National Geographic: Coming of Age with Elephants Page #4

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herd to stop them from doing this.

There's no other way we can stop them.

I'm so happy now that

this animal is dead.

I've been up every night,

waiting and looking after my crops.

The elephants have been bothering us

for the last five years

and destroying our crops.

Some of the farmers actually have not

harvested anything from their fields.

For now, this village's cornfields

were safe.

The killing of one elephant should

keep the other away.

Tonight the crops would not

have to be guarded

but what about all the other villages.

In 1993 alone I gave the order

to shot 57 problem elephants

and each decision was difficult, but

I knew it was the right thing to do.

For these villagers, the monster

that once terrorized them

was now just thousands of pounds

of meat in the morning sun.

Today, it would fed their families.

All over Kenya, deadly encounters

between people and elephants

were on the rise.

Joyce Poole and Richard Leakey

were under constant pressure

to kill more elephants.

I realized my worst fears were

probably going to come true someday.

Kenya was going to have to eliminate

most of the elephants outside the parks.

We would have to confine the rest

behind fences

as other African nations had done.

If elephants had to be

confined to parks,

Joyce wanted to find a humane way

to control their numbers.

She had her team had

a daring new idea.

They were going to test a form

of elephant birth control.

Make sure you don't let them go back

across the river.

Critics ridiculed the whole pain.

But Leakey gave her the go ahead.

For the test, Joyce relies on exactly

the sort of detailed knowledge

of individual elephants

that has always been her specialty.

Just bring 'em over here.

They are looking for a female

who already has a baby,

so they can be certain

she is not pregnant.

The marksman brings her down

with a tranquilizer dart.

Once again, Joyce is defying

the experts.

But this might be a way for elephants

to survive in the crowded world

of modern Africa.

Once the elephant is down,

Joyce and her team have only

They inject the elephant with an

experimental contraceptive vaccine

which should sterilize her.

Then they strap on a radio collar

to track her progress.

Joyce believes birth control for

elephants may mean hope for the future.

But it will take years to prove that

the contraceptive works.

Then just when they begin to get the

first positive results, it's all over.

Political infighting puts an end

to their plans.

I have given the best years of my life

to public service.

In march, 1994 his enemies forced

Richard Leakey out of office.

...and the stress and the pain of

being vilified

by senior politicians and others

is more than I think

is good for my health.

Under these circumstances I have

today sent a letter to His Excellency

the president offering my resignation.

Joyce and several of her colleagues

resigned the same day in support.

What was so devastating about it

was that KWS had had such successes,

and my own program... we had built up

such an extraordinary team

and we had really done so much

and I feel that people knew that,

people were on our side;

yes, they wanted us to do more,

but they realized we were

doing the best we could

and all of a sudden,

Richard is force to resign...

and everything is just left in limbo.

Joyce didn't know yet where her life

was going to take her.

But elephants still had a hold

on her spirit.

She went back to visit Amboseli.

She now had a daughter

named Selengei.

Joyce wanted to introduce her child

to her old friends.

We'd gone out one evening

to watch elephants.

And I saw Vee approaching us

with her family.

And then an extraordinary thing

happened.

It wasn't just any rumble,

it was greeting rumble.

And who knows what was going on

in the elephants heads?

I could only guess that

they had remembered me

and they were welcoming us

back to Amboseli.

For a few days, Joyce blended in

with the familiar camp routine.

Her old colleagues were still

pursuing their research.

Elephants would always be

part of Joyce's life.

But back in Nairobi,

someone else was going to have to make

the hard choice about their future.

I think in the long term,

let's say looking 50 years ahead,

that elephants and people will not

be able to coexist,

that elephants will be confined to

national parks,

many of them with

barriers around them.

And I think between here and now,

it's going to be a very painful

process to get where we're going...

and that there'll be a lot of

suffering on both sides.

To save what she loved most

in the wild, she had fenced it in,

controlled it, even killed it,

and it hadn't been enough.

I think that the dreams I had or

even have for elephants can never be.

There's not enough space anymore.

And what space there

is put aside for people.

I think all we can do is

look at each situation

and do our best to protect

what can be protected,

look for solutions for the conflict.

And where we can't do anything,

we just let it go.

It can't all be saved.

It can't.

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