<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/25/scientists-discover-why-dozens-of-endangered-elephants-dropped-dead>
"In May and June 2020, the death of 350 elephants in Botswana’s Okavango delta
baffled conservationists and sparked global speculation about what had caused
it. Elephants of all ages and both sexes were affected, with many walking in
circles before dying suddenly, collapsing on their faces. Two months later, 35
more elephants died in north-western Zimbabwe.
At the time, the deaths in Botswana were attributed to an unspecified
cyanobacterial toxin, government officials said, and no further details were
published.
But tests on the elephants that died in Zimbabwe have finally come back and
shown the cause was a little-known bacterium called Pasteurella Bisgaard taxon
45, which resulted in septicaemia, or blood poisoning.
The bacterial infection has not previously been linked to elephant deaths,
according to the paper published in the Nature Communications journal.
Researchers believe it could have been the same one responsible for the deaths
in neighbouring countries.
“This represents an important conservation concern for elephants in the largest
remaining meta-population of this endangered species,” researchers wrote in the
paper. It was written by an international team of researchers from the Victoria
Falls Wildlife Trust, the University of Surrey, laboratories in South Africa
and the UK government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).
African savanna elephants are declining by 8% a year, primarily due to
poaching, with 350,000 remaining in the wild. The paper suggests that
infectious diseases should be added to the list of pressures they are facing."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
