Original subtitles

'The Serengeti, East Africa,

stage to one of the world's most extraordinary natural spectacles.

Each year, 1.3 million wildebeest

make an incredible 650km journey

from the vast Serengeti plains in Tanzania

to the highlands of Kenya's Maasai Mara

and back again.

I'm spending a year following them on their epic journey...

..from the birthing plains

to the treacherous river crossings...'

A crocodile! It's got it, it's got it, it's got it.

Wow.

'..and the perilous fight for survival.'

(LION ROARS)

'I'll get up close with the animals...'

Really? Yeah. Really?

The male is right next to me.

(SIGHS)

My heart's still pounding.

'..and meet the people...'

This is nuts.

'..who are an integral part of this...

..one of the largest mammal migrations on earth.'

'On the first stage of the migration, in February,

250,000 wildebeest calves were born

and I began working with Dr Grant Hopcraft,

one of the world's leading researchers of wildebeest.

He GPS collared four mothers,

so that we could follow them in their hoof prints.

But a month in,

and drought left the earth parched.

Life struggled for survival.'

(FLIES BUZZ)

'The migration, already having trekked 200km,

was off-course...

..as hungry and desperate wildebeest scattered...

..in search of fresh grass.'

(BIRDS OF PREY SCREECH)

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

(RUMBLING CONTINUES)

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

'At long last, rain has finally arrived...

..providing much-needed nourishment for the flagging migration.

Young and old can now feast again...

..with grass in plentiful supply.'

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

'It's now June.

The fertile lands have reenergised everyone...

..and the herds are on the move.

I want to know where these lush plains are taking them.'

I can't believe how the landscape's changed

in a relatively short amount of time,

it's unrecognisable.

The grass has shot up to sort of waist height.

This was a dustbowl last time I was here.

I mean, it looked like it couldn't sustain any life.

You know, what's so exciting this time is

it really does feel like a different place,

so it kind of feels like a whole new adventure.

'Grant has been monitoring the migration's movements.'

Ben! How are you?

Very well, thank you. How are you? Very well, thanks.

A cup of coffee for you.

So, according to previous data,

the wildebeest should, and correct me if I'm wrong,

be roughly around here somewhere. That's right, yeah.

That's exactly where they should be. So where are they?

Well, it's not a normal year, unfortunately, Ben,

and so, what's actually happened is that we've had a division in erm...

in the migration, actually, which is really interesting.

As in, it's broken up? It's broken up, yeah.

And it's going two very different directions,

one heading northwards

and the other one's heading sort of southwest.

So no-one's...no-one's west, where they should be.

But first of all, why have they actually split into two, then?

Well, good question.

Erm...that, we don't really know,

but all the evidence is suggesting

that this is probably to do with the weather,

it's just become less predictable. Mm-hm. You know?

We can see that in the rainfall patterns over time.

It's becoming less predictable,

and what's happened is they don't know which way to go.

'We named our four collared wildebeest

after famous conservationists.

Rachel and Dian have ventured into the woodlands

with the northern herd...

..whilst Jane and Virginia have made the decision

to stick with the southern group in the treeless savannah.

Since their calves were born four months ago,

each herd has travelled around 200km, searching for food.'

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

'The closest group to us is the southern herd,

so we head off to search for Jane.'

So we've got a location from her this morning... Yep.

..which we downloaded. Yeah.

We've plugged that into the GPS

and we're asking the GPS to take us there. Mm-hm.

And we're still a few kilometres from her, 6km,

but it's out that way,

so we're definitely heading in the right direction

from her last observation.

'But before we can reach her,

another collared animal steps in our path.'

Yeah. She's got a collar, so someone else is tracking her.

Look how fat she is.

She's probably got 20 or 30 kilos of meat inside her.

Possibly wildebeest.

I hope to God that's not Jane.

(BOTH LAUGH UNEASILY)

Wouldn't that be ironic, though,

one collared animal eating another collared animal?

Even in this grass that's been pretty heavily grazed,

she's pretty hidden, isn't she? Oh, yeah, completely.

In fact, once she goes down, you won't see anything.

And we've got vultures circling around.

They might have been feasting off whatever the lion left behind.

That's right. In fact, I'm pretty much sure

that she's eaten probably just in the last few hours,

there's going to be a kill around here somewhere,

why don't we go and see if we can see what she's been eating?

(VULTURES SQUAWK)

And that is obviously not a wildebeest.

That's not Jane. Not Jane, phew! That's a zebra.

Yeah, it's a zebra.

Look at... Those...

They're really digging in there, aren't they?

(ANIMALS SQUAWK AND CRY)

'Out here, hyenas and vultures have a mutually-beneficial relationship.

Circling flocks of vultures lead hyenas to a carcass,

while hyenas drive away other potential predators.'

Just look at that one, it's covered in blood. It's unbelievable.

They're not particularly delicate, are they? No, they're not at all.

They're very greedy eaters, they get right in.

But you can see, like,

that one is going almost right inside the ribcage.

It's coming in from the anus

and going...climbing inside the body cavity of the zebra.

'Vultures eat almost entirely rotting flesh.

Their stomach acid is more corrosive than that of other animals,

allowing them to happily feed on even diseased carcasses.'

If we go and get samples from this animal,

we'll be able to get a little bit more information

as to what's actually going on.

How is it that that lioness, presumably, if it was that lioness,

caught this animal?

(ANIMALS CHATTER AND GROWL)

Is this fighting between the hyenas?

Yeah.

I'm assuming you're not going to take a sample now,

given all the hyenas and vultures around.

We should probably leave them to it.

Well, you know what?

These hyenas look full to me.

I reckon we hop out of the vehicle, we start clapping our hands

and we try and see if we can shoo them off,

and then we get a sample.

I love this royal we.

(BOTH LAUGH)

You'll get out. No, you.

You. (LAUGHS) I'll come with you.

You really think that they'll just be scared off, will they?

Go on, you go first. (LAUGHS)

(CLAPPING AND SHOOING) (VULTURES SQUAWK)

Keep an eye out for lions. Yeah.

And the hyenas. (SHOOS)

Look at that, they've taken the whole rear end. Yeah.

Ooh! A few flies around here.

(FLIES BUZZ) Oh, the smell!

So, lion kill, to me. Mm-hm.

Hyenas, when they kill,

they'll grab the testicles or the udder... Mm-hm.

..and they'll start disembowelling the animal

as it's coming down,

so you end up with a big blood spot all around. Right.

Here we've got just a little blood spot. Yeah.

Lions are much more efficient when they kill.

(BIRDS CAW AND SCREECH)

'To study the Serengeti's ecology,

Grant has to take samples whenever possible.'

Pretty gruesome, this, out here.

You know, new kill, hyenas all around us...

Do you enjoy this or is this just a part of...?

You know, what I do enjoy is, I enjoy the forensic side of it.

Whodunit? Mm-hm.

It's a bit of a...sort of a...

You become a detective out here. Exactly.

It's a murder mystery, isn't it?

Somebody's killed this animal. Who did it and why did they do it?

First thing is, we can tell right away that it's a male. Yep.

So it's got that canine there? Yes.

Looks like a fairly youngish male.

What we'd like to have a look at is the femur. Mm-hm.

OK, tell me what you'd like me to do.

So I want you to smash it. Yup.

And what we're going to try and do is,

we're going to get a bit of bone marrow

right out of the middle there.

OK, this one here? Yeah, that's it.

Oh, nice!

Wow, that's interesting. Is that the...?

OK, we're going to need a bit more back this way.

Can you smash that again? Yeah, sure.

Yeah, let's see if we can get in there.

I'm helping the hyenas here, aren't I? You are.

And in fact, the vultures are going to love you for this.

Yeah, look at that.

The bone marrow is the last resource of fat. Mm-hm.

What we should be seeing here

is something that looks a bit like, sort of, pale butter. Mm-hm.

What we're seeing instead is red erm...

bloody bone marrow.

To me, that's infection. Right.

This animal isn't healthy.

It's trying to build red blood cells.

Erm...and what it's done is that it's sacrificed its fat

to make red blood cells.

So this animal probably was killed when it wasn't healthy. Right.

So the story is becoming more complete now.

What we're seeing is that

that lion didn't take a healthy animal,

it took a sick animal.

'As we continue our pursuit for the wildebeest,

the Serengeti's unpredictable weather

reveals itself.

With daylight fading,

our search for Jane is put on hold...

..but not before we catch our first glimpse of the southern herd.'

I love this.

We're sheltering from the rain in the car,

but they're loving it.

It's just so entertaining to watch them.

I mean, you know,

I love watching the way they sort of jump and frolic around.

Look at the kicking and things like that, you know?

'At this time of year,

the wildebeest have only one thing on their minds...

the annual mating season,

also known as the rut, is upon them.

Fresh pastures and rising testosterone levels

are making the bulls a little frisky.'

And is this a sort of, 'I'm loving this rain,'

or is this the start of this so-called rut?

OK, well, there's a couple of things going on here.

Definitely, they're starting to prime themselves up for the rut.

The rut hasn't started yet,

but they're getting primed-up for it.

On top of that, they're getting rained on,

and rain always induces playful behaviour

in almost all animals.

But presumably, the rain,

that is lasting far longer than it should... Yeah.

..perhaps because they arrived late... Yeah.

..but this is unseasonal again, isn't it?

It is a little bit unseasonal.

I mean, we're getting rain now in June.

And June is typically drying month,

this is the beginning of the dry season,

and that's usually when the rut would be happening,

so we're just seeing the very start of it.

'Daybreak in the Serengeti...'

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

'..and the southern wildebeest herd

is finally starting to get back on course,

winding its way to the west of the park.

But this is their biggest danger zone...

..it's prime poaching territory.

Each year, a vast 80,000 to 120,000 wildebeest

are caught in snares or shot with arrows

as they're illegally hunted for bushmeat.

Many more are injured in the process.

Here in the west,

where villages back straight onto the Serengeti,

a booming population means a huge 95% of homes

consider bushmeat their main source of protein.

I've come to meet a man who runs a project called COCOBA,

which aims to reduce these illegal killings.'

Hey, Benny.

How are you? Good. Very nice to meet you.

How are you? Nice to meet you, too. Likewise.

You are welcome to our COCOBA group. Thank you very much.

Hello. (SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)

So these are the community members

which, actually, in the past, some of them used to be poachers.

Really? Yes.

Why we focus in this particular area,

in this western part of the Serengeti,

because wildebeest have been seriously attacked by poaching.

Can...? Only people who mind,

could they put up their hands if they used to be poachers?

Could you ask them? Oh, yeah.

(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)

Wow, quite a lot. Yes, there is some poachers.

But no longer. They're reformed poachers. Yeah.

So tell me about how the community group works, then.

OK, so instead of being involved in the poaching,

they can access loans

and then they can come up with some income-generating activities.

Like...?

Well, some, they will tell what the business.

They are telling? Yeah.

Wow! Yeah. Very good.

'The group stores the loans in a safe before they're approved,

and today, everyone needs to pay in their share.'

Each member has his number or her number.

One baobab tree,

it means 2,500.

What's fascinating is that everyone in here trusts one another, then.

So there's complete trust within the room... Yeah.

..but maybe, beyond these walls, not so much. Yeah, not so much.

But will you thank everyone? Yeah. It's amazing to see this.

(MEMBERS CLAP AND SING)

That was amazing.

I just wasn't expecting that.

Walking into a classroom, very simple,

and just to be confronted

by a sea of such proud faces.

You know, it was moving, it was incredibly inspiring.

It's giving them the opportunity to do it for themselves.

And the fact they've turned their life around,

going from an illegal trade to entrepreneurs,

they...it was amazing.

'I return to the southern wildebeest herd.

It's been two days since I last saw Grant,

and the mating season has well and truly kicked in.

All around, bulls are turning their attention

to attracting the opposite sex.

We've stationed ourselves in the thick of the action.'

What happens in the rutting season?

How long does it go on for?

OK, so, well the rutting season

usually lasts for about two or three weeks.

And what's going to happen is, you'll see,

like that bull's doing right now,

his head's right up and he's looking around

and he's trying to find females

and he's going to bring them into his little harem there.

And what's going to happen

is that every single bull is going to break up this entire herd

into just a series of harems of females.

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

So, you know, over there,

we can already see that male has rounded up

half a dozen or so females,

is he going to mate with all of them?

He's going to try. (LAUGHS)

But what's going to happen there

is that while he's off getting some more females,

somebody's going to come and steal his ones.

'Bulls reach their prime between five and ten,

which is when they're strong enough to fight off the competition

and defend their territories.

Whether they're a novice or a veteran,

this is when they come to blows.'

So, the males, are they just doing this solidly?

They're going to do this solidly. They're not spending time eating.

And in fact, what we actually see is

the males' physical condition actually goes down.

Cos they're just thinking about sex?

They're obsessed by sex.

(BOTH LAUGH)

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

I feel like we're two dirty old men.

(LAUGHS)

We're like voyeurs,

we've come out to watch wildebeest.

(WILDEBEEST SNORT AND LOW)

Why are the wildebeest only doing it for three weeks?

Why is this their... their kind of sexy time?

Yeah.

Wildebeest are really tied to their environment, unlike us.

We're a little bit removed from our environment,

we can breed at any time,

wildebeest have to be in synchrony with their environment,

and that's because it's expensive, raising a calf.

And the only time you can raise a calf

are when the resources are most abundant.

So you have to be able to synchronise your calving event

with the rainfall patterns happening in the system.

Are the females releasing their eggs now?

Is this...? That's right.

The more females that are becoming fertile,

the more bulls are getting cued,

and the more bulls that are getting cued,

the greater the competition becomes.

And eventually, what's going to happen

is that everybody gets so exhausted.

The bulls almost drop in the dust because they're so tired,

at which point, another bull comes straight in,

that female's exhausted, she has no more choice anymore,

everybody's mated all at once.

'For some unlucky bulls,

disabling injuries on the battlefield can ultimately spell their end.

As the males continue to focus their energies on sex and violence,

it's up to the females to carry on nursing

their four-month-old calves.

They might be nurturing their young,

but in between, they'll also be bred again,

ready to give birth in eight months' time.

We focus our attention on tracking down Jane.'

Yeah, she's definitely this way.

I'm getting quite excited. Yeah.

I'm looking forward to seeing Jane again.

'Last time I saw five-year-old Jane,

she'd given birth

and had a GPS collar fitted around her neck.'

So given how much grass there is now,

are you expecting she's going to be in pretty good shape?

Mum has been lactating since we saw her,

and lactation is really a difficult time for wildebeest

because they've just got to pour out that energy,

as much energy as you can produce to give to your calf.

And so Mum should be in fairly decent condition.

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

OK, you have a little look.

Pretty much 12:00 on the nose of the car... Right.

..there's a little group there.

Let's she if she's... Oh, yeah.

No, I think that's her. Is it?

I think that's her.

I can't see, though... I'm looking for her calf.

Would the calf definitely be with her?

Could it have tagged onto someone else? No.

No, they don't adopt each other's calves.

I mean, there are no calves that are unattended anywhere near.

This looks like she's lost her calf.

I mean, you can see,

all the other calves are with their mothers.

Is that particularly unusual or is that all part of the...?

Losing a calf? Yeah.

It's all part of the game. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, of the calves that are born,

about 30-40% of them die, you know, by this point, you know.

It's a shame about her calf.

It is a shame about the calf.

Maybe it just couldn't keep up.

'Wildebeest produce their first calves at three

and they'll have around five in their lifetime.

Next year's young will be Jane's third,

and she's already being courted by an excited bull.'

Is this a male over here?

He seems to be, sort of, showing off a little bit.

He's kind of... He's kind of prancing. Yeah.

And in fact, he's actually starting to act territorial.

You can see he's chasing off all these other males as well.

He's getting that rutting...

Yeah, a bit more than that grunt, actually.

(LAUGHS) That's right.

I don't know how to tell you this,

but erm...yeah, he's got a big erection.

(LAUGHS) I think. Really?

I think I've er...seen that before.

Yeah, he does have an erection, yep,

so Jane's obviously attractive.

(WILDEBEEST LOW)

I don't know if he's doing particularly well, though.

It looks to me like they've all lost interest,

most of them are heading off to the left.

Yeah, they're leaving him. Oh.

Nobody's interested in him, yeah.

(WILDEBEEST SNORTS)

He's looking pretty despondent.

Poor guy, it's like the guy that's been rejected in the pub.

Yeah. He's gone back to his mates...

Yeah, and he's like, 'Oh, no, now, what do I do?'

Start again. 'I'll eat some grass.'

(BOTH LAUGH)

Get a bag of crisps, that's what I do.

Used to do, obviously. (BOTH LAUGH)

'As the herd continues their migration towards the west,

Jane is swept away in a sea of wildebeest.'

Obviously, we're going to keep tracking her. We can.

We'll keep seeing her online,

but the next time we should get a visual on her,

hopefully, if all goes to plan, north, the Mara? Maasai Mara, yep.

She's got to cross - The river.

She's got to cross all those crocodiles,

she's got a long trip ahead of her,

but that will be, probably, the next time we see her.

It's a long, long journey for her.

(BIRDSONG)

'It's the middle of June,

and the southern wildebeest herd

is in the midst of the western corridor.

Here, the biggest threat they face are humans.

This is the 350,000-acre Singita Grumeti Reserve,

which borders the Serengeti.

Created in 1994 to protect the path of the wildebeest migration,

its wildlife was decimated by prolific hunting.'

(ANIMALS CALL)

'In 2002,

a private management company took over

and declared war on poaching.

They've trained the toughest men

and now run one of the most elite anti-poaching teams in the country.

These two men head up their troop.'

So how many security and anti-poaching guys do you have here?

For anti-poaching, I have 102 game scouts,

who do all the anti-poaching activities.

And I'm assuming that they have to be in peak physical form,

these guys are looking pretty impressive.

Absolutely. I mean, I have 143 guys.

These are the quick reaction team that support the game scouts

should there be an incident.

So we train 6:30 every morning with PT

and we do weapons training continually,

so we're always doing something erm...physical, if you like.

Have they come into contact or into conflict with poachers?

Yes, they do.

Sometimes there is one incident in which we lost a game scout

with a poisoned arrow,

so it's happened so many times.

Have you ever hired any ex-poachers?

Yes. Yes, in fact, most of them are ex-poachers.

So they know all the environment, where to find them,

so you can use those skills which they had

during the time when they were poachers

to fight against the poachers themselves.

So how can you ensure that information doesn't leak out?

Yes, I just keep reminding them that they should not do so.

And if they do it

and if we prove that they have done it,

we fire them.

(ELEPHANT BELLOWS)

'Most of the world's illegal ivory comes from Tanzania.

To protect the reserve's recovering elephant population,

12 observation posts are strategically placed

to oversee the entire park.

These are manned 24 hours a day to catch hunters.'

And how many poachers do you think you stop

or do you catch on a weekly basis, for example?

We usually arrest around...

more than 300 of them in a year.

That is an average of one poacher a day.

Is it this small-scale, sort of, bushmeat scenario

or is there a higher level?

I've worked over most countries in East Africa.

It's getting worse,

it's getting more technical, more advanced,

the backers to get this are training their guys properly,

so we've got to counter that threat

by training our guys properly.

And that's really what I'm doing here with these,

taking their training to a next level.

You know, people hunt because they are poor

and they find this as a way of making their lives.

So it will take us a long time to make sure

that the poaching is completely eradicated.

As long as there's poverty... Yeah.

..there will always be poaching.

There will always be poaching.

'80% of Singita Grumeti's rangers are ex-poachers,

and unlike the bushmeat hunters that target the wildebeest migration,

many here used to work for organised crime syndicates

that export ivory around the world.

Charles was one of them.'

And did you get lots of money from the elephants and the lions?

But we hear that ivory sells for a huge amount of money,

so who got the most money, where did that all go?

How do you kill an elephant?

Does the elephant cry out?

You never felt sad?

And now that you work here as an anti-poacher,

do you have regrets, do you feel...shame, almost,

of the animals that you killed?

It's...

You know, it's so out of my...

realm of comprehension.

You know, I see these beautiful animals,

I travel the world to photograph them,

to take visual memories of them...

so the image of an animal lying on the ground,

crying out in pain, having been shot,

having been caught in a trap,

I can't really go there.

It's too... I kind of...

I get too emotional if I start thinking about the actuality.

(ELEPHANTS BELLOW)

There's two sides of poaching, and I've met one side,

and those are the foot soldiers.

Those are the people on the ground, near to the animals,

who do it because they have to do it.

They're, like, the very bottom rung of the poaching ladder.

The villains are much higher up,

far from, probably, anywhere around here,

probably never even seen an elephant in their lives.

'It's time to bid farewell to the southern herd,

who I've spent all my time with so far,

and head north

in search of the group that's journeying

towards the Kenyan border.'

'As this leg of the migration is coming to an end,

I go in search of the northern herd that includes Rachel and Dian,

as they migrate upwards, towards the Mara River.'

'Within the next two weeks,

the rut will be finished,

and some 300,000 pregnant wildebeest will be continuing their journey.

Migrating alongside the wildebeest, for protection in numbers,

are other herbivores such as zebra and antelope.

And here in the north,

where open woodlands and hills make up the terrain,

an unexpected individual is driving the herd.

Having found the northern half,

I meet up with Grant.'

OK.

A beautiful light now. Yes, isn't it?

Just at sunset.

'It's at this time of day

that wildebeest communication reaches its peak

as thousands begin to call out to each other in synchrony,

a display that's known as the big hum.'

(WILDEBEEST LOW IN UNISON)

What do you think they're saying when they're making this noise?

I'd love to know what it would translate as.

I mean, just the gnus,

it's like they're having dozens of conversations.

(LAUGHS) 'Yes, no, gnu.'

'Gnu, gnu.' Yes.

But when they're actually doing this in unison...

Yeah, so when they're doing it in unison,

when the whole hum is going on,

this is hundreds of males all saying,

'Mine, mine, mine, mine,'

and they're going to be arguing about it.

That's what the rut's all about.

It's these males going, 'Mine, mine, mine, mine,'

and women, the females going, 'No, no, no, no, no.'

(WILDEBEEST LOW IN UNISON)

The hum is all about the rut.

Dick Estes is one of the leading wildebeest experts,

and he's a great friend of mine,

and one of Dick's experiments was to try and see

if he could induce ovulation

just by playing the hum of the males to the females.

And what he found is that there's probably some cues

that these females are increasing their ovulation,

and cueing themselves to a feedback mechanism

between the males and the females.

So the females are sending off pheromones to the males,

the males start humming,

and that brings even more females into oestrus,

so it's sort of a positive feedback cycle.

'As night falls,

we're able to continue filming

with the use of a special infrared camera

and night-vision binoculars.'

(WILDEBEEST LOW IN UNISON)

What's fascinating about this for me is that,

you know, I've been lucky enough to come out to East Africa

a number of times over the years, I've been on safari quite a lot,

but you rarely come out at night like this.

Now, it feels like the whole Serengeti

is alive with wildebeest and that's it.

(LAUGHS) I can't hear any other animals.

No, that's right.

I mean, you can hear, sort of, faint ones,

but really, I mean, suddenly, our acoustics now tell us,

you know, how many animals there really are here,

it replaces our visuals.

And in some sense,

it is a true indicator of what's actually going on here.

I mean, the wildebeest really do rule the Serengeti,

everything is determined by the wildebeest.

(WILDEBEEST LOW IN UNISON)

Wildebeest are rarely seen mating during the day,

this is obviously when all the action happens.

We should see a lot more mating,

but we just don't see it during the day.

It happens, sort of, under the cover of darkness.

When they do mate, it's over in seconds,

and it's sort of a wham, bam, thank you, ma'am,

and off they go.

It's even worse than the worst one-night stand

you could ever imagine.

(LAUGHS)

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

These clouds over here are just incredible,

it's like being in a theatre.

You know, that's directly due north. Mm-hm.

And that's where the rains are happening.

Down in the south, the rains have stopped,

so everybody's trying to head north, towards those clouds.

(THUNDER RUMBLES) (WILDEBEEST LOW)

'The wildebeest herds and our collared females

have travelled 100km on this part of their migration,

but they continue to remain divided.

Both are now heading straight for Kenya

and the perilous Mara River crossing,

the biggest obstacle on their journey.

As droves of wildebeest and other herbivore

follow the rains to the north,

they leave these plains for the last time this year,

blissfully unaware that it's home

to the park's most highly-endangered species.

I hear news that I've been granted unprecedented access

to visit a secret location

where just a small number of these threatened animals roam.'

If you imagine rhinos are probably

one of the most coveted animals in the world, in terms of poachers.

And anyone that has them goes to great lengths

to either protect them with heavy guards

or to keep them in complete secret,

keep them in isolation, away from everyone else.

So the herd that live here in the Serengeti

are kept miles from anywhere

and they're kept in a top-secret location.

And to allow someone like me to come along and film them

is pretty much impossible.

But we've managed to, kind of, get through umpteen loops,

the paperwork, officials,

and we've finally been granted permission,

which is pretty amazing.

'I'm directed to a checkpoint,

where I meet the team of rangers

who are solely responsible for protecting

the park's black rhino population.'

I'm in the Area 51 of the Serengeti.

This is where the rhinos are, somewhere.

I don't know exactly where.

So I don't even know where we're going, to be quite honest.

I've been told to get in this truck.

There's lots of formalities going on

cos this is pretty unique.

'All 25 rhinos in the Serengeti

have GPS trackers implanted into their horn,

enabling the rangers to monitor their every move

to keep them safe from poachers.'

(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)

So is he...? Your colleague is speaking to...

other rangers?

And just so I'm clear,

you're a special unit of rangers here.

So you're not like the other park rangers

in the Serengeti, is that right?

So you eat and sleep rhino, your whole life is about rhino.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, Mama with her calf, Mama with her calf.

It's just...

The calf is just on the other side of it.

You'll see, it's just coming through now.

I was thinking, at one stage, we might not find them.

And to all intents and purposes, this looks like an English meadow,

just like a summer's day,

so the fact that there's rhino hiding in this grass is amazing

and to find one with its calf is pretty magical.

How old is the calf?

It was born last year, in June.

'The Serengeti has five rhino calves,

and at 30 years old,

Mama has been a mother 15 times.'

Does that make you proud, when you see your rhino?

Very happy.

(CHUCKLES) You see, just look.

'Black rhinos are critically endangered

after a wave of poaching killed 96% of them in the '70s.

Today, just 5,000 survive in the whole of Africa.'

Have you lost any rhino here yet?

Did he just take the horn?

How did it make you feel, though, to lose a rhino?

This one. Yeah? Yeah, because...

Presumably, one of the biggest risks for you

is information leaking out as to where these rhino are.

Is that why this is so secret here?

Because if people leaked the information

of the GPS positions of the rhino,

poachers might be able to come in?

Have you got children? Yeah, yeah.

Have your children ever seen a black rhino?

Would you like her to see one day?

(RHINO CRIES)

These are black rhino, this is a highly endangered species,

and to see the pride on these guys' faces,

you know, they were genuinely disappointed

that we might not have been able to track them.

But to be able to see that,

that's the stuff of memories.

That is a magical experience, thank you.

'Next time, I'm in Kenya.

I'll follow the wildebeest

as they cross the dangerous, crocodile-infested Mara River...'

A crocodile! It's got it, it's got it.

Oh, my God.

'..and witness the migration mass

as it reaches its most northerly point...

..where elephants stray into bordering villages

with horrific consequences.'

You know, it has to stop.

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