When a baby elephant, alone, dehydrated, and near death, wandered into a village in Burkina Faso in West Africa, the people knew she had become separated from her herd and needed their help.
They gave her a name, Nania, and around the clock care.
With the help of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, they got support to buy milk and baby formula.
Four years later, Nania is thriving and beating the odds. With the help of DNA, there’s now a chance she could be reunited with her mother.
IFAW wildlife rescue manager Meredith Whitney told Jesse Mulligan the villagers were baffled at how such a young elephant, only about two or three months old, survived alone.
"We think she was probably only on her own just for a few days. But the community really rallied around her and decided that they needed to take care of her.
"We were contacted by the wildlife authorities in Burkina Faso and asked if we would be able to help with some guidance on how to feed Nania and how to help prepare her for release back to the wild."
Nania is an African forest elephant, which is a critically endangered species.
Separation to these elephants in particular is a big deal, she says.
"You see savanna elephants in these really large herds whereas [African] forest elephants tend to occur in smaller family groups, so you might have one matriarch with just her calves as a herd."
One of the challenges in rehabilitating Nania is that she has no older elephants to learn from and feel protected by as is the norm, she says.
"We just had to hook her up with the best friend who is Whisty the goat, and they have quite a friendship. They look after one another."
Nania also enjoyed playing with the village children, but Whitney says they didn't want her to get too used that in preparation for her release back into the wild.
"We don't want [elephants] to learn that people are a source of comfort or a source of food, because that can lead to negative interactions later on once you have a full-size elephant in the bush.
"There are four keepers that work with her every day, she does have a strong relationship with them, and she does look to them for comfort, but we try very hard to limit it to just those four individuals."
She's also learning wild survival skills from her keepers, like what plants and fruit are good to eat, where to find water and navigating the wild landscape.
"We're very excited that she has had some interactions with some wild herds. Now initially she was terrified, 'what are these giant things?' and she did run away from the wild elephants.
"And it actually upset her stomach, she had a little bit of an upset stomach for a few days afterwards as well, probably from the stress of seeing something so new.
"But she has been showing a lot more calmness around wild elephants as of late, so hopefully that will continue to improve."
This is also the time of year when the elephants start returning to the park that Nania is in. And rescuers are hoping Nania will be able to reconnect with her mother.
"So the elephants leave during the winter months and then they come back in the spring and only about 40 elephants are in this park where Nania was found or where Nania lives now, and so we have really high hopes that she will be able to have more interactions with them this year.
"We do know through the DNA testing that her half-sister or more likely her mother was in the area last year.
"So there is a good chance that as she's interacting with those elephants again this year that maybe there will be a spark of recognition."
IFAW also has cameras at a nearby waterhole, and there's a chance that a picture of the mother may have been taken if she was there, Whitney says.
"We know the [elephant] was within smelling distance, I mean elephants have an incredible sense of smell. It's twice as sensitive about of dogs, so it's very likely that these two animals were smelling each other at least and knew that that they were there."
Reuniting an orphaned elephant with its mother after such a long time has not been known before, she says, but if they're able to prove it can work in Nania's case, it'll be a big deal.
"We also know that even if we don't find her natal herd, there are other herds that might be willing to take her in."
