What will it take to save the savanna elephant? | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Foreign. The way that these elephants use this landscape is something that has been learned and passed on from generation to generation. This is Paula Kahumbu, National Geographic Explorer and elephant expert, on our new documentary series, Secrets of the Elephants. Once the first elephants learned to navigate this incredibly treacherous terrain, they taught the others, and they taught the others, and they've continued to use this pathway.

Paula has followed elephants on these pathways for years. Now, in this second episode of our three-part series, she'll share with us what she's learned. I'm Brian Gutierrez, and you're listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. Kahumbu will take us inside the world of elephants. Generations, they'll continue doing the same. That's how they transmit knowledge. It's what makes them so successful as a species. But that cultural knowledge and the species itself is in danger of extinction, and they'll need our help to survive.

We'll be right back after the break.

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I'm the CEO of Wildlife Direct, and I'm an elephant expert. I try to save elephants. Really, do you remember the first elephant that you could recognize by name? Oh gosh, uh, no. So many elephants in Kenya are known by name—thousands of them. I can tell you which elephant I fell in love with.

Tell me that story.

So, his name was Tim. Okay, Tim was a super tusker. I had my board meeting, and I had told the elephant researchers, "If you see Tim, you know, please let us know. I love the board to meet this incredible elephant." Right? I got this call in the middle of the meeting, and they said, "Tim is in the elephant camp. You've got to come now."

So we all dropped what we were doing, middle of a board meeting, jumped in utes, went racing off in these jeeps in the dust to find Tim. When we got to this camp, there were these beautiful tall palm trees, and all you could see was, you know, the palm tree kind of shaking a little bit. Then he walked out from the trees. As he walked out, we noticed he was limping. He had an injury on his back left thigh. He'd actually been speared.

In that moment, I realized that Tim probably would die unless we took action. Immediately, we made a commitment: we were going to save him. This started my whole board meeting to be overturned with this new imperative, which was, "We've got to save Tim." Tim was an elephant that Kenyans didn't even know existed, because when you have such a magnificent animal, you don't want people to know he exists—because poachers might come and kill him.

We decided we'd do the opposite. We're gonna make this elephant so famous. We're gonna save him, we're gonna rescue him, we're gonna treat him, we're gonna put a radio collar on him, we're gonna have a 24/7 security group following him. And we did all that. So I fell in love with Tim because he was the elephant who turned the hearts and minds of Kenyans. Everybody started coming to Amber City to meet Tim. It was amazing, really amazing.

What happened with the spear injury?

He got treated, and um, we were able to put a radio collar on him so I could always find him. Yeah, he did a lot of surprising things. He would take his family of bulls—he did have this group of bulls, and they were all his relatives. We knew this because the elephants are named by letters of the alphabet which are related to their families.

So all the T's are one family of elephants. So you have Tim, Tolstoy, Townsend, okay? There were just all these names that they came up with, all beginning with T, and they were all together. Did they all have those huge tusks? Are they all super tuskers? Amazingly, yes, they had. They weren't just big tusks; there was one long tusk and one slightly shorter curved tusk, okay?

So you could see that there was a gene. They all had the same pattern. One day, when we were filming them, they all went to sleep. I was watching them while filming them, and I saw my crew. You know, I filmed them now, and now they're all gonna go to sleep. You'd think they lie down like a human being would, like, get down on your knees. No, they just fall over on the ground, yeah, like a building. They literally— their back legs buckle, and they just collapse front to the ground.

Tim and his whole family—there were eight big bulls—and they were just going down like dominoes. Tim was the last one to go down. All these ellies snoring in front of us for like two hours, and we took photos and sent them to the elephant researchers, who were very alarmed. They were like, "There's something wrong with the elephants."

Yeah, they're sick, they've been poisoned, something terrible is happening. I was like, "No, they're just having a nap." Sure, but they let us stay literally within a few feet of them as they slept right in front of us. Tim, whenever we saw him, he would do something that made us think, "Wow, this story will help us to win the hearts and minds of people." Sadly, he did pass away a few years later, but from natural causes. So I’m really grateful that he lived a happy and productive life.

I think there are lots of little Tims out there. I think for people who don't know anything about elephants, we should clarify there are three species, right?

Absolutely, yes. There's the African Savannah elephant, which everyone knows about—the big giants of the African savannas, Loxodonta africana—and then you have the African Forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis, which was only recognized as a separate species a few years ago. Then you have the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, which is a totally different type of animal. They're all amazing— all of them are incredible.

And all these species of elephants are endangered everywhere we went. It was heartbreaking to just see how much peril they're all in. African savanna elephants are losing space; there's a huge amount of human-elephant conflict. African forest elephants, they are so terrorized by humans that if they see you, they will just try to kill you.

We had camera traps that were not just damaged; they were literally smashed to smithereens because it smells like people or something. In one case, they literally pulled up a whole tree and dragged it for hundreds of meters. You can see from the camera trap; the camera footage is still there. You can see how the elephant sensed it, came close to it, smelled it with his trunk, put his eyeball right up against the camera, it's like, this is the thing, and then just whacked it with his tusk several times and pulled down the whole tree.

So how did you decide to study elephants?

I didn't initially want to study elephants because I was really scared—one, studying the most dangerous—not because elephants are dangerous, but because they were being followed by people with guns. And the second reason was because I thought they were going to go extinct.

I had it that if I do my PhD in elephants and they go extinct, what a waste of time. It's a very weird thing to think now. Sure, at the time, that was really what was going on in my mind. When I was doing my master's degree, I was working on monkeys, which was fun. I love monkeys too. When I came back to the Kenya Wildlife Service, having finished my master's, I was working on monkeys. I was watching all my colleagues studying elephants, and I was so jealous.

They were going all over the country counting elephants, counting down, measuring elephants—doing all this really cool research. I was counting monkeys. Okay, okay! I was missing out; I was suffering so badly from FOMO. So I started going out with my colleagues at the Kenya Wildlife Service, and I started just going out with them to help. I realized, actually, I'm a natural at it. I loved the work; I loved being in the bush.

We did a lot of work on foot, on the ground, following elephants, and I felt like I could read the elephants. When it came time for me to apply for my own PhD, there was no question that I was going to study elephants.

Yeah, you were studying forest, not forest elephants, but savanna elephants in the forest. So I had to find my own study site, and I decided to study forest-living savanna elephants because nobody had done it. People had known that there were elephants living in the forest because you'd find dung everywhere, but nobody had seen the elephants.

You more or less don't want to see elephants in the forest actually because it's risky; you can't escape from them. I thought I would take that on.

What did you learn?

Well, how do these savanna elephants—so elephants are amazing. I think if there were no elephants, our forests in Africa would not be as diverse as they are. There's no way when they come into the forest, they kind of bash their way in and create these pathways, right?

So they open up these paths that many, many other animals use, including humans and their livestock. You'll get herds of buffalo coming in; even giraffes can walk in. When elephants walk through these forests, what they're doing is they're munching on all this food, and they're pooping it out. You can imagine—I mean, an elephant carries, I don't know, 150 kilograms in his belly, sure?

So it's carrying a huge volume of stuff and is moving massive distances, 15 to 20 kilometers, and dropping it along the way. You'll find the animals will come and find that dung and they'll start, you know, burrowing through it. You'll often find fresh elephant dung has just been scattered all over the place because these birds will come in and they'll start scattering it about, looking for seeds and anything they can eat—like grubs and things. It's like an airdrop!

Yeah, I mean it is really like a little delivery from Amazon.

Yeah, oh, food! And all these animals will come scurrying, looking for, you know, to forage through it. As a result, the forest is very diverse in terms of species and even an individual tree. Where an elephant will tusk it a little bit with its tusk, in doing so it might injure the tree, then the tree will try to repair itself and it’ll start having all these warts and knots and nooks and crannies start forming on the trees.

So a tree becomes a cavernous thing, full of lots of little places for other animals to go and live in and plants to settle in. When you remove elephants from these places, it's almost like the whole forest becomes quite silent.

One of the biggest threats to African elephants is the ivory trade. After the break, Paula will talk about what it takes to get ivory off the black market and the United States history as the number one importer of the substance for almost 100 years. One of your early experiences was working with the Kenya Wildlife Services ivory stockpile. Could you tell me about what you were doing with them?

Yeah, when I finished my bachelor's degree, I came back to Kenya and I was invited to lead the first stocktake of the Kenyan ivory stockpile. It was an underground vault—the National Museums, where all the ivory was kept. It was really quite a disgusting job because this was an airless room full of just piles of ivory.

Ivory is one of those weird things; it's very hard to store because they're all massive big curved things, and each one weighs tens of kilograms. They're very heavy, so they're just literally just sometimes thrown in a pile. But each tusk is marked where it came from, on the date that it was brought, and the weight of that tusk.

That was work that revealed to me just how serious the ivory crisis was or the decimation of elephants was, because you could see that elephants maybe 20 years earlier were being killed for the ivory. They were full-grown elephants, and by the time I was doing that stock take, baby elephants that were maybe two years old, three years old were being killed.

So can you add the stockpile?

The ivory had been confiscated—almost all of it was ivory that had been associated with the slaughter of elephants. So what happened after you cataloged all the ivory?

We cataloged for a very specific reason, which was to know how much there was and then to create a massive ivory bonfire. It was the first time anyone had dreamed of such a crazy idea—that was Richard Leakey's idea. A lot of people said, "You can't burn ivory. It's like a tooth; you know, can't burn." So he got this amazing crazy guy called Robin, um, created this beautiful fire of ivory, and underneath it was firewood and it was all gasoline.

There were pumps and pipes and whatever’s to create an inferno that would turn that ivory into charcoal. And they did it! It was phenomenal! Phenomenal! And um, all the ivory was destroyed and their vaults were empty. But it didn't take that long—25 years later, the vaults were full again.

We've now burned ivory in Kenya five times. This is probably millions of dollars of ivory. What's the idea behind burning such a valuable substance?

If you talk to Richard Leakey, who sadly has now passed away, he was a very good friend of mine. He felt if you want to change hearts and minds, you need to create a spectacle that is going to be so impossible to erase from your mind. He felt that people needed to stop seeing ivory as valuable and stop seeing it as prestigious, and start seeing it as shameful—um, despicable to be associated with having ivory.

The only thing driving the slaughter of elephants in Africa was the price of ivory because it could get onto the illegal markets. So making sure that the ivory price was rock bottom was really, really important. Sustaining that messaging, whether it's in Africa or here in the United States, which was the largest market, really?

Yes! There are whole towns in this country that were founded on ivory. There's a town called Ivoryton! Oh, and it's in Connecticut! I had no idea—it’s a town that was founded on ivory! And there's another town called Deep Water, also in Connecticut.

They're very close to each other, those two towns, um, would receive ivory from Africa together with slaves, actually. And um, those two things were intimately interlinked, and their fortunes were built on ivory. So, yeah, they built a whole industry that had factories that would receive the ivory. They would carve the ivory into piano keys—that was one of the major uses of ivory.

Billiard balls, hair combs, hair brushes; they were making picks, all kinds of sweet little things. Well, it was plastic. If you think about it, it was the original plastic. Once we got real plastic, you didn't need that stuff anymore, and ivory became more of a prestigious thing.

Those two towns—I went to visit them to see for myself. They invited me for the unveiling of an elephant sculpture in Ivoryton. They had this elephant sculpture all covered in this big cloak, um, and I went through the factory and I looked at all the things, how it all worked and everything. And they wanted to atone for what had happened and how this whole—it's a very thriving town, but it was built on ivory.

They unveiled this elephant, and it was an Asian elephant. You know, it really struck me. People received ivory in this country—in the United States, in Europe, even in Asia—they had no idea where it was coming from, what kind of animal it came from. They didn't know. Even on the boxes of, you know, the toothpicks, whatever, it had an Asian elephant. They didn't know it was coming from Africa. They didn't know it was an African elephant.

How bizarre!

Yeah, it's quite sad. So those poor ellies just died for just forgotten. You know, it's awful.

All right, this is Tolstoy. He's magnificent; he's 51 years old. He's a hero for all the bulls in this area. His tusks are almost too long to walk. You can see he has to raise his head to walk through vegetation. It's like a mama! We're so lucky to have these super tuskers.

There are only about 25 left in the world; each tusk weighs well over a hundred pounds, and that's why so many have been killed by ivory poachers. [Music]

So Tolstoy is Tim's uncle. What happened to him?

Tolstoy was another super tusker. We filmed him just weeks before he died. He was such a magnificent elephant—mostly what one—he was huge, very, very tall. He had these unusual straight tusks; they were so long that the Kenya Wildlife Service actually had darted him and cut off the tips of his tusks because they thought that he couldn't walk properly; they were catching on bushes and things.

His tusks were so long. He was a very, very calm, gentle elephant—really, really lovely. He had a gang of other bulls who were always associated with him, and they were the symbols who were always with Tim and Tolstoy and his gang.

Tim before used to go on raids, and they would go to the neighboring farms at night and eat whatever they could eat—mostly tomatoes. But he was gentle; he wasn't into a troublemaker! He wasn't a violent elephant in any real sense of the word.

But when it came to retaliation from the communities, he was the elephant that stood out. He was the one they targeted. And so a spear struck him in the back, similar to how Tim was injured when we first met him. Only, although Tolstoy was treated, it clearly was a very severe wound, and it got infected. And two weeks later, he passed away.

It was really, really tragic, and all the other ellies must have been so heartbroken to lose their leader. Part of the challenge of elephant conservation, to my understanding, is elephants need a lot of space, and humans increasingly also need a lot of space.

How can we create a relationship between our two species so that we both have room to survive?

You know where Tolstoy lived? It's really simple—it's not rocket science. That's what's so frustrating about it. Elephants need space; elephants don't mind living with people, but you can't grow crops in a landscape with elephants.

They're so smart; they will figure out how to come and get your crops. Right? A monkey will do it too, or a beetle. You might think you can maybe put pesticides on for beetles, but you're not gonna easily stop an elephant. You might chase away a monkey, but you cannot easily chase away an elephant. That's what makes them so dangerous.

So all these people who are trying to farm in this landscape, which is actually quite dry—it's not a very good landscape for farming, but it's a very good landscape for livestock. People with their livestock lived and have lived with elephants in that area for thousands of years without any problems.

It's only now that people are settling down; they're drilling boreholes, they're pumping water, trying to do um, cash crops—tomatoes and other crops—and it's creating a conflict, which is predictable.

The sad thing is that the real landowners often are not the ones who are on the land farming. The people who come to farm are generally young people who are trying to just make a living. They don't actually have a history or a culture of living anywhere near elephants; they have no idea what to do.

So they start banging things, making noise, flashing lights, throwing burning lumps of charcoal at the elephants, and basically pissing elephants off. And of course, the elephants retaliate. Those people have told me—I spent a lot of time talking to them—they've said, you know, they can't sleep at night; they can lose their entire season of crops in a night, which is true! I know it's true!

But they also don't have money to build fences, so they're gonna take matters into their own hands: if an elephant comes anywhere near my farm, I'm gonna throw a spear. So that's what's happening. It's really, really unfortunate and could have been prevented.

I feel so sad about it because when you teach elephants to retaliate and to become violent, it's very hard to untrain them because they're like us—they remember. [Music]

You know, look, the situation facing elephants is troubling. It keeps me awake at night; I literally sometimes will not sleep for days because I'm trying to think, "How are we going to find a way to solve this problem?" It's no longer about creating a mountain of ivory and setting the match to it. That is not going to save them this time.

We need new solutions. All those people who live in elephant landscapes need to benefit from the presence of elephants. I have this crazy idea that somebody said to me years ago, and they said, "Why don't you give us shares in the elephant?"

I just dismissed it. I just thought, "Don't be silly, go away, that's a crazy idea." Actually, maybe it's a brilliant idea. Maybe we should have shares in elephants. If the communities have shares in those elephants and the survival of elephants translates into revenue that comes in through tourism, and they earn money—more money by more elephants—more money because elephants are healthy, more money because elephants can move through the landscape, and more money because elephants are having healthy babies, maybe that's a solution.

Maybe we don't have to kill elephants or injure elephants, chase elephants all the time. Maybe the communities don't have to plant tomatoes; maybe they can grow elephants as their cash crop. Right? Do you know what I mean? What if people—local people—had shares?

Right now they have no benefit. There is nothing they gain from having elephants in their landscape, right? That is the transformation we have to find. I've been talking to people; they're coming up with radical ideas, NFTs and cryptocurrencies and all kinds of cool things. I'm like, "No, it's got to be so practical that a local person on the ground says that elephant is mine, and if you touch it, you're in trouble."

Because so long as that elephant is walking, I get my payment. So I’m gonna go out of my way; I'm gonna plant grass—not tomatoes. I'm gonna plant grass. I'm going to make sure it's healthy. I'm going to make sure the pathways are clear. I'm gonna tell everybody this elephant is on its way!

You know, that could be a solution for not just savanna elephants in East Africa; it would work for the desert elephants so that they can move from Attasha all the way down to the coast, right? It would even work in the rainforest. The people on the ground are poor—they're so poor! You can't fault them for trying to protect their families and their investments.

So, yeah, we need radical new ideas. This has been the second episode of our three-part series on elephants. Next week, we'll talk with explorers Sengita Iyer and Joythi Karat about Asian elephants and their complicated history of life in captivity.

If you like what you hear and you want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app and consider a National Geographic subscription. That's the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe. We've created a hub on our website where you can see all of our coverage on elephants this month, including Secrets of the Elephants, a four-part National Geographic series hosted by Paula Kahumbu, streaming on Disney+.

We've included a link to the hub in our show notes—it's right there in your podcast app. This week's Overheard episode is produced by me, Brian Gutierrez. Our other senior producer is Jacob Pinter. Our senior editor is Eli Chen. Our manager of audio is Carla Wills. Our executive producer of audio is Davar Ardalon, who edited this episode. Our photo editor is Julie Howe. Ted Woods sound designed this episode, and Hans Dale Su composed our theme music.

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funds the work of National Geographic Explorer Paula Kahumbu. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. Michael Tribble is the vice president of integrated storytelling, Nathan Lump is National Geographic's editor-in-chief.

Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

Foreign.

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Thank you!

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