Kenya lost 396 elephants this year to diverse causes, a report by the Kenya Wildlife Service said.
The agency in a statement said this is a 30 per cent drop in elephant mortality compared to 727 that died in 2017.
“Wildlife deaths result from many causes, including disease, drought, drowning, territorial fights, old age, human-wildlife conflicts, accidents and poaching,” KWS acting director Charles Musyoki said.
Sixty-one jumbos, the statement indicated, died in the Maasai Mara ecosystem this year. Of the number, 38 per cent or 23 elephants died of natural causes, 16 per cent ( 10 deaths) were due to human-wildlife conflict and seven per cent (four) were poached.
“Thirty-nine per cent ( 24 jumbos) died from causes that were not immediately established since the carcasses were detected when they were petrified and extensively scavenged,” the director said.
Musyoki said this year, two elephants in the Mara died from ingesting carbamate after straying into farms, which had been sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. “There has been an increase in cases of human-wildlife conflict in the Mara ecosystem due to change in land use, which is not compatible with wildlife conservation,” he said.
The director said the national elephant population has remained healthy despite the deaths, with a current estimate of 35,000 elephants. This, according to the agency, is a 119 per cent increase in population over a period of 29 years from 16,000 in 1989.
“The Mara ecosystem elephants have increased from 1,000 in 1983 to the 2,493 now, translating to an increase of 149 per cent in 35 years,” Musyoki said.
He dismissed as misleading a previous report by the Mara Elephant Project claiming that 26 elephants had died from poisoning.
MEP in a report released on December 14, said 26 elephants had died in Maasai Mara in three months, 11 of them may have been poisoned.
Preliminary investigations indicate some of the dead elephants were poisoned with cyanide.
But Musyoki appealed to the public to always seek accurate population information, including data on mortality from the agency.