Poaching toll rises as calf dies

SEVEN elephants have been killed in one of Kenya’s worst spates of poaching, after a six-month-old calf left orphaned succumbed to an illness and died.

Rangers found the calf, which would have still been taking his mother’s milk, hiding near her corpse two days after she was killed with five members of her herd in Tsavo West national park.

Five adults died within a few metres of each other in the attack, suggesting that they had huddled together for protection when the poachers shot at them with assault rifles.

A sixth elephant was found dead about two miles away.

‘‘[The poachers] were full-on professionals,’’ said Richard Bonham, founder of the Big Life Foundation, whose community rangers helped the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to track three of the suspects who were still in Kenya.

All six elephants had had their tusks hacked off after they were shot on July 27. The calf, named Losoito by his rescuers, was flown to the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage on the edge of Nairobi National Park.

‘‘He has been friendly from the outset, needy of company and attention and clearly grateful to have been saved,’’ the charity said.

However, he developed diarrhoea, and ‘‘keepers couldn’t regain control of his stomach’’ as he was reliant on his mother’s milk to survive.

He died on August 2, four days after he was found.

Two men were arrested in a nearby village after sniffer dogs led the rangers ‘‘straight to two axes and a saw, still wet with blood’’, the Big Life Foundation said.

A third man was arrested 64 kilometres away after a tip-off, but KWS said the gang’s leaders and the gunmen had fled across the border into Tanzania. None of the tusks has been recovered.