Botswana has the largest elephant population on the continent and has traditionally been seen as a safe haven for the animals. However, poaching appears to be rapidly increasing.
The landlocked southern African nation of Botswana has the largest elephant population on the continent. Despite this, it has long been one of the safest countries for elephants, having managed to avoid the levels of ivory poaching seen elsewhere in Africa.
In the study, the authors compared aerial surveys of a 36,000 square mile area, finding that while elephant populations had remained roughly stable—at around 123,000 individuals—the numbers of newer elephant carcasses had increased 596 percent between 2014 and 2018. This indicated an outbreak of poaching.
In the hotspots, the numbers of"old" carcasses—i.e., those that had been dead for more than a year—had increased by 78 percent between 2014 and 2018. "The evidence suggests that ivory poaching on the scale of hundreds of elephants per year has been occurring in northern Botswana since 2017 or possibly earlier," they said.
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