♪ ♪
WALDO: Just a heads up,
there is lightning to the northwest, copy that?
BERTIE: Okay, roger that.
[thunder]
WALDO: Whoa, did you see that?
[thunder]
♪ ♪
[elephant roaring]
Bertie, get back here now!
♪ ♪
BERTIE: As a wildlife filmmaker,
I've worked in some pretty remote places,
but this one is next level!
The spot we are here
is actually the border between three countries.
To the boat's left is the Cameroon,
back behind us is the Republic of Congo,
and up ahead, our destination is the Central African Republic.
We're heading to a vast wilderness,
Dzanga-Sangha National Park.
Our goal is to try and track down
the jungle's mightiest resident.
We've got five weeks to film
one of the biggest and rarest elephants in Africa,
a forest elephant tusker,
huge males with tusks that sweep down to the floor.
It won't be easy.
The tuskers' supersized ivory
makes them a prime target for poachers.
In just 12 years,
Africa's forest elephant population was halved.
To have any chance of finding one
we're going to need some expert knowledge.
Well, this is not a jungle you want to walk around in
unless you really know what you're doing,
and I don't know what I'm doing, so up ahead, this is Ngbanda.
Ngbanda's a BaAka, they're an incredible group of people
that have lived in this forest for generations.
So we're in good hands.
♪ ♪
[distant roar]
Did you hear that?
♪ ♪
[distant roar]
♪ ♪
BERTIE: Ngbanda is leading us to a very special place,
where we'll have the best chance of finding a tusker.
BERTIE: That way? NGBANDA: Oui.
♪ ♪
[distant grumbling]
BERTIE: Listen to all that noise.
[distant grumbling]
We're getting closer.
[elephant trumpets in distance]
♪ ♪
[trumpeting]
♪ ♪
Wow.
♪ ♪
[groans]
♪ ♪
[trumpets]
♪ ♪
[trumpets]
♪ ♪
This is Dzanga Bai, village of elephants.
♪ ♪
Merci, Ngbanda, merci.
♪ ♪
This big, open clearing in the forest is known as a bai.
Created by the elephants over decades,
it's the length of five football fields.
This species spends most of their lives
hidden in the forest.
To see this many out in the open is incredible.
If we want to find a big male tusker, this could be our spot.
There is nowhere else on Earth
where forest elephants gather in these numbers.
♪ ♪
And the big attraction...
[bubbling]
...is hidden deep in the mud.
♪ ♪
See this female and her little calf,
she's pushing down with her trunk, blowing bubbles.
[bubbling]
It looks like she's just messing about,
but this mud play
is serious stuff.
Their plant-based diet lacks essential minerals
like potassium and calcium.
The minerals that they're after are buried deep underground,
so they've got to mine for them.
♪ ♪
They drive their trunks into the mud and blow,
using bubbles to dislodge the minerals.
♪ ♪
But it takes some practice.
The elephant's trunk is the most unbelievable thing.
It's got tens of thousands of muscles in it.
And I don't think that little baby
has learnt to fully use it yet.
It just sort flicks it around.
♪ ♪
[bird chirps]
Forest elephants live in small family groups.
[squeal]
The bai is a place for these normally shy animals
to socialize.
Up to 200 gather in this clearing every day.
Their heavy footfall has created a habitat
that attracts some of Africa's rarest animals.
From giant forest hogs...
♪ ♪
...to bongos...
[moo]
...and African grey parrots.
♪ ♪
Somewhere amongst the crowd I'm hoping I'll spot
the biggest elephant of all, a legendary tusker.
[grumbling]
BERTIE: Ngbanda, elephant in BaAka?
NGBANDA: Njoku.
[elephant roars]
BERTIE: Is it njoku?
NGBANDA: Njoku. BERTIE: Njoku.
BERTIE: What about the big, big elephant, big male? Tusks?
NGBANDA: Njoku wambule.
BERTIE: Njoku wambule. Okay.
We're seeing some njoku wambule,
but none of them are the really big tuskers we're after.
♪ ♪
This male here might look big;
they get much, much bigger.
Those tusks can reach all the way down to the ground.
But the bigger the tusks,
the more at risk the elephant is from poaching.
And open areas like this are where forest elephants
are at their most vulnerable.
[roar]
Hang on a second.
[roaring]
I'm not sure what spooked them, but it's really fired them up.
♪ ♪
[grumbling]
They're very, very jumpy.
[trumpets]
♪ ♪
[trumpets]
♪ ♪
If they come running in our direction,
we'd be in serious trouble.
[trumpeting]
[grumbling]
[trumpets]
♪ ♪
It's too dangerous to stay on the ground,
so it's time for plan B.
♪ ♪
On the team are rope experts
Waldo Etherington
and Meg Donaldson.
They've worked in remote jungles around the world,
and we're going to need all their tree climbing skills.
♪ ♪
[snap]
♪ ♪
We don't want to spook the elephants,
so the setup needs to be quiet and quick.
♪ ♪
Check out the view.
So we're gonna stick the filming platform
on the tree just here, and it's looking good.
Now we've got somewhere to film from.
Next we need somewhere to live.
♪ ♪
Just back from the filming platform,
Waldo and Meg have found the perfect place
to set up a canopy camp.
♪ ♪
This 150-foot sapele tree has a trunk strong enough
to support our whole team.
♪ ♪
They make it look easy, but this is an extreme build.
♪ ♪
They're rigging a netted living area
and metal-framed tents known as portaledges.
♪ ♪
And for safety, there's a nearby bailout tree
for really bad weather.
♪ ♪
While Waldo and Meg finish setting up our canopy camp,
I'm excited to show Ngbanda his home
from a totally new perspective.
[drone whirring]
♪ ♪
C'est bon, Ngbanda?
♪ ♪
BERTIE: From the air,
the scale of their gardening is breathtaking.
And it's not only Ngbanda who's seeing things differently.
Up here, I can see hundreds of routes in and out of the bai
that the tuskers could use.
Secret elephant highways through the forest.
So we need eyes on them at all times.
♪ ♪
Our plan is to set up a network of camera traps.
♪ ♪
The biggest tuskers never stay in the same place for long.
But Ngbanda knows how to spot their favorite routes.
BERTIE: There's another trail here.
Okay.
This is a camera trap, and we've got 10 of these to put out.
I've brought camera trap specialist Declan Burley
to help.
His tech skills paired with Ngbanda's local knowledge
are a powerful combo.
So this is the main one.
DECLAN: Let's focus on that one, then.
BERTIE: Listen to the boss.
DECLAN: Yeah. The man who knows the ways.
BERTIE: Jungle-proof cases will allow us to leave these cameras
for the next few weeks.
So camera's set, and how this is gonna work
is we've set up two invisible laser beams
down either way down the trail,
and when an elephant triggers either beam,
it sends a signal to the camera to turn on and start recording.
[chuckling]
♪ ♪
And hopefully the next time this camera triggers,
it'll be an actual elephant.
While we've been away,
Waldo and Meg have completed the ultimate treehouse,
suspended 120 feet in the air.
♪ ♪
I think it's time for a bit of a camp tour.
So behind me is the view, you can see the bai
with some of the elephants through the trees there.
If I come over here, Waldo and Meg are making some breakfast.
WALDO: It's looking very good. BERTIE: I'm excited.
In the back there is Drew, the sound department.
And then over here, these are the portaledges,
this is where we sleep.
Waldo and Meg's is further down the trunk below us.
But the coolest part of camp is the commute to work.
♪ ♪
A 300-foot highline takes me
straight to the filming platform.
♪ ♪
It also keeps my scent off the ground
to avoid disturbing the elephants.
♪ ♪
Well, this is the filming platform,
and gonna be spending many, many hours here
over the next few weeks.
This platform is a game-changer.
♪ ♪
I've got a clear view
all the way down to the other end of the bai.
♪ ♪
It's just elephant pathways from all directions all around us,
so it's gonna be so good to try and spot this big tusker.
[chuckles]
♪ ♪
Hidden in the canopy, I have a secret window
into the elephants' day-to-day lives.
I think my favorite thing about this filming platform,
other than the amazing view of the elephants,
is the food delivery service.
[chuckles]
Thank you.
♪ ♪
The longer I wait...
[trumpeting]
...the more I notice all the little family dramas.
[roar]
♪ ♪
Most of them are playful,
But things are getting a bit feisty
with some of the younger males.
[roaring]
[grumbling]
[roar]
[grumbling]
[trumpets]
Look at that.
[grumbling]
I wonder how they'd act if there was a big tusker here
to remind them who's boss.
[grumbling]
♪ ♪
Days turn to weeks.
♪ ♪
But still no sign of a tusker.
♪ ♪
Poaching may have had an even bigger impact
than I first thought.
♪ ♪
To learn more, I'm meeting up with the park's rangers.
Known as ecoguards, they put their lives on the line
to protect the forest from poachers.
BERTIE: Bonjour. TATIANA: Bonjour.
BERTIE: Tatiana Solet
is one of the most experienced rangers on the team.
BERTIE: Dzanga Bai has a dark past.
Poachers target the bigger elephants.
Their tusks sell for more money.
BERTIE: Tatiana wants to show me
what these elephants are up against.
♪ ♪
Jeez.
♪ ♪
Pff, they're heavy.
27th of November this year.
That was like a week ago.
A week ago this was an elephant
walking round the forest.
Oh, that's depressing.
Wow, 2nd of October last year.
That is unbelievably heavy.
And it's as tall as me.
♪ ♪
You can see the cut marks, the machete marks
where it's been cut off the elephant.
♪ ♪
Over 12,000 forest elephants are killed
for their ivory every year.
If this continues,
extinction could be less than a decade away.
I guess I didn't expect,
I didn't expect it to be all so recent.
Like, these elephants, you know, they haven't been poached
in the last 10 years, 20 years.
There's an elephant there that was poached last week,
and that absolute beauty less than a year ago.
♪ ♪
But Tatiana and the ecoguards are fighting back.
Over the past four years,
poaching incidents have dropped by more than 80%.
It gives me a small glimmer of hope.
Do you think there are any of those males left
whose tusks reach the floor?
BERTIE: Wow, so the big male tuskers do still exist.
Well, please, please wish us luck.
We've got our fingers crossed, and hopefully we get to see one.
♪ ♪
The tuskers are out there somewhere,
so I'm determined to make the most of our last week.
[roars]
But the jungle has other ideas.
[thunder]
That is a big tropical storm brewing.
[thunder]
Oh, that's a lot of thunder.
[trumpets]
The elephants seem super on edge.
Lots of them have got their trunks in the air.
[trumpeting]
WALDO: For Bertie.
Just a heads-up, there is lightning to the north.
Copy that?
BERTIE: Okay, roger that.
[thunder]
WALDO: Whoa, did you see that?
Another one.
[thunder]
BERTIE: This isn't a great time to be standing
on a metal platform high in a tree.
[thunder]
I need to get back to the team before this sets in.
♪ ♪
[thunder]
♪ ♪
[thunder]
♪ ♪
[thunder]
[rainfall]
Back at camp, conditions go from bad to worse.
[radio chatter]
WALDO: There's some strikes directly to our north,
um, and the west and the east.
It's not directly overhead, but that front is moving this way.
[thunder]
DREW: Agh.
BERTIE: Are you having fun, Drew?
DREW: No!
BERTIE: Waldo, what's the plan?
WALDO: So we can't stay in this tree,
there's portaledges and loads of metal,
so the plan is to move down and across into our bailout tree
which is rigged with just rope and no metalwork.
I'll go down and just take my weight off the lines.
BERTIE: Okay.
WALDO: And then you can come down.
BERTIE: Okay, and abseil down on to it, yeah?
WALDO: Yeah, see you on the other side.
BERTIE: Alright, see you on the other side.
[thunder]
Whoa! Big lightning strike.
We've got to get out of here.
♪ ♪
Time for bed.
[birds and insects chirping]
[unzipping]
I think it has stopped raining.
What do you reckon, Drew?
DREW: Yeah, I think we're good.
BERTIE: The team and our canopy camp
made it through the night in one piece.
♪ ♪
But we weren't the only ones run out of town by the storm.
[bird chirping]
The elephants were spooked
and have taken refuge deep in the forest.
Filming is put on hold,
and we reluctantly use the time to rest.
But then, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
brings a much-needed morale boost.
I've got some very exciting news.
The ecoguards have come across a family of gorillas
while out on patrol.
And I've never seen gorillas before in the wild,
so I'm a little bit excited.
Humans are so similar to gorillas,
we can actually give them our airborne diseases.
Okay.
So we mask-up to keep them safe.
♪ ♪
I'm carrying an 80-pound camera.
That's 40 kilos.
So it's a struggle to be as stealthy as the trackers.
Okay, here's a clearing.
Thanks, dude.
Oh, my word, the silverback's coming out.
♪ ♪
Well, this big boy is called Makumba,
and he was born in 1980, so he's over 40 years old.
♪ ♪
How cool is that?
To be so close to such a powerful wild animal.
♪ ♪
[grunt]
♪ ♪
I love that an animal can get this big
when tiny termites and leaves are his main food source.
♪ ♪
The rest of the family can't be far away.
Ha ha, there they are!
♪ ♪
The ecoguards believe Makumba has fathered
20 babies in his lifetime.
♪ ♪
[chuckles]
The youngest is three-year-old Epolo.
I think that this baby gorilla
thinks he's a silverback already.
♪ ♪
Epolo loves playing with his mum,
under Dad's watchful eye.
♪ ♪
Whoa.
♪ ♪
[thud]
Now that was just a show of aggression
to say, "Just remember I'm in charge."
That might just be our cue to leave.
♪ ♪
On the way back to the bai,
we stop off to check the camera traps.
♪ ♪
The camera's been triggered.
But it's just a young male.
♪ ♪
Unfortunately, still no big tuskers.
DECLAN: Good luck, camera trap.
♪ ♪
BERTIE: With time running out, our luck finally improves.
[roaring]
The elephants are back!
[trumpets]
The number of elephants has just gone through the roof.
There's got to be more than 100 elephants here now,
and there's just more families arriving all the time.
But just as the number of elephants
are starting to skyrocket,
the light fades.
I'm hoping some fancy tech can help extend the search
into the dark.
Okay, here we go, the moment of truth.
[camera whirring]
Wow. Look at all the elephants.
This thermal camera shows white as hot and black as cold
and allows me to see into the pitch black.
That is a lot of elephants.
We definitely didn't see these numbers during the day.
Surely one of them's gonna be a big tusker.
[grumbling]
[trumpeting]
Just when I thought I knew what an elephant looks like,
I can see all this.
♪ ♪
Look at the detail on this elephant's ears.
You can see all the blood vessels.
You can see the veins.
♪ ♪
That's how elephants keep cool,
they shunt blood to their ears and then flap them.
This camera is so sensitive,
it can pick out a source of heat within 27 miles.
Look at the Hartlaub ducks and their chicks!
It reveals an incredible amount of life,
big and small.
♪ ♪
[squeals]
I've just seen a little thing that looks like a cat.
Where did it go?
There it is.
We've got a genet!
Genets are a slim, catlike animal with huge eyes,
especially helpful for hunting at night.
And with all these elephants around,
they can sneak right up on their prey.
♪ ♪
Oh, and it's hunting frogs.
♪ ♪
Oh, it's crouched really low.
♪ ♪
Ha ha. The genet caught a frog.
♪ ♪
[distant boom]
[elephants groan]
Was that a gunshot?
[trumpeting]
Oh, they're all looking nervous.
But they've all gone quiet.
[boom, boom]
Yeah, those are gunshots.
There are gunshots.
♪ ♪
Waldo, did you hear those gunshots?
WALDO: Yeah, uh, dude, get back to camp ASAP.
♪ ♪
BERTIE: The gunshots sent the elephants back to the forest,
and us to our camp in the trees.
It's not how I expected our filming to end.
Now it all comes down to the camera traps.
♪ ♪
Right, here we go.
We've collected all of the camera trap memory cards.
So me and Ngbanda are now gonna watch them back
and see if we got anything.
You ready, Ngbanda?
NGBANDA: Okay.
[Bertie gasps]
NGBANDA: Ooh!
BERTIE: Here come the feet.
[grumbling]
[trumpeting]
BERTIE: Njoku sonny. Baby, baby!
NGBANDA: Njoku sonny.
♪ ♪
BERTIE: Yeah, he's got really long eyelashes. Sshoo.
But this isn't the only clip on the camera.
♪ ♪
[gasps]
Njoku wambule!
NGBANDA: Njoku wambule.
BERTIE: Look at the size of his tusks!
NGBANDA: Ooohhh.
♪ ♪
[trumpets]
BERTIE: A tusker this big is an incredibly rare sight,
even for Ngbanda.
♪ ♪
BERTIE: It's magical to think this tusker
has been secretly roaming the forest for over half a century.
♪ ♪
Defending his territory and evading poachers.
I hope this species continues to hang on,
because without them, this place would not exist.
♪ ♪
These elephants aren't just part of the forest,
they are the forest,
you know, they keep it healthy, they shape the landscape.
[grumbling]
I've witnessed the dangers they're up against.
[grumbling]
So I leave this place with a deep respect
not just for forest elephants,
but for the people that dedicate their lives to protecting them.
[trumpets]
♪ ♪