1For my presentation today
2I want to tell you about how groups of elephants have been moved and settled in new reserves.
3This is known as translocation and has been carried out in Malawi in Africa in recent years.
4The reason this is being done is because of overpopulation of elephants in some areas.
5Overpopulation is a good problem to have
6and not one we tend to hear about very often.
7In Malawi's Majete National Park
8the elephant population had been wiped out by poachers,
9who killed the elephants for their ivory.
10But in 2003,
11the park was restocked and effective law enforcement was introduced.
12Since then, not a single elephant has been poached.
13In this safe environment, the elephant population boomed.
14Breeding went so well that there were more elephants than the park could support.
15This led to a number of problems.
16Firstly, there was more competition for food,
17which meant that some elephants were suffering from hunger.
18As there was a limit to the amount of food in the national park,
19some elephants began looking further afield.
20Elephants were routinely knocking down fences around the park,
21which then had to be repaired at a significant cost.
22To solve this problem,
23the decision was made to move dozens of elephants from Majete National Park to Nkhotakota Wildlife Park,
24where there were no elephants.
25But, obviously, attempting to move significant numbers of elephants to a new home 300 kilometres away is quite a challenge.
26So how did this translocation process work in practice?
27Elephants were moved in groups of between eight and twenty,
28all belonging to one family.
29Because relationships are very important to elephants,
30they all had to be moved at the same time.
31A team of vets and park rangers flew over the park in helicopters and targeted a group,
32which were rounded up and directed to a designated open plain.
33The vets then used darts to immobilise the elephants.
34This was a tricky manoeuvre,
35as they not only had to select the right dose of tranquiliser for different-sized elephants
36but they had to dart the elephants as they were running around.
37This also had to be done as quickly as possible
38so as to minimise the stress caused.
39As soon as the elephants began to flop onto the ground,
40the team moved in to take care of them.
41To avoid the risk of suffocation,
42the team had to make sure none of the elephants were lying on their chests
43because their lungs could be crushed in this position.
44So all the elephants had to be placed on their sides.
45One person stayed with each elephant
46while they waited for the vets to do checks.
47It was very important to keep an eye on their breathing.
48If there were fewer than six breaths per minute,
49the elephant would need urgent medical attention.
50Collars were fitted to the matriarch in each group
51so their movements could be tracked in their new home.
52Measurements were taken of each elephant's tusks.
53Elephants with large tusks would be at greater risk from poachers
54and also of their feet.
55The elephants were then taken to a recovery area
56before being loaded onto trucks and transported to their new home.
57The elephants translocated to Nkhotakota settled in very well
58and the project has generally been accepted to have been a huge success
59and not just for the elephants.
60Employment prospects have improved enormously,
61contributing to rising living standards for the whole community.
62Poaching is no longer an issue,
63as former poachers are able to find more reliable sources of income.
64In fact, many of them volunteered to give up their weapons,
65as they were no longer of any use to them.
66More than two dozen elephants have been born at Nkhotakota since relocation.
67With an area of more than 1,800 square kilometres,
68there's plenty of space for the elephant population to continue to grow.
69Their presence is also helping to rebalance Nkhotakota's damaged ecosystem
70and providing a sustainable conservation model, which could be replicated in other parks.
71All this has been a big draw for tourism,
72which contributes five times more than the illegal wildlife trade to GDP,
73and this is mainly because of the elephants.
74There's also been a dramatic rise...