Olifant

This series was taken on location at Adventures with Elephants at Bela Bela in Limpopo, South Africa, in August 2020. The centre, run by the Hensman family, has been involved with African elephant rehabilitation and research for over forty years. Relying entirely on revenue from the public the centre conducts important research into the largest land mammal. As such, their finances have been severely impacted by lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past forty years their elephants have been incorporated into anti-poaching patrols in the Zambezi Valley National Parks and have willingly worked on the farm doing fence checking, rounding up and managing livestock, and successfully tracking the 12 hour old scent of burglars through the bush resulting in recovery of the stolen goods and an eventual arrest. Ongoing research includes establishing ways to mitigate the dire effects of habitat reduction due to human population growth, and recording and analysing how elephants communicate with a focus on how this might be used to limit interactions of elephants and humans during migration.