Mass Killing of Elephants in Tsavo East- Kenya

It was confirmed that eleven elephants were slaughtered by ivory poachers in Tsavo East National Park in Kenya. After this mass killing, their tusks were chopped off and taken which remarked one of the worst single episodes of poaching in Kenya in recent years.

Kenya Wildlife Services and other conservation fraternity, demand an immediate strong hand response to hunt down those responsible for this latest elephantcide using dogs, foot and vehicle patrols and aerial surveillance. It was the entire family of eleven elephants including the young ones that was wiped out by a hail of bullets before their tusks were hacked out of the carcasses in TsavoEast National Park. Just like any other African country, Kenya has been besieged by increasingly wily and ruthless poachers due to the soaring demand for ivory in Asia. Because of this, more Elephants and Rhinos on the African continent have been poached and killed in order to get money (a pound of ivory can now fetch more than $1,000 in Beijing)

An elephant poached in Tsavo East

According to one researcher in Kenya named Iain Douglas-Hamilton said that he has never seen anything as bad as the poaching of these elephants since 1980’s. He has been studying Elephants for decades and he concluded that if no measure is taken into consideration, Africa is right back where it was during the 1980s as far as poaching is concerned. It’s also reported that several African rebel groups are now using ivory to finance their mayhem, and some American-backed African militaries have also been implicated in wiping out elephants. Much of this ivory is turned into bookmarks, chopsticks and other trinkets.

A recent census on elephant and Gravy Zebra in the north of Kenya has shown a significant decline in numbers and a wave of rhino killings on private conservancies and in parks has resulted in a public private partnership in Laikipia where aircraft and helicopters are now made available by private airlines to take a rapid deployment unit on site as soon as reports of gunshots or suspicious vehicle movement are reported.