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Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
GOVERNMENT has initiated an investigation into the mysterious demise of 22 elephants in Hwange, with experts ruling out anthrax as a possible cause of death.
Speaking after yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu said that more dead jumbos had been discovered during the course of investigations.
Eleven carcasses had initially been discovered on Friday and another on Saturday in the Pandanasuwe forest.
“This is a very disturbing development that is happening in the Hwange area. We have in fact now lost up to 22. Our teams were on the ground today (yesterday) and they used drones to reach out to other areas and there were six other elephants that were found dead,” Minister Ndlovu said.
Government was now working with experts, some in the private sector, to unravel the mystery of the jumbo deaths, Minister Ndlovu said.
“We have teams of scientists that have collected samples to try and understand what could be the cause of death. What I can say is that anthrax has been ruled out but it will take a bit of time for them to have conclusive results on what is the real cause.
“We are working with some private specialists in the area and we do have a private specialist laboratory in Vic Falls which we have been able to make use of and we are expecting that we should be getting some preliminary results as early as tomorrow. They were suspecting that it could be some bacterial plant but they’re still running tests,” he said.
Bongani Ndlovu