Botswana stalls in investigation into mass death of elephants

• Botswana’s government is trying to learn the cause of the sudden death of hundreds of elephants, conservationists say.
• Almost 400 elephants have died since the beginning of May. Nobody knows why.
• After weeks of government inaction, the tests have just been sent to laboratories, where the samples are not certain to be of any use, according to conservation charity National Park Rescue.
• Co-founder Mark Hiley told Business Insider that it is “one of the biggest disasters impacting elephants in this century.”
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Botswana authorities are making efforts to investigate the sudden death of at least 350 elephants within two months, conservationists told Business Insider.

The mysterious deaths, which have seen some elephants fall on their faces and never rise again, don’t appear to be attributable to poachers, according to UK-based conservation organization National Park Rescue.

There are several possible causes. But weeks of inaction by the Botswana administration means elephants continue to die with no answers available, said Mark Hiley, co-founder of National Park Rescue.

Ecotourism is second only to diamonds in the country’s GDP, Hiley wrote in comments emailed to Business Insider. “It is one of the largest disasters impacting elephants in this century, and right in the middle of one of the top tourist destinations in Africa,” she added.

Conservationists urged Botwsana to act, and offered funds and other support, Hiley said in vain. She said government officials hesitated weeks before even sending samples of the elephants for analysis.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi was elected in late 2019 on a platform that included decriminalizing trophy hunting, according to The New York Times, and said he will prioritize the needs of the people of Botswana over the concerns of other countries. for its wildlife.

What has happened so far

• In early May, 12 elephants were found dead in a group spanning two villages in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana, according to Phys.org. The government announced an investigation, the site reported.
• Following the discovery of 44 more carcasses, the National Park’s rescue director, Dr. Niall McCann, surveyed the area on a plane and saw 169 elephants killed in three hours.
• On May 27, officials visited to take samples for the test, according to Hiley. Since Botswana does not have its own testing capacity, they had to be shipped abroad.
• Initially, the government said it would send them to a laboratory in Pretoria, South Africa, but instead sent them to a laboratory in northern Botswana, according to Hiley. Hiley described the lab as “unskilled” to handle them.
• On June 19, a Facebook post on “Botswana Safari News” released a statement by Wildlife Coordinator Dimakatso Ntshebe saying that international organizations “should not only criticize but help.” He said samples had been taken of the vegetation and water consumed by the elephants, as well as their carcasses.
• The samples have arrived at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, but will now be old and “of dubious origin,” Hiley said.

“The government would normally respond in a matter of days to an event of this scale,” he said, adding: “Inaction and refusal to accept the experience and resources offered are only causing more deaths.”

Hiley said tests of this type require a documented “chain of custody” that ensures the origin of the sample at each stage.

“We need an independent team of experts to go in, sample the blood, tissue, spleen, liver and stomach contents of multiple channels, in addition to taking soil, water and other environmental samples,” he wrote.

An unprecedented wildlife disaster

“This is a massive death on a level that has not been seen in a long, long time. Outside of the drought, I don’t know of a death that has been so important,” McCann of National Park Rescue said. he said to The Guardian.

Botswana is home to around 130,000 elephants, Africa’s largest population, animals, according to the BBC. However, the numbers are declining and the animals are classified as vulnerable, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. About 10,000 of them live in the Okavango Delta, which is seasonally flooded.

In his election, President Masisi said he was putting the needs of the country’s population above how Western countries value animals, The New York Times reported. The country auctioned its first elephant hunting licenses in February 2020, the BBC reported.

“Botswana was one of the last safe havens for elephants, making it a tragic turn of events for one of the most persecuted species on the planet,” said Hiley.

A potential risk to public health.

The question of what is killing so many elephants so quickly has yet to be resolved. As Business Insider reported, cyanide poisoning by poachers is considered unlikely, as is anthrax, which killed 100 elephants in October 2019. And since there are no cases of COVID-19 at around 800 miles, this is also unlikely, Hiley said.

“Conservationists on the ground have reported horrible scenes of dying elephants walking in circles and others dying face down, suggesting that something impacts brain function,” said Hiley.

“The position of the bodies and the fact that some living elephants were seen to be losing their motor functions seems to indicate that this toxin, whatever it is, is affecting their nervous system,” he added.

The possibility that an unknown pathogen is causing death is a concern for both humans and elephants in the coronavirus era, he said.

Business Insider has contacted the Botswana Ministry of Environment and Department of National Parks and Wildlife, but received no response at the time of publication.