Botswana said on Friday it had received test results from samples sent to Zimbabwe to determine the cause of death of hundreds of elephants. They’re waiting for more results from South Africa before sharing findings with the public.
“We have to wait for another set of results and reconcile the two to see if they are saying the same thing before we come to a definitive conclusion,” Oduetse Kaboto, a senior official in the environment and tourism ministry, said in a televised briefing.
Officials told reporters near the Okavango Delta on Thursday that they had now verified 281 elephant carcasses and that the deaths were concentrated in an area of 8,000 square km.
Wildlife officials are trying to determine what is killing the elephants about two months after the first bodies were discovered. They have ruled out poaching and anthrax among possible causes.
“We are hoping the second set of results will come in next week, and that’s when we should be able to communicate to the public the cause of deaths,” Kaboto said.
There are fears more could die if authorities cannot establish the cause soon.
The Botswana wildlife department has said the government contacted neighbors Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Zambia, but they had not seen similar elephant deaths.
Africa’s overall elephant population is declining due to poaching, but Botswana, home to almost a third of the continent’s elephants, has seen numbers grow from 80,000 to 130,000 in the last three decades.
Source: Reuters
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