Fifteen elephants died in Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem from June 24 to July 24, with preliminary tests detecting a \u200bpotential toxic substance in samples from several animals, the \u200cKenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said in a statement late on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The broader Amboseli ecosystem spans the national park and surrounding community land in southern \u200bKenya near the Tanzanian border, providing habitat and movement \u200broutes for elephants and other wildlife beneath Mount Kilimanjaro.<\/p>\n
Ten \u2060elephants showed similar symptoms, including partial paralysis that left them \u200bunable to stand before they died within one or two days, \u200bKWS said.<\/p>\n
The deaths were recorded in Amboseli National Park, Kimana Sanctuary and the Kuku Ranch area.<\/p>\n
The condition primarily affected adult females and calves, with \u200bonly one adult male reported.<\/p>\n
KWS said it could not establish \u200bthe cause of death for five carcasses because they were too decomposed \u200cor \u2060had been scavenged.<\/p>\n
Preliminary analaysis by the University of Nairobi detected a potential toxic substance, though further analysis was needed to establish its concentration, significance and source.<\/p>\n
Initial tests by the government chemist \u200bwere negative for \u200bthe toxins examined, \u2060while further testing for other possible toxins was under way.<\/p>\n
Authorities are also testing water sources \u200band other potential environmental contaminants to determine whether \u200bthe elephants \u2060were exposed to a common source.<\/p>\n
“Importantly, there is no evidence that this incident poses any risk to human health,” KWS said, \u2060adding that \u200bthe condition was confined to affected \u200belephants and there was no indication it could be transmitted to people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifteen elephants died in Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem from June 24 to July 24, with preliminary tests detecting a \u200bpotential toxic substance in samples from several animals, the \u200cKenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said in a statement late on Tuesday. The broader Amboseli ecosystem spans the national park and surrounding community land in southern \u200bKenya near the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,34],"tags":[5363,111],"class_list":["post-21625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-society","tag-amboseli-ecosystem","tag-kenya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21628,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions\/21628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}