Nearly 100 elephants killed for ivory in Botswana

Ninety elephant carcasses have been discovered in Botswana with their tusks hacked off, a charity said Tuesday, in what is believed to be one of Africa’s worst mass poaching sprees. Most of the animals killed were large bulls carrying heavy tusks, Elephants Without Borders said.

The grim discovery was made over several weeks during an aerial survey by Elephants Without Borders and Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks.

“We started flying the survey on July 10, and we have counted 90 elephant carcasses since the survey commenced,” Mike Chase, the charity director, told AFP.

“Each day we are counting dead elephants,” he added.

The animals were shot with heavy caliber rifles at watering spots near a popular wildlife sanctuary in the Okavango Delta.

“The scale of elephant poaching is by far the largest I have seen or read about in Africa to date,” Chase said.

The poaching coincided with the disarming this year of Botswana’s rangers, according to Chase.

A similar census in 2014 found just nine carcasses, according to Chase. Botswana has an estimated 130,000 elephants, the most of any country in Africa.

The number of African elephants has fallen by around 111,000 to 415,000 in the past decade, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The killing continues at a dizzying pace of about 30,000 elephants a year to meet demand for ivory in Asia, where tusks sell for around $1,000 a kilogram.

The reported increase in elephant poaching in Botswana could reflect a trend in which poachers move into new territories as conditions become more difficult in regions where they usually operate.

Those conditions could include a dearth of elephants to kill after widespread poaching, or crackdowns on trafficking syndicates in some cases.

Tanzania’s Selous region, for example, was heavily hit by elephant poachers but recent data indicates that the killing has slowed. Even so, killings intensified around the same time in Mozambique’s Niassa reserve to the south, which is linked to the Selous by a wildlife corridor.

The fight against elephant poaching has made some gains, including a ban on the ivory trade in China, the world’s biggest consumer. But experts say the rate of annual elephant losses still exceeds the birth rate, and the encroachment of human settlements is reducing the animals’ range.

Chase said elephants in Zambia and Angola, north of Botswana, “have been poached to the verge of local extinction, and poachers have now turned to Botswana.”

Poachers have targeted old bull elephants that presumably have the heaviest tusks, killing them when they go to drink at seasonal water sources, Chase said.

“A clear order has been put out for tusks of a specific weight, and I suspect such large ivory is in heavy demand, considering that there are few large tuskers left in Africa.”

Botswana Tourism Minister Tshekedi Khama confirmed to AFP that dozens of elephants had been poached, but gave no further details.

The government was not immediately available to comment on rangers being apparently disarmed earlier this year.

Botswana previously had a zero-tolerance approach to any kind of poaching, with a “shoot-to-kill” policy against poachers.

Poachers have also targeted rhino, Chase said, after six white rhino carcasses were found in recent months.