full audience and you would hear the crowd clap, it gave you goosebumps. reporter: but despite the excitement, david knows that working with the world s largest land animals is inherently risky. and david is warned about one elephant in particular. cindy had a lot of crazy behaviors with other keepers in the past. a known danger to humans be with only keepers who had trained cindy when she arrived from a tacoma, washington zoon are allowed to get close to the animal. newcomers like david always use the mate narc elephant nita when we are near her. for two years david keeps his distance from cindy but on that day in january he notices she s a little too close for comfort. cindy was flex to the gate and i needed to get her moved. and in the process of moving cindy, i opened the gate and i should have closed the gate behind me. but david doesn t close the gate. a mistake that will almost cost him his life.
but beyond brown grass and short showers, the drought is having a devastating affect on the most basic system of all the food chain. in northern california salmon eggs have all but disappeared thanks to the lack of water. the kangaroo rat has nearly died off. and drier conditions have forced land animals to seek food in urban gardens. ahead of the busy summer season the state wildlife agency in lake tahoe is preparing itself for a barrage of bear sightings. joining me now is conservation biologist reece halter and associate professor at u.k. berkeley justin. justin, let me start with you. in terms of the kangaroo rat, right, you hear that and people immediately think, oh who cares about what is happening to the kangaroo rat. the numbers of the kangaroo rat have been dpe pleated, i think, 95% have died out since 2010. why does that matter? yeah. that s a good point and you re right. a lot of folks say it s a rat.
and the magic of what makes cheetahs the world s fastest land animals. i think the most important thing we learned for us from that video footage was the head. the head never moves, in the entire run. the nails are digging into the earth, then you see the hind legs coming clear up besides the shoulders of the cheetah. no other animal can do that, and you look at that and you think, oh, my goodness, that must never go away. we must never say goodbye to that. sarah has taught her human companion what s in the heart of every cheetah kept in a cage at a zoo. cheetah would say, if you do not let me run, you will not let my spirit out of this body, and i will never, ever feel that wind in my face. i ll never feel the pounding of
and i ran up there and we tried to pull the father out. we couldn t get him out one side. he ran out around another side but the wall was ten feet so he had to jump up and grab our hands and we pulled him out. reporter: the zoo director say the cheetahs never moved toward the boy or his father. because the spectators were all screaming think cats were either scared or not interested, which is very fortunate because cheetahs or the fastest land animals on the planet and would have easily been on the father and son before they ever got back out of that closure. now many of the parents on hand were baffled the mom actually lifted her son over the fence, which is why the zoo has now filed the child endangerment chappings. three years ago, two-year-old boy in pittsburgh jumped from his mother s arms into a wild african dogs exhibit but in that case the dogs attacked and killed the boys. the parents sued the zoo. the zoo sued the parents. that case finally settled, but a lot of mystery sur
full audience and you would hear the crowd clap, it gave you goosebumps. but despite the excitement, david knows that working with the world s largest land animals is inherently risky. david is warned about one elephant in particular. cindy had a lot of crazy behaviors with other keepers in the past. a known danger to humans, only keepers who had trained cindy when she arrived from a tacoma, washington, zoo are allowed to get close to the animal. newcomers, like david, always use the matriarch elephant, nita, as a shield when they are near her. for two years he keeps his distance from cindy. but on that day in january, he notices she s a little too close for comfort. cindy was next to the gate. i needed to get her moved. in the process of moving cindy, i opened the gate and i should have closed the gate behind me. but david doesn t close the gate. a mistake that will almost cost him his life. just moments later he senses