Botswana’s elephants are literally falling dead.
Hundreds of elephant carcasses have been found scattered in a remote and narrow region in the north, and poaching is not to blame.
The mystery has dragged on for months, and experts say the slow response to the deaths has shed light on deeper problems in the country’s relationship with prized creatures.
The carcasses of at least 67 adult elephants were found in May, Botswana Acting Permanent Secretary of the Environment Ministry Oduetse Koboto said at a press conference on Friday. Aerial studies of the Okavango Delta, a wetland near the border with Namibia, have confirmed 281 deaths, although up to 356 bodies have been reported.
Although not heavily populated, the area is “overloaded” with elephants, Pieter Kat, director of UK-based conservation group LionAid, said in an interview. This is because, compared to Zimbabwe’s neighbors Angola and Namibia, Botswana has long banned hunting and has been a leader in anti-poaching efforts.
“Wherever these elephants went when they left Botswana, they were either poached or killed or hunted by hunters, so it is not surprising that they concentrated again in northern Botswana,” Kat said.
An estimated 130,000 elephants live in Botswana, of which approximately 18,000 forage in the immediate area where the carcasses were found.
“This is not a very significant mortality,” said Cyril Taolo, acting director of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, at the press conference on Friday.
But conservationists say otherwise. Africa’s elephant population has declined to around 415,000 from 3 million to 5 million a century ago, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
A few hundred elephants may be a relatively small percentage of the population. However, given the species’ vulnerability, the unknown threat is baffling, said Keith Lindsay, an Oxford, England-based conservation biologist who specializes in elephants.
“It is troubling,” Lindsay said. “If it’s a disease, it could be catastrophic.”
Anthrax, a disease caused by a natural bacterium in the environment, can cause high death rates among elephants and other species, Lindsay said.
But tests have ruled out anthrax, said Botswana chief veterinarian Mmadi Reuben.
Many things can kill elephants, from poaching to environmental factors and simply old age.
Poaching was also quickly ruled out because elephant tusks, the main attraction of the illegal ivory trade, were intact, Lindsay said. The country was not in the dry season when the first deaths were reported, and it has not been suffering from a drought, which means there should be enough vegetation to support the animals.
Many of the adult elephants that died were still in their early years, too young to die of natural causes.
“The way they were seen from the air dragging their hind legs and walking around suggests a type of agent that interferes with our normal nerve communications,” said Kat.
Lindsay said that while another disease is always a possibility, the scale and speed at which elephants die makes a disease unlikely.
“The only thing that kills elephants quickly is that people kill elephants,” he said.
But if it weren’t for the ivory, what for? The possible reasons are far from clear.
The conflict between people and wildlife, which can include property destruction, agriculture and even human death, is another reason elephants can be attacked, Kat said.
With the high elephant population, Botswana reintroduced trophy hunting last year. The first round of 70 licenses, with a quota to kill a total of 272 elephants, was made available this year, but the practice has been suspended due to coronavirus blockages.
“Elephant quotas were established in particular places where there was elephant conflict,” said Kat. “I can see easily that people would say, sure, they promised us all this, so now we are going to take matters into our own hands.”
But government officials ruled out any connection.
“It is not clear why anyone would want to link elephant mortality to hunting,” Taolo of the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks said in a statement.
Reintroducing hunting is actually a variety of measures that have given communities incentives to protect wildlife resources, he said.
Hunting quotas have also not changed as a result of the deaths, but Taolo said the government is closely monitoring the situation.
Still, there are several ways elephants can be targeted for poisoning, Kat said. Due to the height of the animals, the poisoned fruit could be hidden in the trees they could reach, which would also explain why only mature elephants appear to be getting sick.
However, Kat does not blame the community. She said that better transboundary conservation measures would help to further expand the population.
There are agreements to preserve migration routes for wildlife between Botswana and its neighbors, specifically the Kavango Zambezi Transboundary Conservation Area, which was established in 2006.
Last year, member countries signed a plan to combat poaching in the region, said Nyambe Nyambe, executive director of the conservation area in Botswana.
The plan has also helped preserve migration corridors that allow elephants and other species to roam the continent, he said. “You can’t reverse that once you lose habitat,” he said.
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Still, there are competing interests.
“People need to plow their fields,” said Nyambe. Any conservation plan must be “aware of people’s livelihoods and the economic opportunities that must be developed. And there will be tradeoffs.”
There are many financial incentives to protect the land.
Tourism is one of the country’s largest sectors, after mining, accounting for more than 12 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and providing just over 10 percent of employment, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. And elephants, along with other unique wildlife on the continent that can be seen on safaris, are the main attraction.
Some responses will be received soon. The results of tests carried out in a laboratory in Zimbabwe have been released, said Koboto of the environment ministry. But the findings won’t be revealed until the results of additional ongoing tests in South Africa, Canada, and the United States are returned for comparison.
Testing has been slowed due to movement restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. And comparisons are necessary to ensure the findings are conclusive, Koboto said.
But experts are skeptical about the delays.
“The cause of death should have been easy to decipher, especially since fresh bodies were available and samples were collected,” Kat, of LionAid, wrote in an op-ed in the Journal of African Elephants. “This cannot be conveniently shuffled under a woven rug of complacency and excuses.”
Even the delay between initial reports that dozens of elephants had died in early May and confirmation of the numbers by the government is troubling, said Lindsay, a conservation biologist.
“They don’t seem to be in full control of the situation,” he said.
However, the Botswana authorities maintain that they are investigating meticulously.
“The fact that we are prepared to send samples to other laboratories should be sufficient evidence that we are transparent and have nothing to hide,” said Taolo. “The fact that Botswana has the world’s largest elephant population is testament to our commitment to conserving the species.”
