going to work with them when they're on the ground, put collars, run a various procedures. So, this is a VHF and a GPS collar. So, we will set the uplinks to about every 10 minutes so we can get their location every 10 minutes just until they settle in nicely. And then the VHF is for the telemetry, which those helps us track them on foot if need be.
So, this piece of equipment is a it's a pulse oximeter. Um so, it measures the level of oxygenation in his blood. So, um we want it to be anywhere above 80. Um we're getting it to hover around 90, which is great, but if we are providing him a little bit of oxygen, which is not completely necessary, but it just makes us feel more comfortable. And then the bottom number is a heart rate monitor. So, the third elephant is down, and luckily this one is no need for chainsaws, there's no need to cut parts. It's gone down on the road. And then more importantly, we're going to load them on a truck.
How are we going to bring him from here onto there? Okay, so we're going to lift him by his feet. And whilst we're lifting him, we're going to fit the other ropes that we're going to use at the loading truck. You'll see when we position him on the truck, it almost looks like he's hanging too far off the truck, but as you roll him, then he's nicely on the truck. So, it's always anxious moments while you're working with these big animals. Try our best to make sure, of course, that the elephants are fine, but our crew, too, need to look after themselves in this process. So, obviously, you've got people that we need to take care of in a big five environment. It's a heavy animal, it's
heavy equipment, so we need to make sure that no one's getting squashed or pinching fingers and things like that. It's really dangerous work. Everyone is passionate about what they do, and a great dedicated crew of people who are doing this for a living and making a difference in the conservation world. So, that piece of apparatus is basically what they use to weigh these elephants. So, the elephant's now being placed onto the flatbed. It weighs about 2.5 tons. And the nice part about it is they recently broke away from their herd.
Uh okay. It's great for us as an introduction. Now you're going to introduce him into an area And they can go together. The underside of an elephant's foot, for those who've ever wanted to know, it's very hard. Oh my goodness. Never have you ever seen something like that before. There you can see the elephant obviously in that harness. Guess it will fit uh like a steel bar along his back. Okay. Um and then he'll the ropes will connect to that steel bar and he'll lift on that thing into the truck.
Okay. You might not be able to hear but you can all you can hear is tink and that's all the ropes tensioning. And basically they're going to put him into the as they call the wake-up bin. In this process, you know, of course you've had it before where elephants wake up. Generally try and keep them asleep for most of the journey. The truck's got hydraulics with all roof open so he'll actually wake up on his feet. And that will be slightly easier for him. It's It's much easier because with a big bull they don't always get up easily in the truck cuz he's got cuz he's in a confined space. Whereas now he'll be able to get up or he'll already be on his feet. So um it's a very seamless process.
So the reversal drug has uh just been administered. There you go. So they're going to start lowering him down more so he's on his feet. There you go, so now he's awake. You see the trailer starting to move a LITTLE BIT. OOH. TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHERE HE IS. HE MUST be very confused. Well, they're going to get this uh trailer close to there, they're going to open the door and then they're going to just try and usher the elephant into this last compartment. He's adjusting, trying to figure out where he is, obviously because the last he remembered he was walking around in the bush, fell asleep,
and uh now he's in a very, very dark place. And uh now he's going to the bathroom, as you can hear. Procedure's done, and then it's just left to uh them traveling from here to Mabula. So, it's always also very nice to see the continuation of where the animals go, too, and be able to work with them on that side, as well. It's nice to see some friendly faces when you're on that side, as well. And friendly we are. Let's talk about the animals, though. Well, we have made it back to Mabula, and uh just down the road the elephants in the truck are making their way up towards what I believe is a ramp for them to exit the trailer from. It's
quite a high trailer, so they do need a little bit of uh a landing uh in order for them to get off safely. After delivering the animal, it's going to be monitored pretty closely by the team at Mabula to make sure that it's adapting well. They are moving from a predominantly sweet veld area to mixed sour sweet veld area at Mabula. So, it's got a bit of a forage adaptation to go through, but with it being the end of summer with after really good rain, um there should be good forage available for it. The important for us is that we're managing populations as meta-populations. They're not isolated anymore, and with crews like this, we can integrate new bulls, new genetics, we can get that hybrid vigor in there, which is immensely important for us.
Right. So, they're about to let the first elephants out. They've positioned this ramp nicely so that when they climb, they basically climb out and go down. We've placed the camera there. Hopefully, they don't take the camera. If they do, it would be good footage, but this is a very exciting moment for Mabula. We're not too sure exactly where they're going to go. So, all the vehicles are behind the back of the trailer. We're just waiting in anticipation to see what happens. So, we've had two really successful days here at Marakele National Park. Not easy. There's been rain, there's been hectic weather, and of course, elephants themselves have been in some fairly challenging areas.
But, we are very pleased. It takes a lot to plan this. It even more to implement it. And the hard work now is to monitor and make sure like any species they integrate into existing population. But everything's gone well, especially this last bull was a nice big bull. So, very nice to work with those creatures, and very nice to work with the whole team that's around. It's It's obviously always very special. Epic introduction. It's the first time in 30 years that we're introducing elephants to Mabula. So, yes, epic times. And then, thanks for doing this with us.
Thanks so much. And that's the last interview. Bye. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap. Really hope that you enjoyed following us over the last 2 days as we witnessed six elephant captures, four of which are now roaming around on Mabula Private Game Reserve. And uh we actually look forward to seeing them on our live drive. It's okay, big guy. It's okay. Uh-uh.
