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People share the spotlight with Africa's wild animals in this disturbing look at poachers who hunt big game and the soldiers who hunt them. Shot in Botswana, where the government had the military track down a gang of illegal hunters after they killed the country's last known black rhino in 1990, this 55-minute video follows the soldiers' training, their hunt, and the result. There is some humor as the soldiers act upon orders to peacefully remove snakes and abandon their camp to thirsty elephants, but overall the tone is as mature and grim as the subject matter. Narrator Keith David poses difficult questions: Is it right to put animal life above human life? Should confiscated ivory be sold to fund the antipoaching effort? Photographed by Dereck and Beverly Joubert, this video contains many graphic shots of ravaged elephants and rhinos and a sequence that ends with the discovery of two dead humans.
--Kimberly Heinrichs
Product Description
The hunted...they slip across borders in search of prey, boldly striking without fear. The hunters... an elite force of specially-trained soldiers with orders of shoot-to-kill. Now, National Geographic Video presents the story of one of today's most compelling dramas...the life and death struggles to save Africa's endangered animals. When poachers wiped out the last black rhino seen in Botswana in 1990, Botswana's government deployed a small army to track down the Shaile gang, a merciless band of tribesmen who butcher animals for the illegal sale of valuable ivory, and what many believe to be the potent aphrodisiac of the rhino's horn. Shot on location by famed African filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert, you'll travel to some of the most remote corners of the African bush, following a trail marked by scavengers, wire snares, and carcasses. But as these soldiers wage war against this "phantom" enemy, they are ever-aware that the real danger is the men they hunt...who are also armed to defend themselves, at any cost, against their pursuers...the WILDLIFE WARRIORS.
