Elephant kills man in Zimbabwe Pools

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A 71-year old South African tourist was trampled to death by an elephant “in full view” of his son at Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park, the country’s parks agency said Thursday, days after another fatal encounter with an elephant occurred in a separate park.

A “tuskless” female elephant this week charged the tourist and his 41-year-old son as they took a morning walk in the park, Tinashe Farawo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, told The Associated Press.

Mana Pools is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its splendid setting along the Zambezi River and surrounding flood plain teeming with elephants and other wildlife.

Michael Bernard Walsh, a veterinarian from Cape Town, was a “loyal tourist” who had been visiting Mana Pools “almost every year” for the past 35 years, said Farawo.

The father and son duo had left their car about 44 yards from the scene of the incident. “Because of age, unfortunately, the old man couldn’t escape to the vehicle. His son watched as the elephant killed his father,” said Farawo.

“We are extremely concerned because two people have been killed in one week alone,” he said, referring to an earlier fatality in which an antipoaching coordinator with a conservation group was trampled to death by an elephant in Victoria Falls in western Zimbabwe.

Clever Kapandura, an operations coordinator for the Victoria Falls Anti-Poaching Unit, a non-governmental organization, was part of a team of scouts deployed to investigate reports of a possible poaching incident. “For some unknown reason” an elephant bull charged from about 130 yards away and seized the man and killed him, the organization said in a statement.