Rhino

Rhinos have become the face of extinction.

But in this place, they have been offered a narrow path to survive.

Between 1970 and 1980, 98% of Kenya's black rhinos

were killed, the victims of human greed and desire.

Kenya's response was desperate.

With just 300 black rhinos left, they fenced them in.

The protected zones were called conservancies,

enclaves guarded by laws and lethal force.

Elite rangers were recruited from the edges of the new zones.

The poachers learned to fear them.

And for much of Kenya, poaching has become a memory.

The rhino population rebounded.

In the north, Liberana and Lewa, together, they are

one of the most successful rhino habitats on earth.

They have become a paradise.

Conservancies united by an open border and a single mission.

Save the species.

Kiloku is the lead rhino monitor and one of Kenya's best trackers.

His knowledge has been inherited over generations.

His team must find every rhino, every day.

When night falls, the armed anti-poaching rangers take over.

They are always watching. Always ready.

Kenya stopped the poaching of rhinos

but now faces a crisis born from its success.

Rhinos are killing each other for territory.

The conservancies are vast, but the very fences that save the rhinos

also define the perimeters of gladiatorial arenas.

Each male will take a territory 10 square kilometers in size to find a mate.

And they will fight to the death for it.

The ranger's connection here is deep.

For centuries, their ancestors have shaped this land,

leading their cattle along invisible paths to pastures hidden to the untrained.

The villages on the Conservancy's edge are the birthplaces of most of the rangers.

Kiloku is Maasai.

As a child, he tended his family's livestock.

And as a young warrior, he protected the herd from predators and bandits.

Borana exists in the shadow cast by this forest.

But there's a curse amongst these trees.

The villages between the Conservancy boundaries and the Mukogodo

are besieged by raids from cattle-stealing bandits.

A contest fought with fists and spears has become a deadly

game played with firearms from the continent's civil wars.

The rangers rely on whispers from informants to stem a resurgence of poaching.

Deeper in the forest, villages lie empty.

Ghost towns abandoned after months of banditry violence,

made worse by a drought, slowly creeping through the landscape.

On the fringes of the ranger's territory lives Teresa, the final resident.

She has become their eyes.

Cattle are not just livestock here.

They're currency.

And the bandits are Kenya's bank robbers.

A rhino horn can be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars on the black market.

Each rhino carries a death sentence on their head.

As long as banditry thrives, rhinos cannot exist in this forest.

Opening wildlife corridors gives male rhinos an escape route from large arrivals.

This buys the Conservancies time, but it's only a temporary fix.

They need more space.