00:00:11poachers supplying the lucrative ivory
00:00:13trade use these same trails to track
00:00:16down their quarry
00:00:21and when they do the outcome can be
00:00:24horrific
00:00:28[Music]
00:00:32but not every human use of the elephant
00:00:35trails is destructive indigenous peoples
00:00:39have traveled these ball ways for at
00:00:41least 9,000 years and in 1999 wildlife
00:00:47conservation society researcher Mike Fay
00:00:50embarked on a 2,000 mile trek across
00:00:53Central Africa his chief purpose to draw
00:00:58attention to the threats facing the
00:01:00region’s wildlife his primary means of
00:01:04travel the elephant trails
00:01:09he called his journey the mega transect
00:01:15halfway through Mike stumbled onto a
00:01:18poaching camp and found himself staring
00:01:21at a gruesome scene this wasn’t
00:01:26subsistence hunting the meat was headed
00:01:29for local logging and mining camps what
00:01:34Mike saw on the mega transect would turn
00:01:37out to have far-reaching and unexpected
00:01:39consequences together with WCS ecologist
00:01:44Lee white Mike presented President Omar
00:01:47Bongo ondimba with a plan to create 13
00:01:51national parks the president said yes
00:01:57for me when Bongo said he was going to
00:02:00do it it wasn’t even like a dream come
00:02:03true it was like winning the 256 million
00:02:06dollar lottery setting up the parks was
00:02:09a promising start but only a start
00:02:12Gabonese conservationists joined forces
00:02:15with the Wildlife Conservation Society
00:02:17or WCS and created Park management teams
00:02:22like operation Luang go one of the first
00:02:26problems they faced was pervasive animal
00:02:29poaching it remains a serious problem
00:02:32today
00:02:33all across Central Africa elephants are
00:02:36hunted and killed for their ivory
00:02:39while local poachers profit very little
00:02:42from what they kill the tusks of a
00:02:44single large bull can bring thousands of
00:02:47dollars on the Asian open market
00:02:52so anti-poaching forces face an uphill
00:02:55struggle
00:02:59after discovering an elephant massacre
00:03:02nears Akuma National Park and southern
00:03:04Chad Mike Fay is determined to learn
00:03:07more
00:03:08he knows that especially in war-torn
00:03:11nations like Chad national parks alone
00:03:14can’t stem the tide of widespread
00:03:16poaching
”