Botswana: Lab Tests to Solve Mystery of Hundreds of Dead Elephants

Botswana is investigating "completely unprecedented" deaths of hundreds of elephants since May.

The government said three laboratories in Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe would be asked to "process the samples taken from the dead elephants".

More than 350 elephant carcasses have been spotted in Botswana's Okavango Delta in the past two months.

No-onknows why the animals are dying in Botswana - home to a third of Africa's declining elephant population.

In a report prepared for the government, conservation organisation Elephants Without Borders (EWB http://elephantswithoutborders.org) said its aerial surveys showed that elephants of all ages appeared to be dying, according to Reuters.

Dr Niall McCann, of the UK-based charity National Park Rescue (www.nationalparkrescue.org), earlier

this week told the BBC that local conservationists fi rst alerted the government in early May, after they undertook a fl ight over the delta. "They spotted 169 in a three-hour fl ight," he said. "To be able to see and count that many in a three-hour fl ight was extraordinary. "A month later, further investigations identifi ed many more carcasses, bringing the total to over 350." "This is totally unprecedented in terms of numbers of elephants dying in a single event unrelated to drought," he added.

Back in May, Botswana's government ruled out poaching as a reason - noting the tusks had not been removed, according to Phys.org.

There are other things which point to something other than poaching. "It is only elephants that are dying and nothing else," Dr McCann said. "If it was cyanide used by poachers, you would expect to see other deaths." Dr McCann has also tentatively ruled out natural anthrax poisoning, which killed at least 100 elephants in Botswana last year. But they have been unable to rule out either poisoning or disease. The way the animals appear to be dying - many dropping on their faces - and sightings of other elephants walking in circles points to something potentially attacking their neurological systems, Dr McCann said. Either way, without knowing the source, it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a disease crossing into the human population - especially if the cause is in either the water sources or the soil. Dr McCann points to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is believed to have started in animals. "Yes, it is a conservation disaster - but it also has the potential to be a public health crisis," he said. & www.bbc.com/news/ world-africa-53273361 Image credit: Elephants Without Borders,

ITelkom executives use the Loon service for the fi rst time in Radad, Kenya

Alphabet’s Loon division (https://loon.com/solutions/ mobile-network-expansion), which uses fl oating balloons to provide internet, has today launched its fi rst commercial service in Kenya. In a blog post announcing the news (https://medium.com/loonfor-all/loon-is-live-in-kenya-259d81c75a7a), Loon’s CEO Alastair Westgarth said that the 4G LTE service will be provided to Telkom Kenya subscribers via a fl eet of around 35 balloons, covering an area of around 50,000 square kilometers across western and central areas of the country, including its capital, Nairobi.

It’s a signifi cant step for Loon, which started as a moonshot project in Alphabet’s X division before being spun out into its own company in 2018. The company’s balloons have already provided internet connectivity in the wake of disasters, like in Puerto Rico in 2017 after Hurricane Maria (www. theverge.com/2017/10/20/16512178/alphabet-project-loonpuerto-rico-lte-balloons-disaster-relief-connectivity) or in Peru after an earthquake in 2019 (https://medium. com/loon-for-all/loon-balloons-are-now-connecting-usersin-peru-8daa32db32b7), but never as part of a largescale commercial deployment.

Loon has been testing its balloons in Kenya for several months now (www.theverge. com/2020/4/22/21231205/alphabet-loon-internetballoons-commercial-launch-kenya), and it says that in that time, it’s already connected 35,000 unique users to the internet, “although most didn’t realize it.” The company says that it achieved a downlink speed of 18.9Mbps back in June, along with an uplink speed of 4.74Mbps and a latency of 19ms, and that it’s tested a range of services — including email, voice and video calls, web browsing, WhatsApp, and YouTube viewing — on its service.

The company’s balloons (or “fl ight vehicles” as it calls them) hover at a height of roughly 20 km, analyzing the weather to ride around on