Police have arrested four suspects in an investigation into the deaths of 18 elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem, where authorities also seized \u200bassorted substances including chemicals, the tourism and wildlife ministry said.<\/p>\n
A Kenya \u200cWildlife Service (KWS) spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that the four have since been released on bail.<\/p>\n
Preliminary laboratory results point to the probable involvement of a toxic substance, the \u200bministry said in a statement released on Saturday, with earlier indications \u200bsuggesting cyanide poisoning due to the ingestion of pesticide-contaminated tomatoes \u2060from farms bordering Amboseli National Park.<\/p>\n
Some wildlife experts have expressed doubt that \u200bfarm pesticide was responsible for the deaths, citing the absence of reported deaths \u200bamong other animals in the area.<\/p>\n
The ministry said investigators were also pursuing a fifth individual believed to have information relevant to the case. A search in Tikondo in Loitoktok \u200bsub-county, about 220 km (137 miles) southeast of Nairobi, led to the discovery \u200bof assorted substances, including chemicals believed to have come from a neighbouring country, the \u200cstatement said.<\/p>\n
The \u2060ministry said the arrests and recovered substances did not in themselves establish criminal culpability and added that investigations were ongoing.<\/p>\n
The first\u00a015 elephant deaths\u00a0were recorded between June 24 and July 24, the ministry said. In July, KWS \u200bsaid the deaths \u200boccurred in Amboseli \u2060National Park, Kimana Sanctuary and the Kuku Ranch area, and that the animals showed symptoms including partial paralysis before \u200bdying within one or two days.<\/p>\n
The broader Amboseli ecosystem spans \u200bthe \u2060national park and surrounding community land in southern Kenya near the Tanzanian border, providing habitat and movement routes for elephants and other wildlife beneath Mount Kilimanjaro.<\/p>\n
The \u2060area has \u200ba history of human-wildlife conflict, with elephants \u200broaming beyond protected areas into community and agricultural land, trampling crops and angering farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police have arrested four suspects in an investigation into the deaths of 18 elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem, where authorities also seized \u200bassorted substances including chemicals, the tourism and wildlife ministry said. A Kenya \u200cWildlife Service (KWS) spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that the four have since been released on bail. Preliminary laboratory results point […]<\/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":[29,32,2362],"tags":[5363,111],"class_list":["post-21864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","tag-amboseli-ecosystem","tag-kenya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21864","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=21864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21865,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21864\/revisions\/21865"}],"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=21864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}