Botswana senior veterinarian defends investigations into unexplained elephant deaths

GABORONE (Reuters) – Botswana’s top wildlife veterinarian on Friday rejected accusations by some conservationists that the government had not moved fast enough to investigate the unexplained deaths of at least 275 elephants.

Authorities said Thursday they were still trying to find out what killed the elephants around two months after the first carcasses were discovered in the Okavango Panhandle region.

The widely released images of the bodies sparked an international outcry, and some campaign groups raised questions about why the test results had not come.

“A government investigation team has been on the ground since the first cases were reported,” Mmadi Reuben, chief veterinary officer for the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, told Reuters. “Botswana responded quickly.”

He said local teams had conducted tests and ruled out anthrax as the cause. “We then send samples to Zimbabwe and South Africa to test for other known pathogens or a new pathogen,” he said.

The coronavirus crisis had delayed some samples from leaving the country, he said.

Poaching has been ruled out as the bodies were found intact.

Botswana is home to around 130,000 elephants, a third of Africa’s total, making it a magnet for wildlife lovers.

“Elephants began dying in large numbers in early May and the government would normally respond within days to an event of this scale,” Mark Hiley, co-founder of National Park Rescue, said Thursday.

“However, here we are, months later, with no tests completed and no more information than we had at the beginning.”

Chris Thouless, head of research for Save the Elephants, said the massive elephant deaths on this scale were almost unprecedented, except during droughts. But he said it was wrong to assume that the government had been dragging its feet.

“This is a fairly remote country, hearing about the corpses, going in there, taking a wide range of samples, knowing how and where to get them … that’s a pretty difficult task.”

If a virus was to blame, he said the government had a limited range of options. “You won’t be able to get elephants to distance themselves socially, and you won’t be able to inoculate them.”