Theres no one else to blame but ourselves. [loud buzzing] its here in Grocery Stores where the fate of indonesian elephants begins. You may have never heard of it, but palm oil, a common vegetable oil, has been a growing presence on supermarket shelves since the 1990s. Its high yield, versatility, and price make it an exceptional competitor against alternative vegetable oils. Today, palm oil and its derivatives are present in 50 of all packaged food. Products like bread, cookies, chocolate, chips, and even shower soap. The consumer benefits, but the sumatran elephants pay a price. Their habitat is cleared by legal and illegal loggers to make room for Palm Oil Plantations. We sent our u. K. Field producer jim wickens to the aceh region of north sumatra. Here the leuser ecosystem is one of the last remaining strongholds for indonesian wildlife. Its a 6millionacre protected park, but its being illegally cut down to make room for palm oil. Weve driven into the leuser ecosyst. This is a place of tigs, elephants, rhinos, and orangutans. Its supposed to be protected. But weve been tipped off by rangers here that there is illegal deforestation going on as we speak. Were going to go and try to film them and get right up close to the destruction. Keep going. Weve been hiking for hours to get here, right on the edge of where the trees are being cut down. Im standing just meters from where the chainsaws are opering. Im whispering because weve been told by our guides that these people are highly dangerous. [chainsaws in background] and its likely to get violent if we move any closer. [man shouts in stance] you can hear the trees falling through the canopy. Its one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. [cpping] and its being destroyed. Every day we consume palm oil, labeled as vegetable oil. And a lot of it is coming from here in indonesia. Theyv converted the lowlands already. And now the Palm Oil Plantations are moving up and up the slopes, to here, leuser rainforest. Weve gotta go. Leuser isnt the only place experiencing deforestation. Since 1985, more than 50 of the forests in sumatra have been cleared, not just for Palm Oil Plantations, but also for paper, wood, mines, and road infrastructure. What took thousands of years to grow is coming down at an alarming rate. Look at that. Weraveled for over an hour, deep into this palm oil plantation, till weve got here, the front line of the expansion. This expansion here is illegal under indonesian law, and its all happening for palm oil. This timber will be shipped off to market, and in its place, in a matter of days, young Palm Oil Seedlings will be planted. Palm oil is one of the most widespread vegetable oils throughout the world. Within indonesia itself and also china and india, the 3 of them account for farore than half of the, uh, the worlds consumption of palm oil. But the u. S. And European Union are also Major Players and can really, you know, set the standard for others to follow. We all know about the charismatic megafauna that live in africaelephants, lions, hipposthings like that. I guess whats less known to the International Community are the charismatic megafauna in asia, and particularly sumatra. So here we have aceh, 3. 5 million hectares of rainforest, it contains about a third of the sumatran elephant population, uh, possibly a third of the Sumatran Tiger population. It contains nearly 90 of the sumatran orangutan populaon. Its crically portant r the suival of rge mmals, not st in suatra butcross as as well elephantsrefer loand fore haitat. Ths heir prime habitat. Hatalso theabitat or theand thas mt in mand f agriculral plantions or r loggg coessions well. The exnsion palm oi plantaons certnly has en a key coributoto elephan fort habitat ss. Thas witho a doubt the future of this mountain elephant is bleak. Its a really difficult situation. As long as theres a demand for oil palm theres going to be a demand to clear lowland rainforest in sumatra. The distinct and unique sumatran elephant is now considered critically endangered, meaning that its in imminent danger of extinction. You know, when you dont have governments, when you dont have enforcent, andou got the chancto make les of money, ess whats gonna happen. Right, and were seeing that play out. From a pure economic standpoint, youve got to sort of look at all the political actors. He palm l is generating revenue for the government in terms of export taxes on palm oil, in terms of payroll taxes and payments into social serity sysms and all of the government programs. Palm oil is more valuable than the forest right now because of the way we value forests. While indonesia is looking to scale up its production of palm oil, this will come at a great cost. It will come at a great cost to the environment and the ecosystem. With their old homes deforested, elephants and other wildlife have to move somewhere. Its here in farming villages that humans and elephants collide. In aceh, communities rely on agriculture, and when elephants begin eating those crops, conflicts become deadly. [speaking local languag loss of life isntew to the people of aceh. For over 30 years, violent clashes occurred between rebels and the jakarta government, until 2004, when a peace treaty was signed. Over 15,000 people died in that conflict. Two ars after the peace treaty, aceh was hit by a series of deadly floods, killing dozens. Experts believe extensive logging in the surroundinhills caused the floods. [speaking local language] after such adversity, many communities are just trying to rebud. And for young farmers, like sabaruddin, elephants and other wildlife pose a threat to their livelihood. [speaking local language] with money on the lineits often hard to find solutions that are good for both people and elephants. But with no solutions at all, the conflicts can turn ugly. Baby elephants are often captured, domesticated, and used for entertainment. [speaking local language] [elephant grow] thiis rajah the elephant. Hes been named by the villagers who found him in a trap, on a plantation about a month ago. Apparently hes just over a year old. As cute as he is, its a really tragic story. Hes on his own, chained up, padlocked, well away from his family, where he should be learning the skills to svive in the wild. And effectively, hes now doomed to a life of. Being in a camp somewhere. And this isthis is reallyery much the heart of thproblem here in sumatra. The community are lling us that theyre really fed up with the elephants coming and taking food crops every day, from the wild. And they feel pretty strongly about, you know, the government needs to help them, not the elephants. And theyre refusing to let rajah go, to give him to t government vets, until they get compensation for their crops. That compensation never came, an shortly aer these images were taken, rajah died. [speaking local language] the body of an elephant lies rotting on the forest floor. A casualty of the human elephant conflict, this elephant was killed using rat poison. As more palm oil is planted and more habitat cleared, more elephants will find a similar fate. Conflict elephants that arent poisoned are often captured and placed in governmentrun camps. Forcibly taken from their herds, these elephants now face a lifetime of captivity. Despite the best effort of Government Employees at the camps, the issue of what to do with these socalled problem elephants remains largely unsolved. One nonprofit organization, fauna flora international, is trying to help. Their conservation response unit, or cru, made up of 14 elephants, is being deployed to prevent human wildlife conflict. In communities where conflicts exist, the cru will push Elephants Back to remaining forest areas away from villages. [speaking local language] these approaches can be very fective on the small scale, um,nd also the short term. At the end of the day, as elhant habit shrinks elephants are going to spend more and more time coming out of the forest. So the longterm solution is not Community Based initiatives to drive Elephants Back to the forest. The longterm solution is to make sure theres enough room for the elephants to live in the natural habitat without having to come into human habitation. The best hope to conserve the sumatran elephant is actually to conserve the ones in aceh, because thats where the biggest populations are. So in order to conserve the elephants, weve got to conserve those lowland rainforests, which means conserving leuser. Graham usher is trying to do just that. He is a man on a mission. He is using new technology to capture an aerial view of the illegal logging operations. He hopes it will help protect elephant habitat. Weve been flying a uav, unmanned aerial vehicle. That gives us the capacity to fly Program Missions over a set route with cameras and other nsors on board, so we can basically get an aerial view of whats going on on the ground. [indistinct] ok, can you hold this . Ok, shes on course. Goodirspeed. Ground speeds ok. Today we saw that a very large area of regrowth foresin the leuser ecosystem has been cleared and is being replanted with palm oil. This sort of work, collection of evidence, provides us with a much stronger case when you go to decisionmakers and say, look, this is whats going on. These are your laws. Why isnt action being taken . Its very likely that palm oil from these, uh, illegally logged areas will end up on supermarket shelves unless we are very, very careful. As consumers, we need to be far more wary of which products contain palm oil and put pressure on the retailers and the Food Industry to ensure that those products contain palm oil that comes from sustainable sources. We do have an opportunity. Previous to all of this, it was reay a sellers market, although there was much more demand than there was supply. And so this is really the time to real push hard around the palm issue, because it is gonna be about access to markets. So ve got a little bit of leverage, buwe really also have to take the fight and the conversation to the chinas, the indias, and the ionesias, cause ty have a great, great role in terms of being able to put market pressure and try to change it. [speaking local language] whenever i go to sumatra, whenever i walk into the forest in sumatra, its like walking into a wall of diversity. Its inredible. If we could save sumatran elephants in these lowland areas of sumatra, we would be saving so much more than elephants. That to me is the crux, is this huge amount of biodiversity that youre saving by protecting thethis magnificent create that is the sumatran elephant. If we dont take urgent action, a few years down the road we will be looking at the leuser ecosystem and saying, my god, why didnt we do more when we had the chance . For baby elephants like this, the future remains uncertain. If deforestation continues, it is unlikely the sumatran elephants will survive. But people can make a difference before its too late and the elephants disappear forever. While elephants in sumatra face habitat loss from palm oil, elephants in thailand face a completely different set of problems. Here, tourism is fueling the illegal trade of baby elephants. [speaking thai] elephant rides, festivals, and camps are a must for thousands of tourists who flock to thailand each year. But beyond the happy smiles, there is a dark reality behind the origin of these elephants. A brutal trade that experts claim threatens the survival of some of the worlds last remaining populations of asian elephants. We traveled to the region of chiang mai in northern thailand, home to many of the elephant camps enjoyed by tourists. There have been recent sites based in africa watching elephants, among oth things, for a ve, very long time, whereas in asia theres very Little Research has been done. Very little has been said about the dramatic drop in population. No one would have any idea that this species is also endangered. Jn roberts runs an elephant camp. He was one of the first to recognize the link between the supply of elephants for the Tourism Industry and elephant hunting in the wild. Wevebeen jumping up and down saying, if you buy an elephant, youre probably taking another elephant out of the wild. We realized very early on that buying elephants was causing a problem and hurting the wild population ort least the burmese population. The hunting of Wild Elephants is illegal in thailand, but expertslaim the practice is widespread in neighboring burma, and it threatens the last healthy populations of asian elephants that reside there. Baby elephants are particularly sought after. Its very attractive to tourists or thai people, so everybody wants baby elephants, and they are worth a lot of money. You dont need any documents, no microchip, so its super easy. You go into the jungle, you catch an elephant, you train them, and a month later you can get like 600,000 baht, and if you can imagine how much money this is in thailand and how easy it is to do. Teams of hunters surround herds of elephants, killing the parents and other adults who try to defend their young. Investigations have revealed that as many as 5 adults may be slain for every calf captured. The defenseless calves are then smuggled across the border. These rarely seen images show elephants being forced to endure a cruel spiritbreaking ritual known as the fashong. These activities take place in remote camps on the burmese border, far from the public eye. In thailand, they use sharp things to stab them. They use knives, they use axe, they use a stick to beat them. Anything that will make the elephant painful and afraid of people. A lot of them die. We have a record how the elephant dies. Die from suffocate, die from starvation, die from the stress, and some of them die from the heartbreak because they uldnt accept it. While the lucrative trade in Wild Elephant smuggling is illegal in thailand, lek alleges that it involves corruption on various levels. Have the police involved, have the military involved. You know, if you want to make birth certificate or i. D. Card, you can fake it. Big money for the official to issue the paper. Once you are confronting these influential people that are above the law, it can get quite dangerous. There were some camp owners that like told me literally that if i was a guy i would be dead already. Shortly before the making of this film, a local informant in the area disappeared. Activists fear the worst but carry on nevertheless. People who work with the animal in this country, theyre afraid. Myselfi afraid, too, but to be honest, the animal are more afraid. We put these allegations to the Deputy Director of the National Parks authority, whose remit is to protect and police the countrys wildlife. [speaking thai] but despite such assurances, evidence suggests trade in wild calves is still ongoing. Investigations in the last 6 months and conversations have been had with traders and elephant owners have shown at least 14 wildcaught calves have been traded across the border from burma into thai camps. And we beeve this is just a fraction of the numbers. Elephant advocates claim the presence of scarred baby elephants at the recent surin elephant festival also highlight the need for urgent action. The world has lost up to 90 of its asian elephants the last 100 years. And unless actually more is done to protect this species and stop activities such as the illegal live trade, then were going to lose the asian elephant in the wild forever. What re asking for is only a registration of cative bulcalves so that theyre actually registered within t weeks obirth. And to make this ev stronge were also calling for a dna dabase. Now, with all this proof that we have, is really the moment to form an International Community to, you know, push thailand to really enforce the law and finally really protect the ld elephants. Until then, the plight of burmas Wild Elephants continues to hang in the balance. [animals screeching] man ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the executive director of the Restorative Justice for oakland youth, fania davis. [cheers and applause] fania thank you so much. Bioneers, you are blessed, you are privileged to have had that presentation and to experience the many more wonderful presentations here at this conference. Whathow amazing. As it was said, my name is fania davis, and im here to introduce