Elephant deaths still baffle
BOTSWANA: HUNDREDS DIE – AND EXPERTS NOW DON’T RULE OUT POACHING OR POISONING
Government says only 275 died as country awaits lab results for answers.
Although the death toll of elephants in the Okanago Delta has been revised down, the mystery surrounding the mass deaths is deepening.
A total of 275 elephants have died, not the reported 356, the Botswana government announced.
But the cause of the tragedy is still baffling ecologists, conservationists and Botswana’s ministry of environment, natural resources, conservation and tourism.
The deaths started in March, and occurred in villages in the Okavango Panhandle and in the Okavango Delta’s sub-districts, Serongo and Eretsha.
The ministry said investigations into the deaths are ongoing, and no evidence of poaching has been identified. Samples have reportedly been sent to laboratories in SA, Zimbabwe and Canada.
Humane Society International (HSI) Africa wildlife director Audrey Delsink said without laboratory results from samples taken of the carcasses, poaching, poisoning and disease cannot be ruled out.
Elephants Protection Society founder and chair Oaitse Nawa told the Botswana Press Agency poaching had been ruled out, as the carcasses were found intact, except for missing tusks from two carcasses.
But Delsink said poachers sometimes leave carcasses to rot to remove the tusks easier.
She also said that elephants stick to certain foods in specific areas, so it is possible that the food they consumed, often whole, such as oranges and pumpkins, was poisoned selectively.
She pointed to increasing incidents of cyanide poisoning in
Zimbabwe, which is linked to poaching.
She added that Botswana’s delayed statements acknowledging the deaths signals a lack of urgency. This urgency is not just for the animals, but for the potential consequences of nearby villages.
Botswana is home to one third of Africa’s elephant population.
Nawa called on government to better involve communities to promote conservation, and that communities were suffering due to the pandemic’s abrupt halt on tourism activities.
Last year, the region’s decision to lift its ban on elephant hunting, due to increased tension between surrounding communities and elephants’ tendencies to feast on and trample crops.
Delsink said Botswana’s decision was met globally and locally “with consternation and disappointment”.
But the region is heavily dependent on ecotourism, with the tourism sector contributing up to 12% to Botswana’s GDP.
Delsink said Botswana listed their reasons for lifting the ban, but that about 400 elephants had been tagged as part of the quota set by government.
She lamented that elephants are often blamed for many negative environmental consequences within ecosystems.
She emphasised that they are essential to ecosystems, describing them as “engineers of change”.
Due to an elephant’s poor digestive system, only 40% of the food it consumes is digested. Most food passes out undigested but masticated, which deposits “nursery bags of manure” across plains and forests.
Despite being blamed for killing tall trees, Delsink explained that elephants are integral for reforestation and tree germination.
Not every tree elephants push over die, but instead become micro-habitats for invertebrates, such as spiders and millipedes.
However, an elephant’s sheer size means its presence must be managed, Delsink said.
If they are present in such an area, it will exacerbate landscape exploitation.
She said that there are many mature bulls in the area where the mass deaths occurred, warning that “any threats to mature elephants is a further blow to their population demography that we cannot afford”.
Without lab results, poaching cannot be ruled out