Original subtitles

So there's nothing more special than

waking up early in the morning of a

sunrise over the Drakensberg Mountains here.

I think one of the most special

sunrises is the African sunrise. There's

something heartwarming about it and I

don't think words can necessarily explain

that feeling. You know, people pay big

money to come back every year to Africa

to just witness what we see every day.

One of the reasons why we start with

these operations so early in the morning

is one of the big ones is obviously the heat.

We need to work on these animals in

the coolest conditions possible.

We're out here this morning to hopefully

locate this girl of mine that we

relocated last week from outside the

reserve into Balule.

She's got a full horn on at the moment,

so we need to get that horn off ASAP.

She's being fitted with a foot collar and

Bruce will go up quite soon with

telemetry equipment and hopefully we can

find her and cut that horn off,

and get that target off her head.

It's great to have Ian on the ground today,

usually he's in the air with Bruce.

I think he sometimes

misses out also on a lot of good stuff

that happens on the ground.

..."Hi man. How are you? Good, man. How are you going?"...

For the last few weeks I've been in here so,

I never saw backs out today,

and I get to be with the ground crew,

so it's going to be good. So it's nice to

be here with everyone, see what's going

on and also kick them in the backside if

things aren't going the way I want.

Yeah, there's nothing more fun than being

involved with these operations.

You know that we're fortunate to the

camaraderie between us wardens, but

also, you know, the people that we work

with, the vets and the pilots, and it's a

really fun bunch of people. We mates, all

of us, and it's the dream team.

..."Stand by"...

"Okay Joel, I'm going to send the

ground team to that high rise on the Tshukudu fence"

All right, we need to isal.

Yeah, Rian, he's got

good operational awareness.

And because he's got a good presence and

a good understanding of what needs to

happen, and he's a good leader, that he's

the right guy to be able to get people to

do what they need to.

Basically, because there's an increased

poaching pressure again, there is a sense

of urgency. You do feel like you have to,

you know, do it quickly.

So yeah, it feels good

when you know it's done.

"I'm taking the foot collar off."

So, between all of these people, we've

got one Leatherman....Take note, a

company Leatherman,

we need sponsorship.

We will react on every single animal that

comes in that has substantial regrowth.

We won't leave products out there because

that product endangers that animal's

lives. And every single Rhino is

important. Literally every single one.

To lose one is one too many

And we'll do what it takes

to get them all cleaned up.

We all knew that we'd get hit again.

And as long as we've got

Rhino, there'll be a threat.

Earlier in March this year,

we had an attempted poaching.

The Rhino was shot, the bullet went

through the ear and into the hump on the

neck. So it was an off-centre front shot.

The Rhino's absolutely fine. It's made a

full recovery. We actually treated it now

during the dehorning. This is that bullet

was wounded a while ago. This is the

gunshot wound here... And we treated him

about, what, two months ago? Yeah.

And not much we could have done, but he

looks fine. Looking good.

And yeah, this would have been the prize

that the poachers would have gotten. So

he was very lucky that day. So this is a

good one for us to get... It was the first

breach we've had in a long, long time.

It was in an area that historically we

got hit really hard in.

Scars, you know, it's the old enemies and

that happens a lot in this

game, when catching them...

doesn't mean that that's the end of them.

You often see those

guys straight back here.

That then led to a month later.

Actually having a loss in that area.

I definitely thought that we were gonna

get hit again. The biggest factor was

just time. Time and where.

Where was it gonna happen?

I suspected in particular was gonna be our

side of the reserve. And then

unfortunately it happened. Where I

remember walking in and my hands were

shivering like this because I was like,

the first thing going through my mind is

that there's a dead rhino lying here.

When I walked in, I

remember there w..

just saw that little bit of a back.

And I was just like,

shit. How? How, how, how?

You know, losing a cow is really sad

because it's all her future offspring. Plus

the current offspring normally is either

an orphan or is killed as well. And the

ability to add new ones is severely

impacted with the loss of cows. So yeah,

that's always heartbreaking

But we knew it was coming.

It's just really sad because, you know,

she had a calf, it was her first calf.

You know, they're just living their

life and then suddenly they're dead. And

you just, you feel

like you've failed them.

So once we find the rhino

carcass, it's a crime scene.

And it's officially a crime scene until

when necropsy is being performed, which

needs to be performed by

authorised professionals.

The animal is effectively dissected and

metal detectors used to find projectiles.

And the scene is completely processed,

evidence bagged. And once that is

complete, then the carcass is left for

nature to take its course, which is

obviously scavengers,

vultures and so on.

Jaques had to go back to fetch the skull.

And that's important for us because if

we're doing any aerial operations in the

reserve and we find the skull, then we

know it's from a carcass

that we have not recorded.

I felt it's important that I go with him.

Moral support because he took it

very personally and it's really important

that my guys know I'm

behind him every step of the way.

It's amazing that this is all that's left

of the, of that big

animal here just a while back.

It's a hell of a lot of a different scene to last

time. I just can't believe they've gone

through every single thing.

All these scenes are sad, coming back to

the site like this especially...

It's our first one in so long. You never

get used to it...Yeah, we need to

just tag the skull and take it back with

a case number and keep it in the storage.

Yeah, I think we'll take them

both, ye..

Hell, there's nothing natural about this.

I mean, what's happened to the site is

natural, but what caused

the site is not natural.

Yeah, it's just, it's just a reminder of

the plight that these

animals have against people.

Yeah, it's just power of money, eh?

But just shows it's either

desperation or something. There's

definitely, it's something that they

want and that they're

willing to risk for,..

It's sad for me to see what we as humans

can do just for greed.

When people do this, do they have any

emotions? What's going through their

mind? Like, do they feel anything when

they do something like this to these

animals? And I can only think that

there's no emotions because they

literally keep on doing it. They keep

coming back, so. Yeah,

...not nice.

That record that we got,

of a thousand and eighty nine days,

it's actually unbelievable

The hard thing with that is um getting back in

to that sort of space where

that's what's on your mind all the time.

That's what you're thinking about. That's

what you're processing. You wanna forget

how it feels because it's not great. It's

just not a nice place to be.

Whoever tells you it doesn't creep in under

your skin, is lying, you get

emotionally involved with these animals

and it's a horrible feeling to see a

rhino with his face-hacked to pieces.

It's not a nice feeling. It does get

under anybody's skin.

I'm generally a person, I don't like to

talk about things and I sort of say,

okay, I'll handle it. Whether that's

right or wrong, I'm not too sure. But I

will tell you it affected me.

Your role as a

conservationist suddenly has..

Your time that you can spend with your

family has suddenly

changed. You're on 24-hour duty.

The unfortunate thing is I was in the

situation where I was finding a lot of

carcasses because I'm the person who has

to go on a follow-up operation and now

try and initiate a rest after that.

And I was pretty much fed up, eh?

It makes you fed up. After a while, I

point blank to refuse to actually go.

You see, the poachers, they won't cross

here because you see it's too much to up.

...But I think what we can do is, I

think it's a good place to check anyway for tracks.

I went through a phase where

I got a fear for the moon, I didn't

want to see the moon. People were like,

oh, look how beautiful the moon is tonight.

I'm like, no. If I heard something that

sounded like a gunshot, I freaked out

because I knew what it meant.

Even now, if I'm sitting and I hear

something like a gunshot, I get called.

Some of the oaks, they don't realise how

bad it was. They weren't there with it.

It's not against them, but it's just that

we went also through a

period when it was quite bad.

Yeah, I think a consequence of this whole

onslaught on rhinos that's completely

underestimated is the toll it's taken on

the humans that work with this.

It's sad because I saw a

huge change in a few years.

It's almost difficult to think back to

that time. And it's also difficult to

actually explain to people, what

situation we were all in back then.

I think back of it, it was like,

in my life, it was the dark ages. Yeah.

And I didn't have that front line

experience like you guys did, but I saw

what it was doing to you and other people

and how hard you were trying. And yet it

was just all too sudden, too much to deal

with. We weren't prepared. I mean, it was

devastating. But I remember you saying to

me, you can't do this anymore. Just

you're done. And that was the day and I

thought, we're gonna lose people like

you, giving up hope...And that would

be the worst thing that will happen to

conservation is losing

good people because of this...

trauma are you facing so regularly? That

year we lost 18, I think. Yeah.

These guys are in very

manly careers. They're tough rangers.

And I think it's a hard thing to

admit that you've got depression or

suffering post-traumatic stress. And I

have no doubt that anybody that's dealt

with a carcass before has some level of

post-traumatic stress.

Everybody

in the conservat..

during that time, went or are still going

through the same emotions.

We big boys and have to wake up the

next morning and carry on.

I'm married to a Canadian.

And we've got two kids, Emma and Logan.

..."one with lettuce no cheese"...

Logan can tell you

everything about helicopters. Emma

will tell you everything about art.

I remember when people would say, "Nah,

when you have your first kid, you know,

it's all emotional and you change, but it

sure as hell just changes your life. And

you think differently about the world. So

during that horrible

time of losing Rhino,

you sometimes think back about it and you

think, geez, I actually,

I missed quite a bit of,

the bit when they were at a certain age

and you'll never get it back.

Times when you did spend with family was

probably not quality time cause your

head wasn't with your family.

I think during that time, one was so

drawn into it work wise and mentally that

you probably burned

yourself out without realising it.

I would describe myself as

ninety percent of the time always angry.

You know, you would be out or

in the office until one, two o'clock,

sometimes nights through.

You get back home and that's when it

would hit you again...With the back

of your mind, that's where it

played with your conscience.

"You're coming, Emms?"

"Come sugar."

I think stress and you mentioned

post-traumatic stress. I don't know much

about it and I don't understand it. And I

don't think anybody in the industry wants

to understand it either. Cause you don't

want to know that you

possibly had it or still have it.

What I would do different today if the

same wave of rhino poaching would hit us.

From a family point of view, definitely

would have taken days and go somewhere

and just switch off... It, I think it

would have made a difference

mentally on a person. Yeah.

I dreaded the aftermath of a carcass

because it's finger pointing, it's

blaming, it's guilt. Unfortunately, it

led to an incredible amount of tension

and conflict between good people and

between rangers and between regions.

I think it's human nature to want to

blame someone if something goes wrong and

you don't know who to blame because it's a

criminal force that you can't pinpoint.

From the poachers perspective, they can't

just arrive here and wander around

aimlessly hoping to bump into a rhino.

They need help to do that.

And their biggest key to success is

internal involvement.

I looked very much forward to the

implementation of the

integrity testing because

it was a way to protect your honest guys.

Have you told any

poachers where rhinos are? No.

Have you been asked by any poachers to

help them with the

illegal killing of a..

The polygraph test is a test that records

your physiological responses to certain

questions. We're not interested if you

stolen a spanner from a workshop. Is what

you want to know is about direct

involvement in rhino poaching.

Have you received any form of payment

from helping anyone to

illegally kill a rhino? No.

That's a very successful tool for us and

has proven itself over and over again

since 2018. And it's made a very, very

big difference to the guys on the ground

because it's really important that when

you go into a situation that you need to

know that the guy next to you is on the

same team..." When I ask you questions, are

you going to answer me? Honestly?..Yes"...

Security personnel was every six

months. And once a year for large staff

and these people that have access to

vehicles and can drive

around the reserve unaccompanied.

Us managers do it first and it goes from

there down, all the way down to field

rangers, gate guards, everyone.

Have you been involved with the illegal

killing of a rhino? No.

It's a fair policy because we don't base

results just on an initial test.

And there's a process that we follow that

if you fail the first test there is a complete

and comprehensive interview

process in between the test.

And then the second test is done. The

result then is if there's a double

failure, we then act on it. And every

time to date that there's been a double

failure, it's been vindicated. So we

believe one hundred percent in the process.

Did you answer all

these questions honestly?

Yes.

We're not out to get people fired. And

it's not a process to victimise people,

it's a process to protect your honest

people. And honest people are a commodity

that you have to protect.

None of my field rangers failed a

polygraph test, touch wood.

And I hope to keep it that way. But I

think it shows as well.

The area of my field rangers, patrol has

not, touch wood, lost the rhino yet.

Just do a bit of patrol exercise here.

Just formation patrol. We're just

gonna go up here with the clearing, nice

and wide, because it's nice and open. I

want Morris, so we do some hand exercises

and keep your eyes on

Morris. Let's keep going.

I'm proud to call in my field rangers and

I'm proud to be part of

this team that I've got.

Got a good group of guys around. They've

been with us for ages and I got my trust

in them.

I chose my guys before,

and we went in a direction before the

onslaught completely started.

So, you know, when Callan started,

he started in an area that already lost

quite a few animals and

that had a couple of bad apples

in the crowd.

My story here, you know, has contained a

lot of backstabbing

from within my own team.

I've got a picture when I started here on

my first day, and it's me and a team of

rangers, and I thought we were, you know,

operating as a team and fighting, you

know, this Rhino poaching together.

And now today, five years later, there's

only one of them left, and the rest have

all been fired for

being involved in poaching.

And that's where, you know, this whole

betrayal comes in, but it is part of the

game. And the longer you're in the game,

you realise that that is a reality.

My family actually owns a place in this

area, so I've been

coming here my whole life.

I used to come here pretty much every

single school holiday, and I loved every

minute of it. You know, the whole time I

was sitting at school, all I wanted to do

was just to finish the term and come back

here to the bush. One very fond

memory is that pretty much right here

where we're standing, we used to see

rhinos all over the place. I mean, we

used to see creches of up to ten rhinos.

There was this rhino, her name was Mary,

and everyone knew her because she had a

horn that went straight like this, not a

curve or anything like that. And she was

sadly poached by one of the water holes.

So that one kind of hit home because we

really knew her, and I've

known her since I was little, so.

I guess it was a driving factor, you

know, that when I get out of school,

maybe I can do something about it.

These were all poached

here, specifically on this section of

Belule. And the scary thing is, this is

only 13 skulls. And I mean, if you look

at like the year 2017, we actually lost

17 rhinos. So this doesn't even represent

a year of poaching... when

we were at our worst point.

This is where the front horn would have

sat, and this is where the back horn

would have sat. And you can actually see

here that they've, you know, very

precisely taken a knife and really, you

know, worked the horn off. And you can

actually see all the

individual little cut marks here.

There's a little cut here where you can

see where they would have got the back

horn off on this rhino. And this is

actually the last rhino that went down in

this section. We

haven't lost a rhino since.

A lot of my own guys

were actually involved.

And yeah, it does make it difficult to

trust, but you know, you get better and

better at learning as to who

to trust and who not to trust.

Themba is the only guy left

besides myself in the team that was not

proved to be corrupt

or involved in poaching.

And he's actually been a ranger since

2003. So I mean, he's going on 20 years.

I would say he's the core of our team.

Afternoon Themba

How are you?

That's good. Okay, at ease.

How was patrol this morning?

Okay no, that's good. The reason why I'm

calling you here today is I just want to

talk to you before I speak to the guys.

I'll speak to everyone this afternoon and

give the position for the observation

post. But I just wanted to let you know

that the position that I'm putting you

in, we found a very small white rhino

calf, a few days old...Yes, so I just

want you to stay in that area. And if you

do find that calf, you must call me on

the radio immediately, okay?

Then when you do find it, I

want you to stay with that animal, okay?

Okay, I'll do so...Hundred percent. Thank you, Themba.

Thanks so much. Thank

you. All right. Thank you.

Now, I know he has a hundred percent been approached

by guys to get involved. He would have

had pressure from guys within the team to

get involved because obviously he would

be getting in the way of what they wanted

to do to poach rhinos.

And he just, he never wavered. He never,

he just refused to get involved.

When I arrived here, and this was before

I knew what was going on, you would go

back to base and he was always by

himself. You know, he's not sitting and

having beers with the guys.

And I always just thought maybe it's just

because he's a quiet guy, but now that I

know what has happened here as to why he

was like that, and very

interestingly, when I got rid of these

guys, you know, Themba like came out of

his shell and was a completely different

guy to how I knew he

was in the beginning.

Since those guys have left, he's had a

lot of death threats

and serious death threats.

Thanks so much. Stay safe.

And to you. Thanks so much.

I always give my guys who are threatened

the option, you know, we'll do anything to

help them. I mean, because they are

literally risking their lives to perform

their duty here. So it's only our duty to

make sure we look after

these guys as best we can.

It didn't matter to him. He always just

told me, you know, it is what

it is. It's part of the job.

He understands the risks, you know, when

he did take this job and he's happy to

carry those risks forward, you know, in

order to protect the rhino. So he's

really, really an incredible guy. And I'm

very privileged to have him on my team.

I think any field ranger that is gonna

tell you he's never been approached or

never been around a poacher

or never was worried is lying.

A lot of field rangers, section rangers,

wardens, they find themselves in a

financially difficult position

and they make the mistake once. And that

one mistake getting

involved of it is your downfall.

As soon as you're part of that and you're

in that ring of nastiness, there's no way

of getting out of that.

Rhino poaching is an organised crime

problem where people from the rural

areas, low income earning, are exploited

by the syndicates for their gain.

A few individuals greed that's driven all

this. They've identified a market and

they've identified the product. And to

get the product to that market is evil.

It's a tragedy, what

it does to good people.

In that chain, so many lives are ruined

of people and of animals

between the demand and the supply.

Good morning, everyone.

So it's really an honour for us

to get to know our own people,

in our own area. And to support you.

We want to understand how we can make

this meaningful for

you, not for us, for you.

That's sad. We had some community

engagements last year and a lot of the

older women said their biggest fear is

that their sons get involved with,

especially rhino poaching. Because once

you're in that criminal network, there's

no escaping and they

remain criminals forever after.

You know, we know that Africa has

extremes.You know, wealth and

poverty. And especially around these

areas, our Western boundaries.

We can't employ enough people in the

protected areas to make a difference in

enough families. So there's got to be

other ways that we can make there be a

mutually beneficial relationship because

it's very hard to see the value of an

open area with no cattle

on when you're starving.

We are now working with an arm called the

Balule Outreach Trust.

We have already done a study of where do

our families, of everybody works within

Balule. Where do they live? What areas

do they live in? What is the upliftment

programs that we need to implement there

in those areas where our families are?

Let's start charity at home.

Maseki is one of the areas that the

Balule Outreach Trust is mainly focuses

on with the purpose of providing an

aftercare facility for

children, school children.

John Anderson, who's the founder of the

Balule Outreach Trust, he started it up

in 2012. He asked around in the area

where the most indigent communities are,

and this is one of them. In fact, it's

one of the poorest communities in the

country, not only in

the Limpopo Province.

On a day, there are usually two hundred children

who come here after school, and they are

given a cooked meal, which is possibly

the only meal some of them have each day.

This is pap, and it's made from

mealies. It's also known as mealie meal.

At Maseki,

they are actually battling with no w..

Their borehole pump is broken. They get

odd supplies during the

week of water in tanks.

So it's really a difficult situation for the

people in this area, but we like to think

the drop-in centre is at

least a bit of a lighthouse.

So many of the children are vulnerable

and orphans, the ones who come here.

So it's nice for them to have a really

secure, happy, comfortable place for them

at least to come to after school.

Looking forward, going

into the future, the children have to

learn about the wildlife, how to look

after it. Conservation is a really big thing.

..." Are you putting the chickens?"...

..."There's a rhino? "...That's very important, so

that they can get jobs

going in the area.

Nature conservation is a new name to most

of the people. They don't understand it.

Most of the people are not that educated.

They just understand that it's animals.

Because of lack of knowledge, of

conservation, in them, they want to kill

that animal, you see? Which is a problem

that create even animal poaching. But the

generation that is coming, at least, we

see gradual change

when coming to education.

If you want to make true change, you need

to get involved and you need to educate

the long term and identify where the

needs are. And if conservation is our

area of need, well then we need to make

it available to those

communities that are on our borders.

This is the village of Sigagule, which

as the crow flies, is a

kilometre from the Greater Kruger

National Park fence line.

Our children sit on the swings and they

will say, "indlovu!" that means elephant.

"onyali" and they can look into the

reserves and see them, but they've never

experienced it. They just

never access it.

That tar road that runs between the

community and the private reserves is

like the Great Wall of

China. It separates them.

Unless there's a personal understanding

and a value for conservation, you're not

going to get anywhere

in breaching that bridge.

And the only way to build a bridge from

the one side to the other is to educate

why it's important to preserve a

chameleon, teaching the

value of a termite mound.

The trees leaves, ecosystems, just for

them to understand ecosystems that they

require to survive on instead of this

scorched earth policy or everything gets

taken out even the trees.

Three plus one. Three apples plus one.

Show me. Put the apples on there.

The centre around you has been made

possible through the funding that the

Balule Outreach Trust has made possible.

It's gone from a playroom for small

children where we started teaching the

little ones who couldn't even hold a

pencil how to read and write

all the way to a training

centre for young adults,

also sponsored by the Balule Outreach Trust

where we do skills development

programs now, which is a nature's art

guide. We take young adults from 21 to

35. So when they're finished, they'll be

fully qualified nature's art guides and

they can go out and get work.

I've learned how to love animals. I've

learned. I'm not always... I just wanted

to protect them because they're becoming

extinct. I wanted to always protect them,

but I was never that much into them.

I learned how to love them while I was

doing this course. I now know the

ecological importance of size trees and

termites, insects and that. So now I can

be able to teach everybody out there,

say, let's protect this and that, let's

keep this safe for the future generation,

for them to see the

importance of such animals and trees.

This environment needs to be protected

because it's helping explain an important

role in our life. But if we can't look

after it, then it will be a challenge

because when we destroy it, we are

destroying ourselves again.

We need each other, actually.