10.00.00

Secret filming of smugglers

Johannesburg, South Africa. The marketplace for all kinds of contraband. This is a sting operation to catch a big time ivory smuggler - part of a $5 billion a year trade. The middleman has lured the smuggler to this warehouse with several large tusks and weapons. Since 1989 there has been a worldwide embargo on all trade of unworked rhino horn and ivory. The ban was imposed by CITES (the convention on the trade of endangered species).

00.30

elephants at sunset

 Recently CITES voted to loosen the ban. Three Southern African countries may now sell ivory to Japan from their ‘excess' elephant herds. Opponents argued that even a limited trade in ivory may put the elephant species at risk once again.

00.50

elephant shot from helicopter

Here in South Africa, there are actually too many elephants for the land available. Some elephants are culled to save their habitat.

01.02

locals receive food

These ‘excess' herds are a sign of the Africa-wide recovery in elephant populations. And when locals profit from the products derived from culled animals, they have an incentive to help conserve populations. A goodwill gesture in countries where the elephant has started to compete with man for water and arable land.

01.20

Int: Maria Nonlhanlha

They first gave us elephants, now they give us this meat. So we are so happy about it because it's the first time we're getting these things.

01.31

tusk stockpile

South Africa's Kruger park is bigger than Israel and contains 90% of the country's elephants. Frustrated by the CITES embargo on wildlife trade - the Kruger park is now sitting on a stockpile of around 3000 tusks. It wants to sell off this ivory and pass the profits on to locals.

01.52

Int: Harold Braack - Kruger Park Director

Because of international CITES agreement, we cannot make use of what we have. I believe that the West is trying to impose its will, its ethics on South Africa, on Africa and I think that it's not justified. I feel that we have every right where we properly control populations, to make use of those populations.

02.22

gunshots & culling of deer at night

02.31

Blood vials

Conservation can be a messy business. Impalas are breeding so fast on the park's borders that 1,000 were earmarked for culling. Working by night, the gamekeepers got to 400 when word came from the top to halt the programme. The official reason: unsightly trails of blood might upset the tourists.

02.49

Int: Erroll Pieterson -

Gamekeeper

It's something that nobody likes doing. We've got to do it because the veld has a specific carrying capacity, it can only maintain a certain amount of animals. And in order to maintain a natural balance, or as natural balance as we can it is necessary to cull on occasions.

03.08

dead elephants

The conservation world is also divided on the merits of culling ‘excess' herds. Some groups see the practise as totally barbaric.

03.16

Int: David Barritt - International Fund for Animal Welfare

Elephants really are the most amazing creatures. They have highly developed social structures... intense family lives... when we go in there with guns blazing, we're committing genocide. And when we talk about management techniques, harvesting, culling we forget that these are living creatures, who grieve.

03.38

Elephant snoring

03.45

Elephant being injected

Such protest has prompted the Kruger park to try giving contraceptive injections to keep elephant populations under control. But this method too is highly controversial. Man should not, perhaps, play God... [elephant rolls over] with nature.

03.59

Int: Jurie Moolman - Djuma Lodge

We are crazy to think that it is a lesser evil to manipulate wild animals hormones than to merely shoot a certain number per year.

04.11

zebras

Many conservationists fear that easing the ban on ivory trade means that poaching will once again soar.

04.17

Anti-poaching unit

04.25

Effective anti-poaching units in South Africa, like Zimbabwe, are responsible for stable elephant populations. Here in the Kruger park just nine trackers comb 100 000 hectars, finding 60 poacher's traps a month. These wire nooses can take days to kill an animal - agonisingly.

04.43

Int: Erroll Pieterson -

Gamekeeper

The snares are indiscriminate.They catch anything that walks into them. They've caught lions, they've caught buffalo, they've caught rhinos. They even removed half the trunk of an elephant.

04.56

Poachers through grass

Ironically, these poachers have trapped an Impala - so overpopulous in the park. Tracking them is a costly and painstaking business. It can take days to catch them in the act. Poachers of rhino and elephants often come armed with AK 47s and even rocket propelled grenades.

05.26

Poacher caught

Two crooks escape, but one is arrested, ticked off and questioned as to his motives.

05.40

Int: Erroll Pietersen

He says that they sell the meat so that they can buy food and cigarettes.

05.48

Elephant carcass

The poacher is made to drag his catch back for the gamekeepers to roast. Because he was hunting for food he will probably get off with a whipping from his chief. But sometimes the meat is not the objective - just the tusks - which fetch a big price in Asia. Poachers' sentences depend entirely on what's being hunted. The army helps to catch the butcher of this elephant, who can expect up to twenty years in prison.

06.20

Tourists, animals

Man has always been the most dangerous beast in the bush - and not just thanks to poaching. Human development encroaches on valuable land, tourism affects animals' behaviour and persistent licensed hunting can take its toll.

06.34

Leopard kill

Meanwhile Nature has its own way of controlling populations.

06.49

Conservation has always inspired passion. Like when Kenya's President Moi set ablaze a stockpile of several thousand tusks.

06.57

lions on road

The owner of this park believes that we will never find a balance with nature if we let our emotions rule.

07.03

Int: Howard Knott

Kuduland Safaris

We have a Spanish client who has a CITES permit, who has paid for an elephant hunt but he doesn't want to shoot the elephant he just wants the tusks. So we said can we buy the tusks from the Kruger park and they blatantly said to us ‘No way'. We said this is ridiculous, it means I have to go out and shoot an elephant, to send the tusks to Europe. You guys have got stockpiles of thousands of tusks in your storerooms. Just sell us two. They wouldn't do it.

07.28

But with selling off stockpiles now once again possible, perhaps Moi regrets that he let $3 million worth of tusks go up in smoke.

07.40

ENDS