There is nothing quite as strange as seeing an elephant hanging upside-down from a crane, says Pete Oxford.
We had left South Africa and crossed into Zimbabwe via an insanely busy bridge over the Limpopo River. Everything was different here.
Donkeys pulled carts across barren and dusty terrain, avoiding truck-eating pot-holes and weaving through a landscape with occasional baobabs and scrubby mopane trees. Goats were everywhere, without a single blade of grass on which they could forage. Eventually, after some exhausting driving, we reached our destination.
- "His small trunk and ears were free, but his rear-end was stuck fast in dark, oozing mud. He looked exhausted and must have been struggling for hours"
- "You have to shoot the animal in the shoulder and wait about five minutes for the animal to get groggy and fall over."
A herd of approximately 80 elephants had broken through a fence – a potential source of trouble for local people, so they had to go back. We were picked up by ‘John’ in a bright yellow helicopter, and flew to the spot where they had last been seen (names and locations have been concealed for security reasons, and to protect the animals from poachers).
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Using the chopper like a sheep dog, John split off a family group of 17 individuals from the herd and drove them slowly to a clear area that offered good enough access.
Sitting behind us was ‘Alan’ the vet, who told John how he needed to tranquillise the matriarch of the group and where he wanted to be to get the shot. John followed the instructions to the letter, and Alan fired off a dart. Relatives clustered around her as the drug began taking effect, and within 15 minutes they were all sedated.
Now the ground crew went to work. Any elephants lying on their fronts had to be rolled onto their sides or they wouldn’t be able to breathe. Trunks were stretched out straight, and a small stick inserted into the tip to keep the airway open.
The team of vets was topping up the elephants’ drug doses to keep them under, writing the times on the backs of their ears with marker pens. The ears were then folded over their eyes to shade them from the sun.
Though the location was close to the road, some trees had to be axed down so that the two trucks and their trailers could reach it.
Even then there were further complications, but eventually all of the animals were on board. If you’ve ever wondered, “How many elephants can you load onto a pair of flatbed trucks and trailers?”, the answer is 17.
Arriving at the offload site, each passenger had to be lowered off the vehicles and onto the ground. This was a lengthy process, but finally the head vet was satisfied and gave the word for them all to be injected with the drug that would wake them up.
We backed off. Within moments of the stimulant being administered the animals stirred, and rocked themselves back onto their feet. Then they wandered off as a group and disappeared like grey shadows into the bush.
We gave ourselves a metaphorical pat on the back before reality intervened – there were still bout 60 elephants to go.
Pete Oxford is a photographer whose work appears in magazines worldwide, as well as a founding fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers
