非洲失落的伊甸園 Africa's Lost Eden

lt was known as the place where Noah left his Ark.

An African paradise teeming with amazing creatures.

But then came war, with a park called Gorongosa in the crossfire.

Only ghostly remnants of its wildlife survived.

But now new Noyes with new Arks are fighting to bring back the magnificent titans of Gorongosa.

Only they can restore Africa's Lost Eden.

At the southern end of Africa's Great Rift Valley lies Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

lt's April — the end of the wet season.

And rivers run deep and wide.

All waters flow to Lake Urema, the beating heart at the centre of Gorongosa, and a Mecca for living things.

Once it seemed that Africa had outdone itself at Gorongosa, with its riots of wildlife.

Even today the place seems gaudy with life.

But all is not well here.

Where are Africa's great wildlife icons — lions and buffalo, cheetahs and zebras, elephants and hippos?

For the most part, they're gone, or barely holding on the victims of human folly.

From 1 977 to 1 992, a brutal civil war engulfed Mozambique.

An estimated one million people lost their lives.

Battles raged in Gorongosa Park.

Hungry soldiers and poachers killed 95% of some animal species for meat.

The toll when the guns fell silent was shocking and heartbreaking.

Of 14000 buffalo that had blackened Gorongosa's plains, 15 were left.

Of 3000 zebras, wardens could find only five.

Of 5500 wildebeest, a handful.

And with the great prey went most of the great predators.

Cheetahs and leopards had mostly disappeared.

Of 500 lions, 6 remained.

l have a memory of when l was, l think, 12.

l came and I couldn't believe what I was looking at.

Especially the animals that impressed me a lot were elephants.

And the lions, of course, they were just standing around everywhere.

We had many animals, great biodiversity.

Four decades after that fateful visit, Carlos Lopes Pereira is part of a heroic effort to bring the park back to its former glory.

The plan: to reinvigorate the genetic pools and populations of all Gorongosa's major species.

They're not hoping to save just a few animals here.

They're embarking on perhaps the most ambitious park restoration effort ever attempted.

Of all the animals in Gorongosa's Book of the Dead, the names of two are writ large.

Elephants and hippos — the gardeners of this Eden.

It will begin with bringing in new elephants.

With their voracious appetites, they kept vegetation in check.

Without them, the park has become a tinderbox in the dry season.

If hope is to return to Gorongosa, it will be on the backs of these giants.

But it will not be easy.

There is no way to tell if the severely-traumatised resident elephants that survived the massacre will breed with the newcomers.

The females — the matriarchs that are still alive, they witnessed this massacre that the elephants suffered in this park.

We can see that in everyday contact with these elephants.

They avoid contact with humans as much as they can.

Of Gorongosa's 2200 elephants, only 300 are here today.

They bear not only psychic scars, but also genetic ones.

Almost all of them have stubs of tusks or none at all, because poachers have killed the ones with tusks for their ivory.

Pereira and his team set off for south Africa.

Gorongosa's new elephants will have to come from 1300 kilometres away.

Then the healing of Gorongosa will begin in earnest.

There is one key creature at the heart of the park that managed to escape the horrors of the civil war, and is actually doing its part to keep the ecosystem from collapsing.

Nile crocodiles by the hundreds plunge into the safe haven of Lake Urema at the first sight of humans.

There, they can stay underwater for hours, a talent that no doubt helped them evade the guns of hungry soldiers.

And here, they can satiate their hunger by hunting their main prey — catfish.

The crocs by eating the voracious catfish are actually a blessing for the park.

In other places where the crocodiles have been killed off, catfish have multiplied out of control and destroyed entire ecosystems.

Other fish populations crash, the birds that feed on them follow.

The birds' droppings that fertilise the water disappear.

Gorongosa's crocodiles keep this environmental death spiral from occurring.

The other great keepers of the lake, hippos, are still too few to help restore the park to its former greatness.

They, too, will have to be imported from South Africa.

But for now, the Gorongosa team has elephants on its mind.

They've arrived at South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Unlike Gorongosa which has too few elephants, Kruger has too many.

The population has risen from 8000 to 13000 in just 13 years.

The chase begins.

The target — male elephants.

Bulls are loners, except when mating.

Females are so tied to their families, they wouldn't survive among strangers.

OK. That's one.

Are you gonna fly down?

Now, the ground team waits for the immobilising drug to take effect.

He's a big bull, in his prime, and he's taking a long time to fall.

12 minutes and counting.

After 20 minutes the ground team rushes in.The elephant has fallen to his knees.

ln this position, with all his weight on his lungs, he could suffocate.

On his side, the elephant is safe, but the capture team must still work quickly.

The longer he is immobilised, the greater the risk of fatal complications.

A drugged elephant's trunk becomes flaccid.

To prevent suffocation, they make sure to keep it open.

He's huge. Over three metres at the shoulder.

His ankles measure a metre around

Each tusk is well over a metre long.

He's about 40 years old and probably weighs about 6500 kilograms.

Elephants regularly live to be 60 years old.

The capture team bolts on a satellite tracking collar.

This will allow them to keep a virtual eye on the elephant in Gorongosa.

The collar's code is G5.

This becomes the elephant's new name.

G5 receives the antidote to theimmobilising drug.

We've just given the antidote, getting his eye open. And we're ready to go.

They need to get him back on his feet for the long trip to Gorongosa.

Otherwise, he could be injured under his own weight.

Pull in your legs. Pull in your legs.

Come on! Now, now. Now, now.

Good boy. Good boy. Good boy.

Carlos must give G5 a tranquilliser to minimize the stress of travel and to prevent any elephant rage on the journey.

ln all, the Gorongosa team captures six bull elephants in Kruger.

It's been a long day.

They're exhausted and anxious about what the future holds.

Ahead lies one of the longest overland journeys ever undertaken to relocate elephants.

They and their precious cargo will have to journey 1300 kilometres from south Africa, across the border into Mozambique, and up to Gorongosa National Park.

As the caravan sets off into the African night, Gorongosa's grand plan seems impossibly audacious for now.