Animal Planet wants you to keep an Elephant Diary

Cable channel Animal Planet is trumpeting a heavy-duty new show lumbering onto their schedule this spring. Elephant Diaries, an emotional series highlighting the importance of families to elephants, is part of a new block of programming the network is calling "Whoa! Sunday!"

Elephant Diaries follows a year in the life of six young elephants that have lost their families and have been raised by people in Africa. At the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's elephant nursery in Nairobi, Kenya, the orphaned elephant calves--named Emily, Jipe, Lualeni, Napasha, Naserian, and Wendi--are cared for by human keepers who effectively become the animals' mothers. In the end, the elephants are released into the wild to fend for themselves in an emotional send-off, not unlike what human families go through when teens go to college.

The show is made possible in part by The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which was set up in 1977 by Dr. Daphne Sheldrick, wife of the late naturalist David Sheldrick who founded the Tsavo National Park in Kenya. The trust gives money to conservation and wildlife preservation causes and has been a primary supporter of rhino and elephant preservation in Kenya and elsewhere.

"Whoa! Sunday!" is a two-hour block of programming on Sundays, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., which Animal Planet hopes to make a "destination" for viewers. Comedy Central fixture Mo Rocca hosts the evening of family-friendly shows, intent on eliciting multiple "whoa!" moments thoughout. Other series in the lineup include shows about dragons, survivors of animal attacks, and secrets of animal communication. Elephant Diaries premieres on Animal Planet Sunday, March 5 at 8 p.m.