It is estimated that the death of about 70% is “about a month ago, while the remaining 30% seems more recent, between one day and two weeks”, according to the director of the NGO Michael Chase, author of the report.
“It was observed that the live elephants were very weak, lethargic, and some disoriented and with difficulty in moving,” he added, adding that males and females of all ages seemed to be affected by a “mysterious disease”.
“An elephant was observed to walk in circles and unable to change direction, despite the encouragement of other members of the herd,” he said.
The Ministry of Tourism said at the end of May it was investigating the mysterious deaths of ten elephants in the Okavango Delta.
Located between Zambia, Namibia and South Africa, Botswana is home to around 130,000 free elephants, a third of its known African population.
In 2018, the EWB sparked controversy by claiming to have identified 90 elephant carcasses, a situation described at the time by Michael Chase as the “most serious poaching episode in Africa”.
The Botswana government then strongly denied these figures, arguing that the NGO had in fact counted only 53 elephant carcasses, most of which had died “due to natural causes or conflicts between man and wildlife”.
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