Botswana: bacteria responsible for killing hundreds of elephants

Elephants in the Okavango Delta in Botswana where hundreds of dead pachyderms have been found.

AFP Photo / Monrul Bhuiyan

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3 min

The question has tormented animal rights activists in southern Africa and elsewhere for several months: Why are elephants dying by the dozen in a region of Botswana's Okavango Delta?

Several leads had been mentioned, but the investigation conducted by the Botswana authorities and whose conclusions were presented on Monday, identified a culprit: a bacteria.

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This bacterium is believed to be the cause

between March and early July in Botswana.

It is more exactly what we call a cyanobacterium, a kind of microscopic blue green algae, but potentially dangerous.

Some are toxic to humans and animals when they multiply and, according to the Botswana Ministry of Wildlife and National Parks, this is what has happened in the Okavango Delta.

The elephants, accustomed to the banks of water points which had become polluted, would have ingested too much of it, and their nervous systems would have been attacked.

This is why some experts evoked the possibility of pure and simple poisoning, due to the sometimes difficult cohabitation between men and elephants in a country which, with 130,000 individuals, is home to a third of African elephants.

As for the poaching hypothesis, it was immediately excluded, since we found the dead elephants with their tusks.

In question, climate change

If the trail of cyanobacteria is confirmed, research is still continuing, because we do not know the precise type of toxin at work and we do not know why it only kills elephants, and not the other numerous species that frequent this immense green and blue expanse of Okavango.

Attention will therefore be particularly reinforced during the next rainy season.

According to specialists, the proliferation of this cyanobacterium has one origin: climate change.

With the warming of the water, these bacteria find ideal conditions.

Like the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has already indicated that temperatures are rising twice as fast in southern Africa as in the rest of the world, experts fear that these kinds of incidents will increase.

Moreover, another case is being investigated in Zimbabwe, where recently 25 elephant corpses were found near a national park.

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• Botswana

• Wildlife

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Several hundred elephants mysteriously died in Botswana