>> daljit: coming up on 21st century... the global ivory trade is booming, putting african elephants at risk of extinction >> joseph: look - the skull, you can see how it's smashed. they've cut it with the axe, to get out the ivory >> daljit: in gabon, one man's struggle to stop the slaughter and in the caribbean... a threat to marine life >> dragan: the whole beach side....just dead fish ...

the whole sea ...floating.. >> daljit: an industry, and an ecosystem in peril hello, and welcome to 21st century. i'm daljit dhaliwal. for elephants, last year was one of the worst ever recorded. they're being slaughtered for their ivory at record rates, african elephants are increasingly the targets of global criminal trafficking networks. we travel to central africa to the frontline of the fight to save these creatures and meet one man who's dedicating his life to their protection. >> joseph: i've always been fascinated with the local wild animals

but before i was powerless to protect them. >> daljit: but now dr joseph okouyi is anything but powerless. he is engaged in a dangerous struggle against a criminal network to protect these animals - his life-long passion. >> joseph: when i was young, i had a dog - i ate out of the same bowl as my dog. i don't think you could do this work without a passion for animals. >> daljit: this work is to be the chief warder leading teams of guards trying to save the lives of the animals in gabon's ivindo national park - 1200 square miles of almost- impenetrable virgin rainforest. and one of the animals joseph has dedicated his life to protect is the local forest-elephant.

the largest land-animal on our planet, whose intelligence and maternal instincts are well-known, elephants are extensively hunted and killed for their valuable ivory tusks. and these majestic animals are now severely endangered. >> joseph: less than a month ago, the carcasses of eight elephants were found just on one side of the park. >> daljit: these local forest-elephants are particularly lucrative targets for poachers, he says, as they possess larger tusks per body weight than most other african species. >> joseph: in this region, it's known that there are what is referred to as the "big carriers" there are elephants whose tusks touch the ground! >> tom: the central african forests are being devastated by poaching. that's where most of the ivory, the illegal ivory comes from. >> daljit: tom de meulenaer is the coordinator of the united nations programme to monitor the illegal

killing of elephants. >> tom: we are losing the battle of african elephants in central africa. >> daljit: the elephant tusks are smuggled out of gabon as part of a vast international network of traffickers. the ivory is headed largely to asia where it's used for decorative and other purposes. the thirst for these products globally is so great that the illegal trade of ivory products reached record levels in 2011 with an annual value of some 100 million us dollars according to un estimates. it is feared that as many as 12 thousand african elephants may be slaughtered every year for their ivory. and although a protected species, in the last three decades, the elephant population in africa has been more than halved -

something joseph cannot accept, no matter the personal cost. >> joseph: it's a thankless task, not well paid - a very difficult work, but i don't think there's any alternative. >> daljit: and now, the "elephant man" is travelling 4 hours up the river ivindo to a remote corner of the gabonese forest to join one of his teams, at one of the 13 national parks in the country. they live for months in the forest in the most basic living conditions. separated from their families and with minimal resources, they struggle to protect the elephants - 50 of whom have been killed in the last six months in this park alone. and it's not only the elephants which are in constant danger. >> joseph: every day that passes, when i send my rangers into the

forest, i pray that they will return without problems. us, we just have our bare hands and machetes and knives. but the others have big rifles and even kalashnikovs! of course, we're frightened!! >> daljit: knowing he and his men are out-armed by the poachers, joseph uses a different kind of arsenal. he's cleverly recruited ex-poachers like parfait , who now use their inside knowledge against the current poachers. >> parfait: we were fishing and hunting in the park, and that's how we met. in the beginning, we were ignorant but now we know about the protection of the animals, and i think it's a good thing. before, there were animals that would have disappeared they were hunted so much. >> narration: while joseph condemns the slaughter, he also recognizes that many poachers are often doing this work simply to survive.

one of the main forces driving the supply of tusks in gabon, he believes, is poverty. and the region's poor indigenous groups like the pygmies, well known for their hunting skills and knowledge of the forest are especially vulnerable to exploitation by the traffickers. >> joseph: they don't have work. they have needs like everybody else. they don't have any professional skills. so the elephant, with the value of the ivory, is an enormous temptation! >> daljit: now, the pygmies are themselves targeted by the international ivory-trafficking networks who recruit them to do the killing. >> joseph: have you got any other means of earning a living apart from killing elephants ? afan: uh ... >> daljit: afan, a local baka pygmy, had just been arrested

with another suspect, when we arrived at joseph's office in the town. joseph questions him on his role in the killing of the elephant >> joseph: so it's you who does everything? >> afan: yes >> joseph: it's you who carries the gun? >> afan: yes, it's me ..i was there, i had the gun. i killed the animal >> narration: so why did he do it? >> afan: because they give me some soap, some salt and some petrol - because i don't have any - that's why i killed it. >> daljit: afan was paid the equivalent of 40 us dollars- a fortune to him but a measly sum compared to the profit made by the middleman who, in turn, sells the tusks to the traffickers for 25 times that amount. >> joseph: he's given the gun, he goes to kill the elephants; he's given a share so he won't testify against them. >>daljit: and, it's hunters like afan who are generally

more easily caught than either the "middlemen" or the other professional traffickers. now afan faces both a fine way beyond his means, and a prison sentence of 3-6 months. when asked if he felt guilty about killing an elephant, it seems there's little room for sentimentality when it's a question of survival. >> afan: it's just that the people asked me to do it, you understand? - that's how i came to do it. >> daljit: but, this time, afan won't pay the price alone. the man suspected of being the middle-man, in this operation, "bobo", as he calls himself, was arrested with afan. bobo didn't want us to film his face. allegedly it was he who paid afan to shoot the elephant and then sold the tusks to the international ivory traffickers. his capture could be a breakthrough for joseph, who hopes bobo will lead him to

these bigger fish in the poaching network, the only way, joseph believes, to stop the slaughter. joseph questions bobo about who traffics the ivory out of africa. >> joseph: who are the buyers? >> bobo: cameroonians >> joseph: ok. and what do they do with the ivory ? >> bobo: i don't know ... >> joseph: so you, you just hunt, you don't know where the ivory goes and you don't know what they do with the ivory? >> bobo: no... >> daljit: joseph tries to establish the value of the ivory, at the stage when bobo sells it on. >> joseph: in this case, that one you'd sell at how much per kilo? and that one, at how much? bobo: this one i can sell for $50 per kilo, and that one could go for $20. >>daljit: one tusk, on average, weighs 10 kilos but there are elephants in this region whose tusks weigh twice as much. >> dajljit: joseph works out that bobo, as the middleman, could be making as much as 1000 us dollars per elephant killed!

>> joseph: you know that hunting big game is illegal, right? >> bobo: yes >> joseph: do you understand the situation that you're in now? are you ready to collaborate with the investigation to help us? >> daljit: although bobo refuses to give names, hoping for a reduced prison sentence, he and afan do agree to take joseph's team to the elephant carcass, deep in the forest. the collection of evidence at the site will help build a case against the traffickers. that night, bobo and afan set off with the forest guards on the 3 day journey back to the slaughtered elephant. meanwhile, the next day, joseph joins another of his teams in the forest, who also found an elephant carcass three months' earlier.

joseph is going to look at the bones, to see if the elephant was killed and or died of natural causes. he's looking for signs of brutality. >> joseph: here's the evidence! look - the skull you can see how it's smashed.... they've cut it with the axe, to get out the ivory. this proves that the elephant has been well and truly killed for its ivory. >> daljit: it's a sight he can never get used to. >> joseph: sincerely, it makes me really sad to think that my gabonese brothers devote themselves to this kind of activity! >> daljit: government efforts have been stepped up to stop this kind of activity across the country too.

one of the tactics to stop the trade is the setting up of road patrols on main routes, to search vehicles for ivory and other protected species smuggled out of the forest. >> good morning, we're from the ministry of water and forests where are you coming from? >> daljit: at this patrol, they found some small animals killed illegally for meat - but no ivory. another tactic to help stop the criminals - preventing trafficked ivory from leaving the country's alleged main exit point - the main port at libreville. here large container boats depart to different corners of the globe presenting an enormous challenge to those whose job it is to thwart the smugglers. >> capt gnambault: the port is a border and we've done everything we can to make this border impossible to breach, in accordance with international norms.

>> daljit: captain gnambault is responsible for the security here. >> capt gnambault: the port of ivindo is the most heavily guarded place in the whole country! >> daljit: in the last year, no ivory has been discovered leaving the port. but, he says, the risk is always there. >> capt gnambault: it's always possible that there's a failure of the system, that someone could enter with one or two pieces of ivory, but, in terms of volume, no - nobody could put, for example a ton of ivory, or a hundred kilos, inside a boat! >> daljit: but, ivory is leaving africa somehow - and apparently in great bulk, says tom de meulenaer. >> tom: illegal trade is certainly serious. it's becoming more and more organized and clearly criminal gangs are trying to bring ivory mainly from african to asian markets. >> daljit: so joseph says it is important to curb

not only the supply but also the demand. >> joseph: i think that if justice is going to be severe, it should be directed at the people who buy the ivory to put it on the international market, rather than at these young people who are just looking for a means to feed their families. >> daljit: controling the global market for ivory products is the focus of the united nations convention on international trade in endangered species of wild flora and fauna, or cites. >> tom: this is the forum where we can bring all stakeholders together - the consumers in asia, and the producers in africa. and try to jointly develop policies that lead to combating the illegal smuggling of ivory. >> daljit: while seizures of ivory worldwide are on the increase - an estimated 23 tonnes of ivory in 2011 alone - the highest figure ever

it seems there's still a long way to go. indications are that the amount of ivory being smuggled is also at its highest level ever. and for joseph, that means the fight continues. >> joseph: much more needs to be done for conservation to become a reality. >> joseph: the international community should support a country like gabon, which is really trying to solve this problem. >> daljit: and it's only if people take action, he says, that the elephants and the animals he loves will have a future. >> joseph: everytime i go into the forest and see an animal, that makes me feel so happy. that's my compensation. of course it's worth it. >> daljit: in exchange for leading joseph to one of the top traffickers in the ring, poacher afan and middleman bobo, were not charged for their crime.

the trafficker spent 5 months in prison. bobo however was once again caught poaching in the forest and he is currently in prison awaiting his sentence. afan has not been seen since.

>> daljit: for about a third of the world population, fish is a staple part of their diet. and millions of people depend on fishing for their livelihood. but the world's oceans are being stripped of stock

at alarming rates, and threatening the future of many and putting the ocean's delicate ecosystem at risk . we travel to the waters of the caribbean where the danger is very real. >> daljit: trinidad and tobago. its ribbean waters once supplied a very lucrative fishing industry - worth hundreds of millions of dollars. but all that's changed - its value has plummeted by more than half - causing some one thousand fishermen to worry. it's a phenomenon happening across the globe as fish stocks dwindle. the reasons -fishing techniques that slowly erode the ocean's ecosystem ...

and many argue the dangerous effects of drilling for oil and natural gas under the ocean floor. >> dragon: about the last five years, we used to catch fish by 400 and 500 lbs. now, you can't catch 100 pounds of fish. >> daljit: 43 year-old dragon has spent nearly a quarter of a century fishing these waters, depending on the sea to support a wife and two children. he says he's watched his livelihood slip away ... the problem was evident back in mid-2009 when thousands of dead fish washed ashore on trinidad's southwestern tip... not even the birds ate the carcasses. >> dragon: the whole beachside was just dead fish, the whole sea... floating. stink.

>> daljit: some environmental activists believe it was the drilling that was largely to blame. trinidad and tobago is the fifth largest exporter of natural gas in the world, producing more than 115 million cubic metres daily. while a bounty of gas may lie under the ocean floor, the only way to access this precious commodity is to blast it out of the bottom of the sea. underground rock is fractured - and natural gas is released and then pumped back to the surface, all creating seismic blasts which many here, like local environmental leader gary aboud, argues is killing the fish >> gary: when you do seismic surveys which are currently being conducted and conducted randomly in trinidad & tobago the innards of the fish explode.

>> daljit: environmentalists also believe another factor contributing to the dwindling supply may be leaking platforms and chemical run-off. the community did demand the authorities investigate exactly why the thousands of fish washed ashore in 2009. >> dragon: they just came and took some pictures and that was it. we never heard anything again. >> daljit: we checked with trinidad & tobago's institute of marine affairs and learned that water samples were in fact tested shortly after the incident but they wrote in an email response to us, water quality tests found nothing unusual. >> bachan: livelihoods are very important to us. people's lives are very important to us. >> daljit: carolyn seepersad bachan, former minister of trinidad & tobago's energy sector says that while she has no specific knowledge of why the beaches were littered

with dead fish, accidents in the oil and gas industry do happen. >> bachan: our state owned companies - they have some aged infrastructure so we have had several risks. >> daljit: but she says the country is committed to ensuring the safety of the water and the fishing industry even if that means closing platforms. >> bachan: if there is an issue, we prefer to shut down and that has been happening currently throughout all of our operations. there are many areas that we have shut down because of health and safety risks. >> daljit: while this is helpful, dragon and his friends continue to worry about their futures, saying that their smaller hauls together with higher gas prices that they need to pay, are actually causing them to lose money. >> ali: the taxi and the shopkeeper, everybody depend on us. >> daljit: president of the fishermen's association, esuk ali, says the dwindling fish stock affects the entire community.

>> ali: even the retailers and wholesalers depend on this. so it's affecting many people's lives. >> daljit: this vendor agrees. >> vendor: if the fishermen don't catch fish, we don't have anything to sell. >> daljit: making matters worse still, the fishing industry here is facing another challenge - drastically restricted opportunities for fishing. this rock - known as soldado - marks the maritime border cut off point between trinidad and tobago and neighbouring venezuela. for years, trinidadian fishermen fished here without problems. but now if they go too close, venezuelan authorities are seizing the boats and restricting their movement, all in an effort to keep stocks plentiful for their own fishermen. and there's yet another major threat - trawling. deep sea trawlers, fishing for shrimp, erode the sea bed -