Great news to end a busy 2013 has been the recognition for two of our recent photo-journalism projects in this year’s Melvita nature photography competition with French magazine Terre Sauvage and the IUCN.
Images from our work photographing a crack team of top US and South African veterinary surgeons performing pioneering keyhole surgery in the middle of the African bush on wild elephant bulls have been awarded a top prize in the competition – a bursary of 4,000 Euros to photograph a conservation assignment (yet to be decided) for the IUCN.

Wild elephant bull hoisted by crane for vasectomy operatio

A wild elephant bull is hoisted into position

The portfolio of winning images showed how the vets, in full operating room scrubs, handled these tricky patients using oversized surgical instruments and cutting edge keyhole surgery techniques to perform vasectomies on a number of elephant bulls on a South African reserve to help control population numbers. The procedure, while expensive, is seen as a potential solution to the problems caused by elephant overpopulation in some parts of southern Africa, particularly on smaller game reserves.

Not to put too fine a point on it, an elephant’s testes are inside his body so quite difficult invasive surgery is required. And that’s once you’ve tracked the elephant bull down, tranquillised it from the air and manoeuvred him into position so two teams of surgeons, and their support crew, can safely get to work.

We watched and photographed three such 90 minute operations. All were successful, with the bull stitched up and back on his feet at the end of the complex procedure.

A big thanks to the expert team from the Elephant Population Management Program in America and South African vet Johan Marais for all their help and assistance with this photo project.

Wild elephant ready for surgery in the bush

The elephant’s vital signs are closely monitored during the operation

A second portfolio of images from our current Project African Rhino photo-journalism campaign to raise awareness about all issues relating to the poaching crisis was also nominated in the competition’s ‘Mankind and Nature’ category.