The Mara Elephant Project, a Kenya-based conservation program, steps in when elephants need help. Normally, it saves baby elephants when their parents have been poached for their ivory tusks and left abandoned. But when a calf was wasting away in November without influence from humans, the group stepped in … with a helicopter.

In the video above, a pair of conservation staffers working with the elephant project emerge from the forest in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. One carries an undersized, undernourished pachyderm in his arms toward an awaiting helicopter from the Karen Blixen Camp Ree Park Safari. With each step, the 100-pound elephant's limp trunk sways.

After loading the elephant onto a worker's lap,