Infiltrating the Illegal Wildlife Trade: The Human Cost | Nat Geo Live

In East Africa, ivory trafficking is probably what you might guess. It's organized crime, it's poachers on the ground, corrupt governments. Central Africa; completely different. It's a war zone.

These are the rangers. These six men are dead. They were on an anti-poaching mission on Heban Hill in 2012 in Chad, Zakouma National Park when Janjaweed came in. They were in their morning prayers and killed them all. This woman was attacked by the Lord's Resistance Army, which cut her; she's had multiple surgeries since. Cut her ears off, her lips off, and her nose.

This is Emmanuel de Merode. He and his men were Explorers of the Year here at National Geographic. Emmanuel runs the park at Virunga. The most courageous man on the planet. He was shot last year, ambushed... for his work to preserve Virunga National Park. Innocent, who works with Emmanuel, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.

These tusks were seized from FDLR. The Rwandans, Hutus have come into and live in Virunga National Park and exploit that park and have killed a number of rangers this year. These guys are a part of a force the African Union force dedicated to going after Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army. These are anti-Lord's Army Resistance army rangers. This is all the more significant because these men don't know how to swim.

And they go out every day, this-- this guy is a defector from the Lord's Resistance Army. Michael Onen, beaten by the men who kidnapped him. And it's all because of those two teeth. So, let's go after these people. Let's be creative. Let's move forward. This is George Dante, one of the world's best taxidermists. I hired him to build me fake elephant tusks. Then I had an engineer in California build me a satellite-based GPS system. And I laid them inside those tusks.

That's the result, you tell me which one's real. We put our tusks in Central Africa in the black market, and we watched them, using an iPad. And they went to this area of Darfur. Called Kafia Kingi. That's where Joseph Kony is. And so that was the new face, for me, of the ivory story. The violence, the terrorism behind ivory. And I was excited about telling this story we told it as the September cover story.

We told it as the launch, new launch of the Explorer series "Warlords of Ivory," and as a result you give the world the opportunity to ask "does it want this?" "Does it want this?" Every story is a gift. These stories are my gift to these animals that can't speak and to these men and women who pay so much, and your gift to them can be to share this story.