The Maasai Mara, East Africa.
Stage to one of the world's most extraordinary natural spectacles.
HOOVES THUNDER
Each year, 1.3 million wildebeest make an incredible 650km journey -
from the vast Serengeti plains in Tanzania
to the highlands of Kenya's Maasai Mara - and back again.
HOOVES POUND
I'm spending a year following them on their epic journey.
From the birthing plains...
to the treacherous river crossings.
A crocodile! It's got it, it's got it.
Wow.
And the perilous fight for survival.
I'll get up close with the animals.
Really? Really? The male is right next to me.
HE GASPS
My heart's still pounding.
And meet the people...
This is nuts.
..who are an integral part of this.
One of the large mammal migrations on Earth.
It's September.
I'm on the third leg of this great migration
that began seven months ago.
Back in February, 250,000 wildebeest calves were born,
and I began working with Dr Grant Hopcraft,
one of the world's leading researchers of wildebeest.
Here in the Serengeti, the healthy ecosystem is one driven by wildebeest.
If you imagine it's a big engine, the wildebeest are the major cog.
Everything else sort of spins off on the side of that.
He GPS-collared four mothers so that we could follow them.
So far, the herd has battled drought and was divided in two,
as hungry animals scoured the barren earth in search of food.
Since they started their epic journey, the wildebeest have travelled 300km,
crossing the border from Tanzania into Kenya,
where the reserve is divided in half by the snaking Mara River.
The herds have now rejoined here.
And this is where they face their next challenge.
I'm in Kenya. I've followed them all the way up through Tanzania,
through the mighty Serengeti, and now I'm here at the Mara River.
I've always, always wanted to come here.
This is a pretty scary place if you're a wildebeest.
It's full of crocodiles, hippos
and, for our youngsters, they're seven months old or so now,
this is pretty much the biggest obstacle they're gonna ever face in their lives,
because it's not just the predators in there,
it's the fast-flowing water, the sheer volume of wildebeest.
Drowning is a very real probability here.
I want to find out if our four collared wildebeest are still alive,
so catch up with Grant who's been tracking their movements.
So we've got Jane, we've got Virginia,
we've got Diane, and we've got - Rachel. Rachel.
So which wildebeest is closest to us? That's the most important thing.
That's right. I looked this morning, and Jane is just over here.
So she's across the Tanzania border here.
The other three are still on this side of the river,
and they're all still alive, more importantly. That is some very, very good news.
They have this big, obvious obstacle which we can see glinting in the sun. Yes. The Mara River.
This is the only source of water anywhere in the Serengeti right now.
That's why all these wildebeest are here. That's why Jane's here, she needs that water.
The other problem is that water's full of crocodiles and strong currents and all this sortof thing,
and she has to cross back and forth,
so she needs it, but it's a dangerous resource at the same time.
Which way, Grant? Yeah, straight ahead. Straight ahead? Yeah.
TRACKER BEEPS
Towards this group over here?
I think so. Just let me listen. No, it's not that guy.
I think it's over this way actually, off to your right. To my right? Yes.
Grant and I are eager to lay eyes on Jane,
whose calf had died the last time we saw her.
It's a needle in a haystack, but we have modern technology to help us.
It's nice, they're all walking by...
Actually, that's her there. I think that's her. Where?
Right at the very back of this group here. She's just grazing just now.
I think I'm being blind. Oh, hang on.
There you go, there she is. That's her. That is amazing.
That is amazing. Welcome to Kenya. That's right!
Can I see your visa? Passport, please? Immigration.
So she looks to me, I'm no expert,
but she looks like she's in relatively good health. Yeah, she's in good nick.
She'd be in probably better health than all the other females
because she hasn't had to produce milk for the entire trip.
And it's most likely she's eating for two again now.
She's eating for two, I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it.
90% of these females here would be pregnant already.
This season's calves are now seven months old.
They're weaning, and need all their strength.
Is this almost the moment, a bit like a boy becomes a man or a girl becomes a woman? Yes.
Is this when a calf becomes a wildebeest?
It's well on the way to being a wildebeest,
to relate it to humans. It's about the age of a ten-year-old.
They don't actually achieve adulthood for another year-and-a-half.
Keen to understand what these crossings are about,
Grant and I speed down to the river where a big herd is building up.
And they won't cross just the once. Over the next few weeks,
as the river winds its way through the national park,
the wildebeest will have to cross as many as ten times,
back and forth, to reach the best feeding grounds.
Is there much data as to who's up at the front there, or can you even see?
Is it males? Is it females? Is it mothers with calves? Mmm.
Well, at this distance we can't really tell,
but generally it's the males that come in first.
They're sort of the boldest. They'll come in and start having a look -
Boldest or hungriest? Boldest, really.
Well, stupidest, perhaps.
Across the river,
the pressure ridge of wildebeest is building up...
..pushing the frontrunners to the water's edge.
It's a classic situation of
it just takes a long time for things to happen suddenly.
You wait and wait, and then suddenly they all decide and they cross.
Capturing that moment, it's a sort of "a moment".
But it could happen at any point.
There's danger all around.
Look, look, look at this here. A croc coming in right there.
Oh, wow, look at that. Wow, look at the power of that.
Yeah, that just looks evil, doesn't it?
This five-metre crocodile, weighing up to 700 kilos,
may not have eaten since the wildebeest were here last -
a year ago.
Eventually, one brave male finds the courage to slowly enter the water
and kick-start the crossing.
This gets the attention of a deadly predator.
Yeah, look at that, there it goes. Oh, God.
I don't know if I can look at that. That's unbelievable. That's scary.
That is the stuff of nightmares. Yes.
Aiming straight for the herd,
the crocodile prepares to make its attack.
But the full force of the stampede tramples it underwater
before it can launch its strike.
Whoa, God, come on, come on.
Which side are you on? The croc's side or the wildebeests' side?
Wildebeests' all the way.
Unnerved, the herd panic and turn back to the refuge of the shore.
Just a handful, including the brave male who started the crossing,
have made it safely to the other side.
And now look, they're all going. It's like someone just went, "Everyone out." Yep.
Exactly. Somebody's lost nerve at the back there and just decided that's it.
As quickly as they arrived and now are leaving,
I suppose they can reverse and come back again. Yeah.
And, you know, any one of these individuals may have been
having a look at this river multiple times today.
For now, the fear of predators has prevailed.
But the great temptation - and the need for fresh grass -
means the wildebeest must face the river and its dangers... again.
It's morning in the Maasai Mara,
and the herd that failed to cross the river yesterday
has again made its way to the water's edge.
They've travelled a further five kilometres upstream,
in search of an entry point from the eastern side to the west.
An army of 10,000-strong have lined up, summoning courage.
But they've not chosen wisely.
This stretch is famed for its strong current,
and has claimed many victims.
Grant and I don't wait long before a plucky leader
looks set to start the crossing.
I can see there's one lone one coming down.
Go on. Missing a horn. Look how old that thing is.
Oh, yes. Would he have lost that in a fight?
Probably, yeah. Here's a typical case of somebody who's motivated,
you know? And an animal like that might be making a decision
that's not necessarily in the interests of everybody else,
but their own self-interest, to have a drink or maybe to cross.
If they cross, everybody else might think, "Well, we'll do it, too."
It's interesting that they're drinking in threes.
Mm-hm. Is there any significance to that? No. I don't think an animal feels secure drinking by itself.
That animal with the one horn was probably trying
to recruit somebody else to have a drink with.
You know, "Aren't you thirsty? Come on.
"Come down to the water with me." Like us going to the pub. Exactly.
You don't wanna drink by yourself, do you?
But it's one-horned companion that takes the first plunge.
The floodgates have opened,
as more and more wildebeest follow suit,
hurling themselves into the unknown waters.
Look at the leaps they did there. Fantastic.
A big leap and a splash. This is amazing to watch, isn't it?
They pull out of the water and they fully submerge.
Yeah, that's right. A big jump in. It's a bit like when you swim.
You push yourself off the side and get a little bit more propulsion.
Cos they want to be in that water for as short a time as possible. That's right.
The objective is get across as quickly as you can.
This is an astonishing spectacle, I have to say. It is, isn't it?
In this section of the Mara, the greatest threat is the brutal current.
The water might not be deep but their hooves struggle over the slippery stones
as they desperately try and fight their way out.
You can see where the injuries are occurring here, can't you? As soon as they start scrambling out,
and you're on unstable ground, trying to climb over slippery rocks,
other animals are jumping in on your back. You're trying to get out quickly,
you've got crocodiles coming in from all sides, it's just chaos.
The herd is now too great -
and there's no space for the backlog to enter the water.
As the huge volume of wildebeest crush each other,
a breakaway group is forced to find another crossing point
in a deeper part of the river downstream.
This is a really fast water that they're going through. It is.
Will he get through that? Ohh. Oh, my God.
A torrent of wildebeest are unleashed,
as the remaining herd surge forwards and pour into the Mara.
That's a youngster. It looks like it's been separated from its mother.
I don't know if that thing's gonna survive, actually.
It's getting pushed further and further away.
For this young calf the journey is over -
as it's swept away by the force of the river - and drowned.
A real struggle for life right in front of us.
Do you know, when you think about it, this river is life.
Cos this is water, and water is life.
And, at the same time, it's death as well.
Because you have to cross it and because it's full of predators.
So it's this weird mixture of life and death
happening at the same time.
It all kind of meets, in time and space, right here.
Weakened, the herd head into the new pastures
they've just risked their life for.
I leave Grant behind and follow them.
The wildebeest head west and north, spreading out into the reserve.
They're reaching the most northerly point of the migration...
..where over 500 elephants roam the edges of the national park.
Outnumbered, the elephants, who also migrate, need to search further
for food and stray into bordering farmlands.
COWBELLS RING It's here where trouble beckons,
as they trample and raid the croplands.
I've come to meet Daniel,
a local farmer who's at war with the elephants.
BOTH SPEAK LOCAL LANGUAGE
I'm Ben.
So what's going on? What are you up to?
Ah. HE SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE
Elephant dung.
This season's harvest has been decimated by the elephants,
and Daniel now has to borrow money from his family
so he can send his kids to school.
If you were a farmer out here and your livelihood is threatened
on a daily basis by elephants,
you know, you're gonna be angry, you're gonna be cross.
you're gonna be worried.
It's the million-dollar question.
How can people, how can man and animal cohabit Africa?
Where there's huge pressures on everything here, from the resources
to just the land itself.
Trying to find solutions to the human-elephant conflict
at the park borders is Marc Goss from the Mara Elephant Project.
So you can see the Mara River.
By GPS collaring elephants, he's able to track their movements,
and when they stray into farmlands, deploy a rapid-response team that
drives the herds away.
We don't want to be more than an hour away from any elephant,
one of our collared elephants. And so we're got 15 collars on
different elephants across the rangeland.
We've had them on for four years now.
Our oldest collars have just been replaced,
and today we're recollaring one of our big elephants, Hugo.
I can't even imagine how you go about that. Have you got one with us?
Right here. So let's have a look at it.
Oh, wow. There was me thinking it was going to be
a bit like my dog's collar. Wow.
So that's, what, a couple of kilos? Two kilos or something?
Yeah, two kilos. About two kilos.
Here's the frequency for the VHF, it's on here.
On the top is the GPS unit, batteries on the bottom.
If you put that on my neck now, that would kind of slow me down a bit,
but an elephant's not even gonna feel that. No, not at all.
And the first thing they do when you put a collar on is they feel it.
So they put their trunk and feel what it feels like
to have a collar on, and we've seen...
I mean, it's an anthropomorphic idea,
but some of our collared elephants come together.
We'd like to think that they come together
to admire each other's jewellery.
Look at our collars. "Yours is very nice.
"Yeah, I like the colouration."
Marc and I head off into the bush,
where the vet and his team have already found Hugo.
To recollar the bull elephant he'll have to be tranquilised,
but Marc's worried that Hugo has wandered into a dangerously rocky area.
And predicting where a 40-year-old elephant is going to go
after he's got a dart in his butt, it's difficult.
I notice, too, that this is where thousands of the migrating wildebeest
have stopped to feed.
The riskiest part of the whole procedure is tranquilising Hugo.
In charge is the park's vet, Dr Limo.
Then once you've darted, how long until it goes down?
Mmm, anything between 8 to 15 minutes.
That's when the work starts? That's when it starts. Is it a race against time?
Do you need to do it as quickly as possible? Sure. With this kind of weather we need to work quickly.
When you say, "This kind of weather," do they get hot? Yeah, they get hot,
so when they're down we need to work very fast.
But, of course, with a lot of care.
Yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm all hands.
So if I can be your assistant today,
I'm willing to do just about anything.
OK, welcome onboard.
The dart has a fluorescent feather,
so it's easy for the team to see it and retrieve it when it falls out.
We get as close to Hugo as possible, so Dr Limo can take aim.
HUGO BELLOWS
(It was a good shot.)
Hugo has run off that way, so this is exactly what we wanted.
And it's now counting down, so we've got ten minutes or so,
he's gonna start getting very woozy,
and then it's gonna be a mad rush for us to change that collar.
What we're hoping is he doesn't head towards the rocks,
which is where he's kind of heading.
It's quite nerve-racking knowing that it could kill itself
if it lands the wrong way.
He's quite calm now.
Yeah, my heart's pounding.
I'm on the northern edges of the Maasai Mara,
with the Mara Elephant Project,
where Dr Limo has just shot a tranquiliser dart into Hugo,
the bull elephant.
We're going to change his GPS collar, which tracks his location.
So that if Hugo strays near bordering farmland,
a team can be deployed to herd him away.
Here he goes, he's down.
Here we go, we've got Marc running up now.
Do you want me to come out, Dr Limo? Yeah, sure. OK.
I'm coming out as well.
Steady!
Keep going!
OK, guys. OK. All right.
Oof.
With the African midday heat reaching soaring temperatures,
the race is now on to treat Hugo.
It's all hands on deck to fit his new collar.
MECHANICAL WHIR
Just a bit. Just a bit.
So I'm basically cooling him down.
An elephant can't sweat so use their ears to flap,
and that's how they reduce their body temperature.
Obviously it's incapacitated now.
So we just pour little bits of water on its ear
that hopefully stop it from overheating.
You can hear it's almost snoring.
SNORTING There's a little stick in its trunk.
It's what's holding the trunk open so it can breathe.
That was the first thing they did.
HUGO SNORTS
Earlier this year, Hugo was treated for an infected wound.
Now he's unconscious, it's an opportunity to give him
a preventative shot of antibiotics.
That's a big dose of antibiotics, Doctor. Wow.
HE LAUGHS
20, 20, 20 several sites. OK. The muscular area.
And you're happy for me to do it? Oh, yeah.
OK, first bit, how much, 20? Yeah, 20 here.
How deep do I take it? The entire length? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK, so 20. 20. That goes to 40. Yep.
I never thought I'd give an elephant a shot of antibiotics.
There you go. Rub that clean.
Good boy. Good boy.
Wow. That is something.
Hugo's been down for ten minutes,
so the team want to bring him round again in the next five.
Everyone knows exactly what they're doing.
Eye ointment, antibiotics, measurements,
hairs from the tail, DNA, collar changing.
It's done incredibly efficiently,
and it's partly cos everyone knows that it's kind of a race now.
The longer we keep him under, the more dangerous it is.
Now Hugo has his newly fitted collar,
Dr Limo injects him with the reversal drug.
This is the most nerve-racking part of the whole procedure.
OK.
So now we just wait.
(Sometimes they act.) (What, they pretend to be asleep?) (Yeah, sure.)
(Really?) (So that when you operate on them...
(..they can crash you.)
(Is he gonna be very cross when he comes around?) (Oh, yeah.)
HE CHUCKLES
HUGO SNORTS
(Hugo, come up.)
Wow.
(Straight up.)
(Yeah.)
(It must be a huge relief to see him standing up.) (Oh, yeah.)
It takes a few minutes for Hugo to find his feet,
before ambling off to join the rest of his herd.
Thank you very much for letting me assist you.
That was a very special moment. Welcome, welcome, welcome!
Do I get to call myself a vet now? Yes.
THEY BOTH LAUGH
The day's success is short-lived.
Back at the project's headquarters,
the team get a disturbing call about another elephant.
SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE
I'm not really sure what's going on, to be honest. Marc's just taken a call,
and it sounds like there's a dead elephant. Well, I'm not sure why,
whether that's it's just died of natural causes,
or it's more sinister.
The report says the elephant has been killed by a spear
in the bordering farmlands.
I know it's going to be brutal
but I think it's important for me to see things like this,
I think it's important to share it with other people. It's not...
It's not always pretty out here, you know?
Nature's red in tooth and claw, but so is mankind.
Whoa.
So this is the carcass. And it looks like the rangers have
opened the stomach just to see if they could find the spear.
So they found a hole where the spear went in. Yeah.
And they've taken the tusks, so the elephant doesn't have a face.
And that's not because poachers took it. OK.
The Kenya Wildlife Service have retrieved the tusks and taken them to Nairobi.
Retrieved tusks are kept by the authorities in Kenya's capital city
so that they don't end up on the illegal black market.
This is an elephant that went into a farm,
we're in an area where there's a lot of farming,
so I would say it would be a conflict.
We'll probably record this as conflict
instead of an attempted poaching.
It's still an illegal death of an elephant.
The work that you're doing by putting the collars on
would've predicted, or at least alerted you to an elephant like this
that may have strayed close to a human... Right. ..habitation. Um...
And maybe prevented something like this? The other thing is,
is what would the numbers be like if we weren't here? Mm-hm.
The number of deaths.
But how does it affect you? I'm kind of shocked when you see
a creature so majestic dead like this.
Yeah, it makes you feel ill to the stomach, you know?
No life in it, without a face, it's terrible.
You know, it has to stop.
What I've discovered over the years, and specifically over this year,
is the importance of us actually using our technology
and using our know-how to be able to protect these magnificent creatures
from us and from themselves.
The wildebeest have grazed across the northern Maasai Mara for three weeks,
and now, in search of new pasture, they head back down towards
the river in their droves.
Today, they've chosen a notoriously tough location to cross,
with multiple entry points.
Steep banks...
..and deep waters.
Joining them are some of the 250,000 zebra
who also make the Great Migration.
Are they coming this way, or are they...?
They're heading up the hill.
Oh, it's a big herd. Look at all the dust. Look at all that dust.
Grant and I arrive just as the force of the Mara makes itself known.
Look, that's a crocodile. Yeah.
Oh, no. There it goes.
It's got it, it's got it. It's taken him down. The crocodile's got him.
Oh, no, it's struggling.
Look at it shaking him. It's got his mouth up above the water.
Oh, my golly.
Oh, it's mouth is... It's struggling for air.
It's mouth is open, it's... Oh, no. Look.
Oh, no, I can't bear to watch. Oh dear. Yeah.
So it's drowning him now. It's basically holding him down. Yeah.
I think that's gonna be... It's struggling
but I think the crocodile's got it. Crocodile's absolutely got it.
It's disappeared with it as well. Yeah. Wow.
With the Mara's most stealthy predator swiping its first victim,
terror breaks out amongst the migrating animals.
Because there isn't just one crocodile prowling this deep strait.
In the carnage, a loan zebra makes a mistake, and decides to swim back
to try and reunite with the rest of its herd.
Unable to chew their food,
crocodiles use their razor-sharp teeth to tear off large chunks
by rolling their prey.
Once they've torn off pieces they swallow them whole.
With this crossing over...
just blood spills remain.
In the panic, mothers and calves have become separated.
How do they reunite? Look at them, there's so many of them.
As you can see, it's absolute chaos.
Everybody's calling to each other, lots of grunting and groaning.
But what they're gonna do, as soon as they're out, they'll start calling to each other,
they'll start trying to locate each other.
And again, they're so tuned in to their mother's call.
It's all about imprinting on the mother's call.
With most mothers and calves reunited,
the herd begins to migrate away from the river.
But there's just one lone calf left on the bank, calling out in vain.
It doesn't seem to have a mother.
This is when a calf really does have to stand on its own. That's right.
Will it just carry on, a calf like this?
It might make it. It might make it.
It's just at the point of weaning right now.
So if it's just lost its mother
and it rains and the nutrition is good enough and it can keep up,
then it might make it.
Before the herd leave the calf behind,
a single female races from the top of the plain,
heading straight for the calf on the river bank.
MOOING
They've both mooing at each other. Oh, my God!
Oh, wow. That's hilarious.
That is amazing. They found each other. That is amazing. Wow.
Out of a cast of thousands and thousands... Yeah,
..they've both crossed the river and been reunited. Yeah.
To us they all look identical, but to them they're unique, they're special. Wow.
I might have to have a cry.
Oh, wow. It's OK, Ben.
It's the middle of October, and I'm in Kenya's Maasai Mara...
..where the river crossings have taken their toll
on the herds of migrating wildebeest.
With up to 10,000 animals dying at the hands of the river,
there's one species that has a vital job in clearing up their remains.
Vultures are the undertakers of the Serengeti.
VULTURES SCREECH
But their numbers are critically declining,
and it's a global epidemic.
I've come to see Munir and Simon from The Peregrine Fund,
who are trying to get to the bottom of what's going on.
We've had populations in India and Pakistan and Nepal decline
by as much as 99% over the last decade and a half.
And it turns out that poisoning is one of the most major contributors
towards their decline. And is this local communities
who are putting poison down to keep predators away? Pretty much.
A lot of pastoral communities all over East Africa,
they lose a cow to a lion or a hyena,
and there's no compensation, so obviously they'll get upset
and so they'll take the law into their own hands.
Almost invariably, the vultures will come down and feed on a poisoned carcass. Yep.
And virtually every single one of them will die.
As part of Simon and Munir's research,
we need to find a carcass with vultures at work
so that we can trap one.
This is looking promising. So what I'm going to do
is we're gonna herd them to one direction... Yeah.
..so that Simon can get out and set the trap.
Simon attaches a simple lasso to the ribcage of a wildebeest carcass.
The vultures flock back immediately.
And it's not long before one gets caught.
Go, go. Come, sir. Go, Ben. Go, go.
Just chuck it right over him.
OK, good. Good lad, there we go.
Good lad.
They're really strong. OK.
It'll try and struggle.
Keep your hand where it is, Ben. Yep. I won't let go.
Even if he takes your finger off. OK.
Would he take my finger off? He might.
HE LAUGHS
Quite a way to lose a finger, wouldn't it?
We're going to attach a GPS backpack to the vulture,
so that they can track its movements.
So, remind me why it's important to track vultures like this one.
It's important to understand what their foraging range is, how far they go.
Which are the hot spots where they get poisoned.
What we can do in those areas
to change attitudes of local people there,
to get them to appreciate vultures more.
And then to identify those areas that are safe spots
for vultures as well
so that we can spend more time and resources protecting these areas.
Why do you think vultures have such a bad reputation?
Well, you know, when somebody looks at a vulture for the first time,
it's looks like they're sinister creatures
that's feeding off people's flesh and blood.
When Charles Darwin went on the Beagle for his journey,
he described the turkey vulture as, "A disgusting, ugly bird." Mm-hm.
"Born to revel in putridity." Those were his words.
But they perform the most important role in the savannas.
You can imagine when the tourists watching the wildebeest migrate at the crossing points overhere,
in the future, if these vultures go extinct,
they're gonna have to wear gas masks or something
because the stench will just be overwhelming.
People will stop coming here.
The whole ecology of this Mara Serengeti will just be
turned upside down with the loss of vultures that we're now having.
OK, are you ready? On three. One, two,
three.
The GPS weighs only 2% of the vulture's body mass,
so it doesn't affect its flying ability.
It will stay on for the next year before it's self-released.
I don't think I fully appreciated how important they are to the ecosystem,
and that realisation of what would happen here
if they weren't around is pretty bleak, really.
This would be a toxic place. I'd have to wear a mask.
It'd be full of disease. The body simply wouldn't break down,
cos you see carcasses everywhere.
And it's those vultures that are the janitors, they're the cleaners.
The wildebeest have now travelled 400km of their 650km annual trip.
And the migration's time in Kenya is now coming to an end.
The herds are heading straight for the Tanzanian border,
ready to cross back into the Serengeti National Park,
where the rains have started to ripen the plains.
It's just a mass of wildebeest,
all of whom have survived this extraordinary journey.
These are hardy souls, aren't they?
They are. These are the ones who have made it,
these are the winners, these are the guys who have managed to cross
the Mara River and run the gauntlet
through the crocodiles and managed to make it here.
Our four collared females, Jane, Diane, Rachel, and Virginia
have also made it.
And, of course, hiding around the periphery of this
are all those animals that were booted out, almost,
by the mass arrival of wildebeest. That's right, yeah.
It's almost like once the squatters leave... Yes, exactly. ..they can reclaim their habitat, their land.
That's right, they come back into their home ranges again.
And obviously that habitat has been modified.
So these wildebeest haven't just had a negative impact on this landscape.
No. In fact, it's the opposite.
They've increased the productivity of the grasses,
they've knocked down a lot of the biomass,
they've created niches for other animals to live in.
They've fed a few animals as well. They've fed a few as well.
And how hard is this return journey going to be for them?
They've got to get through all those woodlands, lots of predators.
It's a tough journey and, undoubtedly, some of these animals
that we're looking at here are not gonna make it.
Next time.
I'm back in Tanzania, where land predators
await the migration's return -
ready to make their attack.
It's alive, but I'm sure that hyena's tearing off its testicles and going in,
probably right through the stomach right here.
Are you being serious? Yeah.
And I discover a unique human journey
that mirrors that of the wildebeest.
Here's to the Maasai. Yeah. Oof!
Subtitles by Ericsson