[01:14.30]For my presentation today I want to tell you about how groups of elephants have been moved and settled in new reserves.
[01:24.14]This is known as translocation and has been carried out in Malawi in Africa in recent years.
[01:32.32]The reason this is being done is because of overpopulation of elephants in some areas.
[01:39.75]Overpopulation is a good problem to have and not one we tend to hear about very often.
[01:47.36]In Malawi's Majete National Park the elephant population had been wiped out by poachers, who killed the elephants for their ivory.
[01:57.95]But in 2003, the park was restocked and effective law enforcement was introduced.
[02:06.31]Since then, not a single elephant has been poached.
[02:11.33]In this safe environment, the elephant population boomed.
[02:16.71]Breeding went so well that there were more elephants than the park could support.
[02:24.15]This led to a number of problems.
[02:26.93]Firstly, there was more competition for food, which meant that some elephants were suffering from hunger.
[02:36.78]As there was a limit to the amount of food in the national park, some elephants began looking further afield.
[02:45.32]Elephants were routinely knocking down fences around the park, which then had to be repaired at a significant cost.
[02:56.84]To solve this problem, the decision was made to move dozens of elephants from Majete National Park to Nkhotakota Wildlife Park, where there were no elephants.
[03:10.03]But, obviously, attempting to move significant numbers of elephants to a new home 300 kilometres away is quite a challenge.
[03:25.07]So how did this translocation process work in practice?
[03:31.39]Elephants were moved in groups of between eight and twenty, all belonging to one family.
[03:40.31]Because relationships are very important to elephants, they all had to be moved at the same time.
[03:48.29]A team of vets and park rangers flew over the park in helicopters and targeted a group, which were rounded up and directed to a designated open plain.
[04:03.16]The vets then used darts to immobilise the elephants — this was a tricky manoeuvre, as they not only had to select the right dose of tranquiliser for different-sized elephants but they had to dart the elephants as they were running around.
[04:23.03]This also had to be done as quickly as possible so as to minimise the stress caused.
[04:31.58]As soon as the elephants began to flop onto the ground, the team moved in to take care of them.
[04:39.38]To avoid the risk of suffocation, the team had to make sure none of the elephants were lying on their chests because their lungs could be crushed in this position.
[04:51.82]So all the elephants had to be placed on their sides.
[04:58.14]One person stayed with each elephant while they waited for the vets to do checks.
[05:04.83]It was very important to keep an eye on their breathing — if there were fewer than six breaths per minute, the elephant would need urgent medical attention.
[05:18.57]Collars were fitted to the matriarch in each group so their movements could be tracked in their new home.
[05:26.75]Measurements were taken of each elephant's tusks — elephants with large tusks would be at greater risk from poachers — and also of their feet.
[05:40.68]The elephants were then taken to a recovery area before being loaded onto trucks and transported to their new home.
[05:50.34]The elephants translocated to Nkhotakota settled in very well and the project has generally been accepted to have been a huge success — and not just for the elephants.
[06:05.38]Employment prospects have improved enormously, contributing to rising living standards for the whole community.
[06:15.23]Poaching is no longer an issue, as former poachers are able to find more reliable Sources of income.
[06:24.33]In fact, many of them volunteered to give up their weapons. as they were no longer of any use to them.
[06:32.69]More than two dozen elephants have been born at Nkhotakota since relocation.
[06:39.56]With an area of more than 1,800 square kilometres, there's plenty of space for the elephant population to continue to grow.
[06:49.60]Their presence is also helping to rebalance Nkhotakota's damaged ecosystem and providing a sustainable conservation model, which could be replicated in other parks.
[07:04.09]All this has been a big draw for tourism, which contributes five times more than the illegal wildlife trade to GDP， and this is mainly because of the elephants.
[07:18.39]There's also been a dramatic rise in interest ...
