Over the past three months, hundreds of elephants were found dead in Botswana in a mysterious manner. While poisoning and poaching have been ruled out, we find out what caused these heartbreaking deaths. By Amitha Ameen
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More than 300 hundred elephants have been found mysteriously dead in the past three months, in the landlocked country of Botswana. “We are still awaiting results on the exact cause of death,” Regional Wildlife Coordinator Dimakatso Ntshebe was reported as saying to Reuters.
Botswana is home to Africa’s second-largest elephant declining population and these recent deaths stood testament to that. While many carcasses were found near watering holes, others seem to have died right where they were, falling on their faces.
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“It’s appalling — we need to know what the hell is going on,” said Niall McCann, director of conservation at United Kingdom charity National Park Rescue, (as reported by CNN). The country is home to more than 130,000 African elephants, with the Okavango Delta were most of the carcasses were found accounting for 10 per cent of the population.
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The nearby live elephants too appeared weak and seemed to find it difficult to walk or change direction. However other animals in the region did not seem to be affected by whatever may have caused these elephant deaths. The reason for these mysterious deaths remains unknown as Botswana is testing the samples from dead elephants and is yet to ascertain a cause.
The African elephant is the largest walking mammal on earth and is currently on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list.
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