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Elephants charge helicopter in Africa
In the wild heart of Africa there is a dwindling group of savannah elephants so traumatised by decades of war, poaching and conflict with humans, that when they see a helicopter, they don’t run away… they charge. While the choppers are a means of providing vital conservation measures, such as collaring programmes to monitor under-threat animals for their own protection, these majestic animals have learned to defend themselves in an area so wracked with human conflict it’s been dubbed the “Triangle of Death”.
Combine the dangerous reality of several tons of angry pachyderm with the threat of armed militias, and almost impenetrable terrain, and you have potentially life-threatening conditions for man and mammal. Yet these are the conditions faced by a determined team, including a British vet, who have just successfully carried out the first ever collaring programme on the last population of a species in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Only around 200 savannah elephants now roam in pockets in Katanga Province in the south of the war-torn nation, having once numbered in the thousands across the whole country. The herds are the subject of an urgent conservation project to save them from extinction led by Upemba National Park and backed by the UK-founded Forgotten Parks Foundation, the European Union and the Elephant Crisis Fund. Upemba covers a vast area close to the Zambian border and contains a diverse habitat of a plateau, mountainous terrain, grasslands, swamps, forests and lakes.
The Katanga elephants have been collared for the first time, seen here with Dr Harvey (Image: Justin Sullivan )
British freelance wildlife vet Dr Richard Harvey was part of the operation last month to dart and collar what could be some of the most endangered elephants in Africa.
Richard says the amount of sedative that is loaded into the CO2 dart guns fired from the helicopter to put an elephant to sleep is “about 1,000 times stronger than morphine – what we use would be a fatal dose for around 30 to 35 people”.
He adds: “Essentially, the dart is a flying syringe which administers a potent opioid which puts the animal to sleep. We make sure the herd is away from the darted elephant.
“Once the animal is asleep, we jump out of the helicopter and put a collar around its neck and then wake it up with an antidote. Within 30 seconds the elephant is fully awake, and we must be back in the helicopter when that happens.”
Dr Harvey fires the CO2 rifle to administer the opioid to the elephant (Image: Justin Sullivan )
But unlike his work in countries such as South Africa and Namibia, it’s not just the elephants that park rangers and the team had to worry about. All around Upemba National Park are groups of heavily armed Mai-Mai militias, a separatist group who want to break away from the DRC. The Mai-Mai have killed two rangers and two community trackers in the past year. And as well as terrorising humans, the militias have also been known to kill elephants for meat and ivory.
“You see in animal populations that have had high poaching pressure for a long time, they start to associate humans with trauma,” says Richard, a Royal Veterinary College, University of London graduate who has worked extensively in the field over the last decade.
“This remnant elephant population, they will have had poaching incidents in their herds, and they will almost certainly have seen and had real experiences of humans causing them severe threat and pain.”
It’s thought the surviving animals in the herds today are alive for “two reasons”, says the vet. “Generally, they are smarter and know how to utilise the environment to avoid humans, and also they have had to become more aggressive.”
Using the stunning natural environment as a way of hiding from people who want to harm them has become a speciality of the Katanga elephants.
“The elephants were hiding, there were probably about 30 or 40 hiding under very small trees in such a manner that it was very difficult to see them,” explains Tina Lain, the Zambian-born director of Upemba Park, who has been described as having one of the “toughest jobs in conservation”.
“They have been so used to hiding, they go in at night to raid crops and go and hide in the day,” she says, highlighting one of the biggest threats to the endangered herds – conflict with local communities living around and inside the 4,200-square mile park. Tina, who has a background in conflict resolution, adds: “Conservation is not just about wildlife, it’s mostly about people. Here on both sides, you have a human population that is traumatised, and you have an animal population that is traumatised.”
Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) soldiers cluster beside the helicopter (Image: Justin Sullivan )
To deter the large herbivores from visiting their fields at night, the local community uses a “toolbox” of ideas developed by Save the Elephants.
“Sometimes the biggest animal can be scared by the smallest one so one of the things that works very well is bee hives,” explains Tina. “You can make a belt of bee hives around your crops and the elephants won’t come.
“Another technique is using chilli pepper, they really don’t like chilli pepper so you can make fences of the plant and then put your crops inside these fences. These are easy techniques to use with the resources that you have in these communities – you don’t need a huge electric fence.”
However, despite the recent success of the collaring project and community engagement, Tina warned: “For decades, Upemba was a “paper park”, protected in name but forgotten in practice.
“Now, with competing pressures from mining, agriculture, and land grabs, it is at a crossroads. The coming years are crucial. Without sustained funding, patrols, data analysis, and infrastructure development will stall. Worse, the momentum gained through recent victories, like the collaring could be lost.”
Eco-guard Dieudonné Kwadje Lugala fits a GPS collar onto a large female elephant (Image: Justin Sullivan )
But perhaps like the bee hives, even the smallest actions can have big consequences. Justin Sullivan, who documented the collaring of the elephants with these remarkable photographs, has seen other wildlife, not just elephants, show signs of recovery in the four years he has worked at the park.
He says: “When I first came to this park, I was very pessimistic about this place and its future because there was so much that they had to tackle – the area used to be called the Triangle of Death because of fighting between militias and government forces.
“But there has been a bounce back in the wildlife, especially with the bird species on the plateau, that area is so unique in terms of its forest galleries and access to water. That water probably benefits millions of people around the park.”
Wildlife photographer and filmmaker Justin says collaring the elephants brings hope not just to nature but also to people living in and around the park.
“These kind of operations, collaring animals, happen every day in Africa but I think what really sets this apart is urgency. It’s not every day you get to try to save the last population of a species of elephant.
“It felt at times like something out of a movie. In the first few days we travelled north to a town called Ankoro, which is 200 kilometres from the park.
“We landed on the runway and there were hundreds of kids all running towards the plane, it was quite the scene to witness.” Having collared some of the local elephants, South African Justin says explaining to children and the local community about what they had done was “priceless”.
On Lusinga airstrip, Upemba National Park, pilot John Bassi wraps up his final pre-flight checks (Image: Justin Sullivan )
He says: “Showing local people a mother elephant with her calf, it really brought to life for the kids that these are living beings and not just a nuisance trying to eat their crops. It was special being able to show the elephants to people in a different way.
“Elephants are an iconic species for us as humans and we are responsible for them. Saving this last species in the DRC creates hope. With these collars we have almost bought ourselves more time to build better and closer relationships with local people so they can see the value in looking after these animals and the need for coexistence.”
He smiles. “Elephants famously have long memories, and these herds have not forgotten the horrors of war and conflict that ravaged this region for so long. Neither have the people who live here.
“But now with this collaring project there is a glimmer of hope for something better in the future.”
A herd of endangered elephants make their way through the incredible landscape (Image: Justin Sullivan )
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