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JEREMY SISTO: Botswana in Southern Africa,
home to a third of all Africa's elephants
and the last place on Earth where they are free to roam vast distances,
as all elephants once did.
Disneynature's documentary film, Elephant,
will tell the story of these epic journeys.
Behind the scenes, the crew's journey was also underway
as they followed the elephants on a thousand-mile round trip,
through some of Africa's most hostile places.
By following them on their road trip,
the crew would gain an entirely new perspective
on these remarkable creatures.
MARK LINFIELD: Why the elephant road trip?
I think it's because the amazing migration
that these elephants undertake hasn't been shown before.
And also the challenges that these elephants face along the way
bring out the best in our elephants
and, obviously, the journey itself is stunning.
You have three, four, five countries all together
through which the elephants can move
through this amazing area of southern Africa.
It's a chance for people to see a part of the world
they might not have seen before.
SISTO: The entire southern third of Africa
is covered by the giant Kalahari Desert.
The first challenge for the crew
was going to be finding elephants in this vast wilderness.
But there is one special place where elephants gather every year.
Seasonal rains flow into the desert, creating the Okavango Delta
and the starting point of our journey.
SISTO: Our film crew wanted to get one step ahead of the elephants,
so they called upon local wildlife filmmaker Mike Holding,
who has over two decades of experience in the delta.
Mike's role would be finding and filming elephants,
as well as sorting out the sheer logistics of this massive expedition.
HOLDING: You're talking about a vast area. Ten-thousand square kilometers.
It's really like a needle in a haystack
trying to find eles and other animals in that mosaic of water and islands.
So, one of the reasons we spend a lot of time in the plane,
in the air, looking at the movement of the flood is
it's how we can see
where the different movements and changes happen
and where the animals start to congregate.
I could do this for the rest of my days.
Flying over the delta is one of the most amazing things.
Anybody who's ever flown over the Okavango
will tell you this is absolutely the way to see it
because you really get a sense of the scale.
The massive unspoiled wilderness and just sheer beauty,
it's absolutely spectacular.
SISTO: Mike's first challenge is to choose a location for the crew
to camp that is close to the elephant action,
but not impossible to reach.
HOLDING: There are no roads around here. There's very little mapping information.
So, the plane is incredibly useful,
really to identify a route in for the vehicles
and which way we can go, which rivers we have to cross,
where it's too deep,
and then we try and put that into practice on the ground.
But, you know, it's pretty tricky
because there's a lot of water on the road to get up here,
so when the trucks and the convoy and everybody, you know,
set out to come and find this camp,
they're in for a few challenges and surprises on the way.
SISTO: Getting the crew and five tons of camera gear
into the heart of the Okavango Delta
was going to need some serious custom-built transport.
The crew call these mean-looking machines swamp trucks.
The mission for day one,
to reach the heart of the delta and set up camp before nightfall.
And now, the adventure begins.
This is the bottom of the delta.
Just, uh... Just about 20 kilometers from Maun.
DUNCAN ROWLES: Yeah. Straight, straight.
SISTO: It wasn't long before the swamp trucks were put to the test.
Okay, that was basically the first of five crossings
that we're gonna be doing.
Potentially the shallowest one.
The deepest crossing, they say,
pushes water through the gear lever notch inside the truck.
That would mean the water level would be about here.
We've got the six-wheeler truck
which is gonna pull us through this crossing.
'Cause we're hitching each vehicle,
basically creating like a long snake of vehicles.
We'll have vehicles switched off
and we're gonna block up the exhausts, lift up everything on to the roofs.
The trucks will haul us through.
TANIA JENKINS: What's going on out there?
That's not a good question.
Whoo! Here we go swimming.
Everything is completely underwater.
JENKINS: You're just showing off. You need to drive like that?
Wow! Hey!
-JENKINS: Wow. -Wow.
That was an experience.
Shaky, shaky, but I'm okay.
SISTO: As the rest of the crew rush ahead to make camp,
cameraman Martyn Colbeck and expert guide Presley Mbeha
are stopped in their tracks.
Out of nowhere, a family of elephants appears.
They're highly agitated but it's not clear why.
It's pandemonium.
We've got lots of excitement here, lots of... Oh, that's lovely.
Wow.
SISTO: And then all becomes clear.
COLBECK: We've just found a newborn baby
and it's staggering around, it can hardly walk.
Probably born, I don't know, three or four hours ago.
It's really, really young.
That's amazing. It is lovely.
SISTO: The crew draw on their decades of experience
to film without disturbing them.
COLBECK: The problem I've got, is A, there's a big bull in the way.
It's okay, it's okay.
The problem I've got is that this grass is very, very long.
So it's very, very hard to see the baby.
This male is being a real pest.
SISTO: While the bull was clearly annoying the new mother,
the fact that she was happy to stay close to the vehicle
was a good omen for filming in the delta.
COLBECK: It's okay.
Everyone's very excited here.
We got the rest of the family behind us.
What's really interesting is that she's using the car as protection.
She's trying to get away from this male.
And there's the baby.
Oh, that's very sweet, look at that.
You can tell by the pink ears, it hasn't got particularly pink eyes.
That's very sweet.
And I can see the umbilical cord.
Oh, look at that.
SISTO: A great start to the shoot.
An elephant encounter before they'd even arrived at camp.
And a rare chance to film the first steps of a newborn.
On the road ahead, the rest of the team were having far less luck.
So basically, we've just got three vehicles stuck now.
Literally, five minutes ago we had a trailer unhitch itself
and land upside down.
Go!
It's just getting a little bit frustrating.
ROWLES: We just gotta keep going,
this is what making elephant films is all about.
Hurry! Go, go, go, go.
SISTO: After 15 hours on the road,
the front of the convoy finally drew into the site
Mike had located for their camp.
This remote island was to be home for the next six weeks.
Mike gave me this point from his flight.
So, he gave me this as a GPS point of where he wanted the camp to be.
SISTO: The camp was all set up,
but the elephant filming had delayed the rest of the crew.
Would they make it before nightfall?
Tell my mother I love her.
We've absolutely no idea what's gonna happen up in front...
And we've still got 50 kilometers to go.
SISTO: And driving 50 kilometers in the delta can take an hour or all day.
We were trying out to get out
and couldn't, so we decided to use the winch.
Yeah, good.
And then when we were winding it back in, the screw came out.
You see it? Which holds the actual cable in place.
So we had to take the whole thing out
and then try and manipulate the metal.
Luckily, I've got delicate fingers and surgery was successful.
Now we see if it pays off.
SISTO: No, it's gonna take them all day.
MBEHA: That's it.
EDWARDS: How's it looking?
SISTO: The rear guard finally make it into camp,
but their struggle just to get here
has brought home the scale of the challenge.
Martyn arrives tired but elated from filming the newborn,
but he's also concerned how quickly they disappeared from view.
The crew realize they need a way to keep track of the elephants.
Fortunately for them, help is about to arrive.
Biologist Mike Chase
has been counting elephant populations in Africa
and tracking their journeys across the Kalahari for over a decade.
Yeah, I've got a visual,
she's in front of the woolly caper bush. She's heading south.
Well, I'm a fifth-generation Batswana.
I've always just felt
a very deep sense of belonging and tie to elephants.
These are the world's largest terrestrial land mammals
and I was mesmerized by them
and I always have been intrigued and fascinated.
SISTO: And that's not just in the wild.
Mike and his partner, Kelly, also devote huge amounts of time
to rescuing and nursing young elephants
that have been orphaned by poaching or human conflict back to health.
Their hope is that these junior elephant ambassadors
will help local kids to connect to their wildlife
and care for its future.
CHASE: I think people around the world think all too often
that there are a lot of people saving the elephants
and there aren't, really.
And so to be part of a privileged few,
committed to safeguarding the future of elephants,
I derive a great amount of enjoyment from that.
Let's go look for the eles.
SISTO: Both Mikes share a passion for Botswana's elephants...
HOLDING: All right. CHASE: Yeah.
SISTO: ...and today, they hope to find a particular herd
known for traveling great distances.
CHASE: The epic journey that Botswana's elephants embark on, it's untold.
Because contrary to popular belief,
not all of Botswana's elephants are confined to within Botswana.
They have this ability to cross international borders.
They don't need passports.
So our satellite telemetry data has recorded elephants
moving out of Botswana, through Namibia, into Zambia and Angola.
Some of the largest home ranges ever recorded.
SISTO: Mike is convinced data from his satellite-tagged elephants
could help the crew with their filming.
So one of our collared matriarch cows
has the tendency to gather in this area during the dry season,
where she congregates in a large herd with other matriarchs.
HOLDING: Yeah.
Let's see if we can pick her up.
We have the VHF tracking antenna on,
and see if we can get a ping from her satellite collar.
Hold up. I can't hear anything yet.
It'd be great if we could get a visual.
Ah, do you hear it?
Yeah.
Yeah, a ping definitely. There's a ping there.
HOLDING: If we can pick up that concentration, it'll be amazing...
CHASE: Okay. Film.
HOLDING: ...for the beginning of the filming. We can establish family groups
that we can follow throughout the film.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
It'd be really good if we can find somebody in this group.
CHASE: It's a nice loud signal now.
HOLDING: Yeah.
Well done. There she is.
Okay.
CHASE: Nice!
HOLDING: Brilliant. Well, that's fantastic.
And now, all of these herds will probably stick around together for a while, Mike?
Definitely, Mike. You've got at least another month or two.
HOLDING: All right, great. It's not the easiest area to get to,
but we can handle that part.
It's great. Very, very helpful.
CHASE: This is the last place left in the world
where elephants can still wander
-as they did 100, 200 years ago. -LINFIELD: Hmm.
For the simple reason they have the space to do so.
LINFIELD: Yeah.
-Wow. -It's nearly 260,000 square kilometers.
And that's why you're having difficulty finding elephants.
That'll be it, then!
So, we've satellite-collared nearly 300 elephants
and you can see all these dots on the map
are GPS locations on their migration routes.
So how often do you get updates?
-Every hour, we get a GPS location. -All right!
So you can tell us where they are?
-Absolutely, yeah. -So what are we waiting for?
What am I doing now?
I need a good Internet connection...
Yeah. Okay.
-...and I'll give you the locations. -Amazing.
Bring it on.
CHASE: Our elephants have the ability to move 1000 kilometers a month,
often over terrain that is inaccessible for vehicles.
Good job.
CHASE: It's very remote. It's difficult to traverse.
Very thick sand, swampland, deep rivers,
thick bush. It's unforgiving.
And this is some of the perilous journeys that elephants are undertaking.
Keeping up with them as a film crew is gonna be a difficult task.
SISTO: At first, the filming boat
did keep up with the elephants,
but it wasn't long before they'd moved out of reach of conventional transport.
LINFIELD: Our elephants, whilst they're moving,
they're not moving in places that are very vehicle-friendly.
COLBECK: Oh! Right over the camera.
LINFIELD: So a lot of the time, we have to launch the drone,
follow them by drone.
If the distance is too far,
we have to continue with a helicopter.
It's just,
trying to keep up with them is... It's been a technical challenge.
Come in. Here we go. Come in.
SISTO: This time in the air also revealed
how the channels of the delta are formed by its wildlife.
It was important to film the elephants' water world
from below as well as above,
which carried its own unique risks.
Big croc.
ROGER HORROCKS: Croc, big. LINFIELD: Yeah, a big one.
Yeah. Big crocodile on the bank.
Nice four, five-meter crocodile.
SISTO: Seasoned underwater cameraman,
Roger Horrocks, knows how dangerous diving in these waters can be.
Every year, the narrow channels are carved out
by the massive hippos and elephants, which can be lurking round any corner.
When Roger's in the water,
he has a safety diver with him as well as Mike supervising from the boat.
HORROCKS: One of the things with the delta
is the massive surprise when you go underwater,
is the relief and the structures of the pathways
that are made by the hippos
and the plant life is...
The structure of it is just astounding.
It's gothic, it's organic and the palettes are incredible.
The hippos and elephants are the architects of the delta
and you can see, you know,
they use their bodies to actually create these pathways.
You know, they're huge.
I mean, you can swim down a channel made by a hippopotamus.
You can actually see the girth and it's huge.
The producers want
shots that show the water traveling down
and the only way to do that is to kind of just travel down these channels
and you don't want to put a boat ahead
because it muddies it up.
The danger is you never know what's up ahead,
so for me this drift diving
is probably the most dangerous thing you can do
just because of the...
You know, the uncertainty of what lies around the corner.
MATHIEU VAN GOETHEM: Wow. HORROCKS: It's very beautiful.
It's a little bit scary though, we can't really see.
VAN GOETHEM: It's so different.
HORROCKS: They hear the boat coming, they slip into the water
and there's nowhere to maneuver,
so you'll be around a corner and you'll be on...
You'll be on top of him before you know it and he'll bite you
and that's not good for him, it's not good for us.
Not optimal.
VAN GOETHEM: Came up across a pond, a little pool, deeper pool
and I was following Roger
and literally out of nowhere this croc came between the two of us.
I pulled on Roger's fin...
he turned over and started following the croc.
It was really cool, but it all happened very, very, very quickly.
HORROCKS: The vis is not great so just... Yeah, it puts him on edge.
He can't really see us,
so we're not gonna do any more diving on crocs until the water cleans up.
No, no, no. This drift diving should be double pay.
-Danger pay. -Danger pay. Yeah, no.
SISTO: Spending day after day filming the elephants,
the crew began to fall in love
with their many unique and endearing eccentricities.
JENKINS: They have individual personalities,
they have the same dynamics we do. The sisters fight,
the teenagers scream and fight,
the boys show off and mock-charge.
And, you can really, really identify with them.
I think it's their sense of fun.
I know it sounds strange for an animal to be talked about as having fun,
but I'm genuinely convinced that they do.
If you watch them chase warthogs. If you watch them chase imaginary enemies.
If you watch them disappear into bushes backwards and then ambush...
I mean, they just have a wonderful sense of fun.
They do this floppy running,
when they just let everything loose
and their trunk goes and their ears go.
Elephants, I'm convinced, have a wonderful sense of humor.
-
LINFIELD: One of the favorite flood scenes we captured
was a young calf chasing lechwe and egrets through the water,
like some naughty kid chasing animals through their garden.
It really, really captured their personalities.
I definitely have more elephant friends than humans.
Elephants are really gentle,
they're really caring, they're really intelligent,
they're really entertaining.
I don't know too many people like that.
I'd rather spend a day with eles than most of the people I know.
That's some of my friends excepted.
SISTO: But some of the best moments for the crew
were when unexpected visitors would arrive in camp.
HOLDING: We woke up to the sound of rattling palm trees
and these two guys are standing here shaking the palms,
knocking the nuts down
and basically joining us for breakfast.
Slightly different diet, but nice.
LINFIELD: It's a shock when you go for your morning coffee
and you've got a couple of elephants shaking the palm trees around your tent.
Quite noisy though, you know they're here.
They'll spend days and days in this island because it's full of palm nuts,
so we're gonna have neighbors for a while. It'll be great.
Mmm. Tastes like ginger.
I've eaten this before,
so if you just eat one whole nut,
it just makes your mouth very dry.
Yeah, now he's just feeding on something else,
he's feeding on the rain tree
because there're no nuts here altogether.
There was one bull, he ate all the nuts,
so it's very unfortunate for him, so there's nothing.
Well, I've been a guide for 22 years,
so I actually know the animal behavior.
And now this elephant... It's very calm
and that's why I'm this close to him.
Even the generator is on right now,
it doesn't even bother him.
So, he just comes so close,
so then we just worry that one day
he might just come to the middle of the camp
and that's when we're going to have a problem.
We'll just have to scatter in all directions.
SISTO: A few days later, the crew had other visitors
that were much less welcome.
COLBECK: We found a pride, in the middle of the day,
which is very unusual.
Three lionesses and seven eight-month-old cubs
and almost immediately we found them, they started hunting.
The camp is right here.
The zebra and the wildebeest all formed a tight bunch,
but not far from the camp.
But this lioness was absolutely determined and sure enough, she went again.
SISTO: This time, straight towards camp.
DANIELLE SPITZER: Okay, we've got lions in camp, hunting...
Yes, Pres, go ahead.
SPITZER: Yeah, we're already in the vehicle.
We had all the animals just run through camp
and I have no idea where this lioness is. Do you guys see the lioness?
SPITZER: I just saw an impala.
There she is. There she is. There she is. Right there.
My view in the car was very limited.
I could just see out the side. I could see out the front.
The whole back of the car was blocked.
I couldn't see behind us.
Felt like you were in a box and you can only see out of,
you know, a certain window
which I think made it even more terrifying
because she could be anywhere behind you and you just wouldn't know.
She could be under the car and you wouldn't know.
So it was just... It was insane.
Okay, yeah. Copy that. Just let us know what's happening.
Apparently, this lioness is still somewhere here in the camp,
but we have no idea where she is,
so we're just gonna wait and hopefully hear from the guys,
if they've seen her but she's completely gone.
We have no idea.
There is one there.
Okay, copy that, copy that. We'll just stay put at the moment.
COLBECK: I was really concerned. Um...
Out of nowhere, you can suddenly
have a pride of lions running through your camp.
Dani and Alfred were in camp walking around.
They could easily, easily be killed by lions.
SISTO: As the dry season advances,
the delta transforms into a dangerous and hostile place.
Its channels now filled with treacherous quicksand and sticky mud.
COLBECK: 'Course the delta dries out every year
and the elephants make this journey every year,
so every year, the waterholes become glutinous.
The elephants are very stressed at this point.
There's virtually no food, the water's drying up
and so they're at their most vulnerable and stressed.
And for me, the most emotionally challenging
was filming a baby stuck in the mud.
Very quickly the situation turned into a life-threatening situation.
This calf became completely locked in this mud.
And what was amazing was that had it been a first-time mother,
I'm pretty sure that calf would never have got out.
But the fact that it was a very, very experienced matriarch,
she was incredibly calm and she knew exactly what to do
and I've never seen anything like it before
in 20 years of filming elephants.
She realized that she had to enable it to breathe
so she lifted its head out of the mud
and actually lifted its trunk and curled her trunk around its trunk,
cleaned the trunk off so she knew it could breathe
and that's extraordinary.
In the meantime, she then had to work out how to get this calf out of the mud.
It was a very, very hard thing to shoot because I knew how serious it was.
I was convinced that this calf wasn't gonna get out of the mud.
I really was.
It was getting weaker and weaker and she didn't have a solution in short
and so I thought, we're gonna lose the calf,
you know, and here I am filming it.
What do I do?
But in those situations, I think you have to become very detached.
You are witnessing something that would happen
irrespective of whether we were here or not,
so we're not really in a position to interfere.
We should be there as documentary filmmakers,
recording that incredible behavior and of course she got it out.
So if we'd have interfered, we'd have altered that outcome possibly.
When the baby came out,
I've never seen a baby covered in so much mud.
It looked like it was dropped in a whole vat of chocolate.
It was just this elephant-shaped blob of mud.
And I haven't witnessed a matriarch being so calculating in rescuing a calf.
SISTO: The key role of the matriarch was soon to be demonstrated again.
COLBECK: The next day, they all disappeared
and we know from Mike where he was filming and other people,
that they all disappeared on the same day.
They then left the area completely,
which means that all those families were coordinated.
Someone had made the decision,
one of the matriarchs, several of the matriarchs realized
that the water was drying up significantly
and that they had to leave the area
and that's a big decision for a clan of elephants to make.
I think one of the biggest challenges of this film actually
has been to get into the mind of an elephant.
HOLDING: The old joke about elephant memory is absolutely accurate.
They have the highways mapped into their heads.
They know where they're going
and that's data that's been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years.
LINFIELD: Usually with the animals that we follow,
once you can second-guess what they're gonna do next,
that's when things really start to work and gel.
With elephants, that is a real challenge
because I don't think I've ever worked with an animal that is more other.
You know, they do so many things that we would, sort of, recognize.
They have tenderness towards their calves
to an extraordinary degree.
Their social life is super-duper rich.
They are superficially so like us
and yet they are so different that our powers of prediction on this film
have fallen spectacularly short on so many occasions.
SISTO: Up till now, the film crew had only managed
to follow behind the elephants.
It was time for a new forward-thinking filming strategy.
So they decided to take a stabilized camera,
normally used for aerial filming, and mount it to the front of the truck.
This allowed them to film the elephants on the move
and not fall behind on the journey.
TOM WALKER: This piece of kit is generally designed for helicopters.
We've now mounted it on a vehicle to get us ground-level
and give smooth tracking shots.
We're moving so it's hard to tell,
but then you look at the image and it's smooth
because of the axis, it all rotates around the central point,
so the results are smooth but I'm physically bumping around.
HOLDING: What's fascinating is that it's a whole new way of telling the story
and that's what it's all about.
For years, I've filmed elephants
with a long lens on a tripod and in any sort of scenario
where elephants are moving, you might get two opportunities at a shot,
you know, one coming towards you and one going by.
With this machine you've got almost infinite possibilities,
if you stay with them and so because we're trying to tell a story
about a big epic road trip across the desert for these eles,
this is absolutely incredible
because what it does is it allows us to travel with the eles.
And if we can do that, then the audience is drawn into the story
and feels that journey better than if elephants were just passing by the camera.
SISTO: Just when the crew starts making progress with the new system,
the elephants start covering a lot more ground,
so Mike must take to the skies to catch up.
Once they've left the delta, the herds travel up to 30 miles a day
as they hurry to reach the edge of the vast, scorching desert.
The last few days, we've actually seen hardly any eles at all
and they were last seen heading off into an area which is of some concern.
They're heading out of the dry land and towards an area of habitation
and of course that's not necessarily a good thing for elephant herds.
So, I've arranged to meet up with some elephant researchers
that I know well, who live in this area
and who monitor the movement of elephants
in the hope that they might be able to give us some idea
whether these groups of elephants are gonna be moving into this area.
SISTO: Mike meets up with his friends, Graham and Anna,
who are transforming our understanding of elephant movements
by living amongst them.
Their family home is in an area of the delta
where once elephants roamed freely
but now large numbers of people also live and farm.
GRAHAM McCULLOCH: Hey, come here! Hello.
ANNA SONGHURST: It is a challenge raising children in the bush,
but it's also a big adventure for both
us as parents, and also for the girls.
The reason for coming to this area particularly
was because this is an area
where there's about one elephant to every person.
There's really high incidences of conflict and competition
between people and elephants for resources and space.
McCULLOCH: If you really want to understand
what the situation is really like, what it's like to live with elephants,
you can only truly understand that
when you live permanently
in amongst 15,000, 20,000 elephants.
You know, this is our piece of land
and when we first moved in here, we love elephants,
but all of a sudden now, elephants are knocking your trees over
and pulling up your water pipes and, "Hey, hold on a minute!"
You know, it's a different story.
Living with a five-ton herbivore
that wants to eat everything around you is one thing.
Living with 15,000 of them, that's a massive, massive deal.
SONGHURST: This is where the elephants hang out quite a lot...
HOLDING: Yeah.
SONGHURST: ...in this area and then the main corridor comes down here,
there's another one here and another that goes like that.
-Yeah, okay. And this is where we are now? -SONGHURST: Yeah.
If you take me to where you think they'll cross,
we could put up cameras there
-and go look and see. -SONGHURST: Yeah.
HOLDING: If they're coming down through this area,
either one of those three major pathways,
that'll be the place to look.
SISTO: Today, a mosaic of farmland and human settlements
is encroaching on the Okavango Delta.
Disrupting ancient pathways that have been used by generations of elephants.
SONGHURST: We mapped all of the pathways and we monitored them.
Thirteen of those pathways were used more frequently than any others
and so those 13 are where the corridors now are.
So the ones I was pointing out there...
McCULLOCH: Yeah.
The corridors then are made up of a main path
plus a kilometer either side for a buffer
and then that means that now the land authorities
will not allocate any more fields inside a corridor.
Those corridors will be left free so that as we move forward
and the population grows for people and elephants,
there will always be space for the elephants to move
but there'll also be space for people to grow their crops
and feed their families.
CHASE: Elephant corridors are lifelines.
They are vitally important in allowing elephants
safe passage to food and water.
Without corridors
we sentence elephants to
maximum security, living in a very small, enclosed habitat
and corridors give elephants the freedom of Africa.
They need space,
the world's largest terrestrial mammal needs to wander.
SISTO: A visit to their local corridor reveals
that Anna and Graham's dream of giving herds safe passage is working.
SONGHURST: Herds of this many, you see them coming at nighttime
but in the daytime, it's rare to see these many elephants coming down here.
This is incredible.
SISTO: The peaceful corridor has become a busy elephant crossroads.
SONGHURST: Wow! Now there's hundreds.
McCULLOCH: Look at that!
This many! I'm speechless.
There's just so many of them.
It's them.
SONGHURST: Amazing, they're actually...
McCULLOCH: Yeah.
SISTO: These corridors hint at a future
where people live in peace alongside elephants,
allowing them to move freely, day and night.
HOLDING: Here's a big herd. McCULLOCH: Yeah.
SISTO: Mike and Graham review hours of footage.
They're pleased to see the herds the film team have been following
have also passed this way in the night.
HOLDING: Big herds as well. McCULLOCH: Yeah.
Now we know that they've come through here,
-having lost them... -Yeah.
We can follow the highways out.
Yeah. And pick them up.
-And pick them up. -Yeah.
We can stay with them. That's useful.
Brilliant. Fantastic, mate.
Cool.
SISTO: Mike heads out towards Botswana's border with Zimbabwe.
A vast network of paths stretches out, linking the last remaining waterholes.
They are key stepping stones
on the elephants' final leg of the journey.
HOLDING: This is one of the big elephant highways
and it's a very bleak desert scene.
And just watching those herds, the matriarch, the little ones
struggling through that desert heat and the dust
and totally uncertain of whether the path they've taken
is the right one to the next waterhole and the next waterhole
because, of course, they need water every few days.
It's really high risk for these eles
and thank goodness they have this mental map
and they have this ancient knowledge
because that's what carries them across the desert.
LINFIELD: In the dry season,
when we were trying to film elephants out in the baking heat,
we were having to wait for them by small waterholes.
We had crews scattered throughout the landscape,
using Mike's surveying and satellite information
to help get us to the right places.
As we filmed the elephants on their road trip,
all sorts of things have made me realize
how sentient, intelligent, and emotionally sensitive they are,
but there was one scene in particular that I was filming with Martyn
where the elephants came across
the bones of a dead, we presume, relative. We don't know.
COLBECK: It's one of the most extraordinary and poignant things
to witness with elephants,
because they go into a very different sort of frame of mind.
They're very, very quiet
and they're very sensitively touching key parts of the skeleton.
It's usually the skull, the tusks, the lower jaw, the pelvis.
They don't respond in the same way to the bones of other animals
so they clearly know that the carcass is that of an elephant.
And it's absolutely remarkable to witness.
JENKINS: Elephants coming across the bones of another elephant
and the gentle way that they touch the bones, sniff them,
almost as if they were trying to work out who this was,
how they died and it's a mourning
and it's just their respect for each other and care is really, really beautiful.
I think that is really special.
LINFIELD: The elephants just would, picking up the bones,
passing them between each other,
drooling on them so they could get more taste and smell.
They spent 10 or 15 minutes,
apparently reminiscing about an individual,
who knows, we'll never know, but it was very moving.
COLBECK: This set of bones exemplified the fact
that the decisions that the matriarchs make
and the matriarchy makes across the clan
are actually crucial to the survival of the family
and they have to get it right.
SISTO: The elephants complete their five-hundred-mile journey
as they reach the shores of one of Africa's largest rivers.
The Zambezi is an elephant paradise.
Its secluded islands have plenty of food and fresh water
to sustain them for the next couple of months.
And the team are in perfect position to film the first arrivals,
as well as reveal one of the most dramatic and extraordinary landmarks
on the elephants' road trip.
Victoria Falls is the world's largest curtain of falling water.
Over two-million gallons per second cascade into the gorge,
creating Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders.
To capture the enormous scale, the falls must be filmed from the air.
But even with the very latest,
most advanced drone, this was a nerve-racking job for the crew.
The shot that we're trying to do, which is slightly insane,
is to drop the drone down in this V, by Cataract Island,
and swing around to where this lovely light is shafting
and then come round so that the shot opens up
and you can see the whole fall.
The trouble is, we're getting lots of spray on the lens.
I mean, you can see out there, it's just absolutely insane,
there's just spray everywhere,
thousands of tons of water per second going over the lip
and we're flying a drone right through it.
It's like they're stupid things.
I'm very confident that Russell is a superb drone pilot
but he's gonna need to be.
That's nice.
RUSSELL MACLAUGHLIN: I think we're just picking up light from here.
LINFIELD: I can only imagine, looking there,
how many updrafts and downdrafts there are gonna be.
Any one of them could suck our drone right down into the gorge and trash it.
Keep coming. Keep coming.
It's nice.
Okay.
Uh...
No, let's bring it back.
MACLAUGHLIN: Yes, that's our scene.
LINFIELD: Okay.
The trouble is we're flying a brand new, really expensive drone
all over Vic Falls and it's soaking with water
and we think this is why it might not be behaving correctly.
As we come over the waterfall,
all of the spray is coming up and drenching the rotors,
drenching the electronics and then we're losing control.
MACLAUGHLIN: It's always nerve-racking, this, flying it into waterfalls like this.
The challenge is, I mean, we've got a lot of spray from the waterfalls,
so we're getting the camera and drone wet
and there's a lot of wind at the moment and downdraft and updraft.
I mean, the wind's just crazy around here.
You just never know what's gonna happen.
Definitely the hairiest bit of filming and I think everyone agrees.
Let's just do that same run again.
That's good. That's good.
That's it. That's nice.
That is lovely, straight over the falls.
Great, cool, Russ.
MACLAUGHLIN: Bring it back. LINFIELD: Bring it home.
Bring her home. Bring her home.
Whoo-hoo!
Well done, guys.
The stuff we got at the end was just incredible so...
Yeah, and I'm relieved it's down on the ground, so... Damn happy!
LINFIELD: Poor Russell, that's a very nerve-racking day.
We basically said,
"Go on with $80,000 worth of equipment over Victoria Falls,
Luckily, he didn't crash it
and that last shot looks absolutely amazing,
this gorgeous orange light and this amazing vertiginous drop,
which was, yeah, something else.
I've never seen Victoria Falls look like that, incredible.
SISTO: Two months later and the waters have receded.
It was time for the elephants to head back to the Okavango Delta
and for our crew to once more follow in their footsteps.
The team was back on the road again.
Heading away from the Zambezi, the next stop for the crew was Hwange,
Zimbabwe's largest National Park.
Here, the herds were avoiding the heat of the day by traveling at night.
The crew knew they were heading straight into lion country.
GAVIN THURSTON: Just in the last year, cameras have come out now
by which we are able to see in pretty much near darkness and film in color.
We've got a very specific filming period with these low-light cameras at night,
so we're really hoping
this behavior would happen while we've got enough moonlight.
EDWARDS: Um, a lot of us guides never really get the opportunity
to see what predator interaction goes on during the night,
so it's kind of a unique insight into something
that we really rarely get the opportunity to experience, so
excited and apprehensive 'cause not knowing what to expect.
SISTO: The night cameras reveal how little the elephants can see at night.
-
EDWARDS: I've had experiences before where young lions
have taken an interest in a vehicle,
but not to the degree that these youngsters did.
Hey!
The important thing is to make sure that you're always calm
and the guys switch their flashlights on and the lion backed away instantly.
Negative reinforcement.
THURSTON: And they're the ones...
EDWARDS: As soon as they actually figured out
that we were not something to play with,
they accepted us almost as if we were part of the pride.
THURSTON: Well, when she got up and came towards the camera,
she came closer than minimum focus,
I was trying to focus on her as she came towards us.
Minimum focus, I think, is 80 centimeters.
That's close in a car with no doors on at night.
Very cool cats though.
SISTO: Night after night, Gavin and Clinton keep a watchful eye on the lions,
which didn't seem the least bit interested in the elephants.
EDWARDS: Everybody keeps telling me these lions are the ones which,
you know, are super-active, as you can see.
THURSTON: Once with an... EDWARDS: One rolled over, twice.
So it got all pretty quiet around at the moment.
SISTO: For now, the elephants are safe from the lions
but as these old bones show, that isn't always the case.
One of the big differences between filming
during the night rather than the day is
a lot of the predators are less nervous of our presence,
so your vigilant level has to be quite high
and also, you know, you're dealing with night-in night-out
and you know your body starts to take strain
'cause you're working all night and trying to catch up in the day,
-so it gets quite tough. -
So, when you're working at night,
it's very important to stay vigilant
and it's really good that the three of us are out here,
keeping our eyes open and ears open
for any strange sounds or predators or whatever.
-In fact there's some... -
Is that a lion at the back?
It sounds like a lion roaring.
I think it might be.
I was hoping the guide might be keeping his eyes open for us,
but it appears the night has taken its toll.
EDWARDS: Yeah, after talking about how vigilant we should be,
and I fell asleep on the bench seat in the back
and then basically roared like a lion in my sleep.
SISTO: Even though the crew was out looking for lions,
when you camp in the middle of Africa,
you're always sharing your space with the local wildlife.
Whether you know it or not.
Have you ever had the feeling you're being watched?
For the last few nights, the lions had disappeared from the area.
They returned on the full moon.
And with empty bellies.
THURSTON: Right, that female's up.
She's on it, she's on it.
The other one's up.
This is it.
She's got it, she's jumped on the back.
We've gotta move.
SISTO: All this was captured by the behind-the-scenes cameraman,
bravely shooting the action from the open back of the filming truck.
THURSTON: Okay.
-
LOUIS LABROM BROWN: To film all of the action, to film Gavin and his reaction
and for me to film Clinton and all of the things going on
in the back of an open car,
there's lions surrounding the car
and there's a mother elephant who's really agitated
trying to protect her calf, running towards the car.
THURSTON: She's coming your way, coming your way.
That was pretty intense, really.
I think for me, as soon as I saw that lion go for the elephant,
in my heart, I was thinking "Don't kill it, don't kill it."
And I suppose I was quite relieved that Mom actually managed to chase it off
and that's pretty good mothering really, to be able to chase off eight lions,
eight hungry lions, you know, as a single elephant.
SISTO: The next morning, the crew returned to the scene of the attack.
As expected, the lions were still in residence,
but surprisingly, our elephants were also close by.
LINFIELD: I remember hearing all the sounds before coming round the corner.
It was mayhem.
The elephants were so distressed.
We couldn't work out what was going on.
And then we saw they were all looking at the same place.
Looking down at the ground where the matriarch was lying.
She was still alive but only just.
It was as though the family realized
they were about to lose their leader
and all the information and knowledge she was holding.
CHASE: Without a doubt, the grandmothers, the matriarchs of the family group
are absolutely critical to the survival of the rest of the elephant family.
They are the oldest, wisest leaders within the group.
HOLDING: Occasionally, they'll make mistakes
and there are fatalities along the way
but for the most part, these animals are incredible.
They know where to go and they know when to go.
COLBECK: I think what intrigues me most is, is their relationships
and of course the longer time you spend with them,
the more you know what those relationships are like
and you can sort of start to untangle what goes on between relatives.
The bonds between the individuals
and the emotions that you get with these individual relationships.
LINFIELD: Our film is really all about journeys.
You've got the journey of the water from Angola into the Okavango Delta.
You've got the journey that our herd goes on, the road trip.
But actually, my favorite journey is the one taken by a female
who starts the film as the second-oldest female of the herd.
But when the matriarch dies,
the herd turned to her to help get them back home
and she has to find it within her and pull on all of that knowledge,
pull on everything that she learned from the matriarch
to save the herd and bring them back to the delta.
SISTO: The loss of one of the film's key characters
was followed by another piece of bad luck for Mark and the crew.
Now the rainy season isn't due for two months.
So, you know, I was feeling a little bit concerned,
and, you know, in the end,
when we managed to find a spectacular evening sunset scene
with the eles trekking against stormy skies
so... I guess that was a silver lining.
SISTO: The crew were in place as the storm ramped up
and the lions sensed opportunity.
LINFIELD: One of my favorite nights of the shoot so far,
Halloween night, no less, it just felt so atmospheric.
We were with the elephants and out of nowhere,
the storm whips up, the sky goes... Still going, sky goes dark,
just apocalyptic scene with kind of dust devils and sand
and we actually saw the lions before the elephants did.
They came in on our side like this just through the swirls of dust
and lined up in front of the elephants and then the elephants saw them.
We weren't sure if the lions were gonna attack the elephants
or the elephants, the lions.
Elephants start advancing on them
and then the lions sort of back off.
I looked over and that they... I could almost touch them
and then luckily they were just completely fixated on the elephants.
Very raw, very real.
And, yeah, quite a Halloween night actually.
SISTO: As the rains began in Zimbabwe,
they were already well underway in the Angola Highlands,
the source of the Okavango River.
Months later, the floodwaters are creeping back into Botswana
and filling up the delta.
The leading edge of the flood is moving at over a mile per day,
so the crew has had to race to get ahead of it.
JONATHAN JONES: We found this spot.
We actually saw it from the plane.
You know, if we can get our big crane down there
and we see the water coming down
and it trickles and flows and builds. I think it'll be really amazing.
Okay, here we go.
The challenge we've got is the sun is dropping fast
and we were gonna plan to try and shoot this tomorrow morning
but the speed in which the water has come in now,
we're just worried if we wait, that overnight it's gonna be through here,
so we're frantically trying to make this come together
with literally minutes of sunlight left.
Right where you're set. Yeah.
-Right. -JONES: Right. Right, ready.
This water, we're not sure if it's gonna come slowly
or in inches an hour, so
I think we only have one go before the light goes.
JONES: Tom, get me ahead, please.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
That's very fast, okay.
There is good.
Keep going.
STEPHENS: This is the flood of the Okavango Delta.
It's unbelievable,
here it comes from Angola
and we're standing on the leading edge of the flood.
Now we've just filmed it.
This wall of water just comes pouring in over the desert
and we managed to catch it.
But it's stressful and you hope everything is working
but it looked fantastic.
And after three years of trying,
we've finally managed to film the flood arrival, it's quite incredible.
And now here come our extras.
Where we are right now
is outside the buffalo fence in the Okavango Delta,
so this is a cattle area.
And this is the water that all of these cattle drink every year
and all the farming communities rely on
and no sooner has it come through,
then we've got cattle coming to drink.
It's an absolutely amazing sight
and it's just been such a struggle, but really rewarding to finally get it.
LINFIELD: The flood in the Okavango Delta
has to be one of the most amazing and frustrating things on our planet
because everywhere around here,
you'll find an expert who's gonna tell you
when the flood's gonna arrive and where it's gonna go.
And I can tell you to a man or woman, they are always wrong.
HOLDING: Every time the flood arrives, there's a real sense of anticipation
and it is...
It's like an old friend returning.
It goes from a semi-desert to an Eden in a matter of a few weeks
and suddenly everything is lush, the place is full of new life.
SISTO: Flood arrives.
Mark and Jonathan take to the air
to film the magical sight of life returning to the delta.
What you get up here is amazing different colors
of green and emeralds and then sand and then yellows
and it's amazing and it just depends,
like, you travel a kilometer
and then within a kilometer it feels so different.
LINFIELD: So, of course, one of the brilliant things about filming aerials
is this extra level of context that you get.
So on the ground, you just get a tiny window of what's going on.
But as soon as you're up really high,
you can see, for example, the floods snaking across the landscape
and all of the animals gravitating towards it
and you actually get to understand the process of what's going on.
SISTO: Back down on the ground, the other film crew
hangs back to capture the final leg of the elephants' epic journey home.
LINFIELD: One of the things that's been working really well
is our ground-based camera stabilization system,
which has been allowing us to film elephants on the move.
And today, for example, we were trekking alongside our herd
and one of the calves was falling behind
and it was dribbling and in a terrible state.
And its mother kept circling back to chivvy it on
and, you know, nurture it through the situation.
You feel like you're on the journey with them and it's effective.
HOLDING: It's tough for them, you know, they lose condition.
They're thirsty, they're hot, they're hungry,
there's little to eat, it's a really tough time for them.
SISTO: Over the course of the filming,
the crew came to realize that these elephants
can only complete these epic journeys through the Kalahari
because of the strength of their family bonds.
It's only when these extraordinary bonds are broken,
when herds are attacked by farmers or poachers,
that calves get lost or abandoned,
something Mike Chase is determined to prevent.
Every elephant counts and if I'm in a situation
to help an elephant that's orphaned because of humans,
then it is our commitment and duty to respond, absolutely.
SISTO: The lucky ones get taken
to Mike and Kelly's Botswana Elephant Orphanage.
Over the past five years,
they've learnt how to become surrogate parents
to some of the world's biggest toddlers.
KELLY LANDEN: All the orphans and all the little elephants,
they're very emotional animals in the first place
and when they're separated from their family,
they have these strong needs
and are very dependent and very vulnerable.
If you leave them, even for a few minutes, they stress and the stress is what...
It can actually kill the baby elephant.
So, when they come in,
we're with them 24 hours, seven days a week,
every minute.
Somebody is with them, sleeps with them, holds them,
a lot of physical contact is important
'cause elephants have a lot of physical contact.
They really need to feel a bond, and feel that love, and feel that care.
Having them together is perfect
because the orphans actually comfort themselves.
So they're not alone, they have a family,
they bond very well, they play, they learn from each other.
We just help it, we just help them in the process.
CHASE: Use your trunk, please, use your trunk. There we go.
Look at...
Elephants are being orphaned or abandoned because of poaching,
human-elephant conflict, retaliatory killings
and these little calves, they don't have a future
if they were left in the wild, they would die.
Unfortunately, not many local people in Botswana
get to enjoy the magnificence of elephants.
And to be able to touch and feel and empathize
with their struggle for survival,
I think is fundamentally key to securing a future not only for elephants,
but for our natural world.
Using calves, at the sanctuary,
as an ambassador species to invoke a culture of conservation ethos
in our youth is what we're hoping to instill with the elephant sanctuary.
SISTO: Mike and Kelly's work continues to this day,
taking in lost calves
and providing a brighter future for Botswana's elephants.
Back in the Okavango Delta, the crew is set to capture
the elephants' return to their watery home.
A year on the move has brought them back
to the very place their filming first began.
LINFIELD: They're coming.
SISTO: But there is one key character they're all rooting for.
LINFIELD: Oh, my God. Pandemonium.
Splashing, they're just splashing and crashing through that water.
SISTO: The new matriarch has got the herd home safely,
even the new calf.
The crew are elated.
LINFIELD: Having an absolute whale of a time.
That is amazing. Oh, my God.
Oh, wow!
Oh, that is amazing.
HOLDING: And it's the story of the journey of elephants
but it's been a journey for me as well,
which has been incredible
and there have been some fantastic elephant moments.
We've seen them struggling for water, we've seen babies being born,
we've seen old eles die
and I think I've learned far more than I anticipated
that I would about elephants and their behavior and their movements,
just from the process of making this film and that's been really magical.
COLBECK: Children love elephants, people love elephants
and I think if we can get people realizing,
having an epiphany, like I did 30 years ago,
that these animals are extraordinary and special
and we should care about them for our children and grandchildren,
I think we will have succeeded.
That's what I hope we can achieve.
LINFIELD: In recent times all we've heard about elephants has been gloomy,
it's been centered on poaching and the ivory trade
and we wanted to shine a light on the elephants themselves.
Emotionally and socially intelligent creatures
that really deserve our respect.
But also, that this incredible home of theirs,
where they're still free to live out their lives as they always have
is here to be saved, if we have the will.
SISTO: In his ongoing work to save elephants,
Mike Holding teams up with Mike Chase
to fly a new aerial survey of Botswana, and beyond,
for the next elephant census.
Counting the elephants allows them to monitor
the long-term trends in Africa's elephant population.
Their work is continuing to help protect and conserve these amazing animals
in this most vulnerable period of their history.
There's certainly a lot of eles out here.
I have to say I'm a bit nervous of telling Mark about all these elephants
because it's almost completely inaccessible, this area.
He's gonna have a heart attack if he tries to get camera crews out here,
but isn't that nice actually,
you know, just for us to enjoy it at least.
CHASE: I know. You know... As you say, Mike,
they're in the elephant heartland, beyond the reach of man and cameras.
Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of nice, you know,
-not great for the film... -No.
HOLDING: ...but it's nice for the eles. Stunning.
How many elephants do you think are here?
-CHASE: Oh, Mike. -I mean, there is a lot of eles here.
This is some of the highest concentrations of elephants in the world.
So elephants can aggregate here in their thousands.
HOLDING: Yeah. This is a little piece of paradise here.
CHASE: Where elephants can be left at peace to be elephants.
-Exactly. -And that's...
For me, that's very comforting and reassuring.
Yeah.
CHASE: Given the plight of elephants, that there is still a safe refuge
where elephants can disappear into the wilderness of northern Botswana
and still follow the ancient migration routes.
HOLDING: Yeah.
CHASE: Look at this, it's just beautiful.
HOLDING: Amazing country, yeah.
CHASE: Having flown the great elephant census and knowing what I do
and seeing the situation of elephants in many protected areas,
elephants will go locally extinct,
but the upside of that is that I'm incredibly fortunate
to be studying and conserving elephants in their last stronghold.
This is where elephants are making their last stand
and...
I think I'm very grateful for the opportunity
to be a part of a film like this,
that sends a message to the rest of the world
that elephants are important
and the story that you're telling
is crucial to protecting and conserving the world's largest elephant population.