Zimbabwe poisoned elephant death toll rises to 90

The death toll of elephants poisoned by cyanide in one of Africa's largest game parks has risen to 90, the worst poaching case Zimbabwe has experienced in years, an official said Tuesday. The National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority public relations manager Caroline Washaya-Moyo told Xinhua that one month after discovering the first poisoned elephants, the number of dead elephants in the sprawling Hwange National Park continued to rise and the authorities could not say that is the end of it. "We do not know. We are still carrying out investigations," she said. Two of the eight arrested poachers were slapped with 16 year jail terms last Wednesday, with the rest of the suspects expected to stand trial soon this week. The poachers were said to have mixed highly toxic cyanide in the water holes from which elephants usually drink water during the dry season. The poaching case, the most serious in Zimbabwe in years, has jolted the government and prompted the establishment of a trust to mobilize funding for wildlife conservation. The callous act, suspected to have started in May, took long to be detected as the game park has fewer rangers due to inadequate resources. So far, three high-level ministerial delegations have visited the park to assess the situation that has since turned into an ecological disaster as an undetermined number of other game that fed on the carcasses and drank from the poisoned water holes have also died. The 14,650 square-kilometer game park, Africa's third largest wildlife sanctuary after Tanzania's Serengeti and South Africa's Kruger National Parks, has an estimated 45,000 elephants, about 40 percent of the country's elephant population. Due to the lack of funding, Hwange is patrolled by a paltry 50 rangers against a requirement of 500. Following the ecological disaster, Environment, Water and Climate Minister Saviour Kasukuwere declared war on poaching and vowed to eliminate the crime in the country's conservancies. "The war is on. It's a war which we will win. We are not going to surrender," the minister said. The national parks had also begun the process of de- contaminating most of the affected area. It had also stopped pumping water into some artificial water holes in the park to prevent elephants and other wildlife from exposure to further cyanide poisoning. Zimbabwe has experienced poaching in most of its wildlife sanctuaries for years, with the elephant and the rhino being the most targeted.