{"id":3253,"date":"2019-06-21T11:16:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T11:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=3253"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:22","slug":"500-vultures-die-in-botswana-after-eating-poisoned-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/06\/21\/500-vultures-die-in-botswana-after-eating-poisoned-elephants\/","title":{"rendered":"500 Vultures Die in Botswana After Eating Poisoned Elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>By France24<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than 500 endangered vultures died of poisoning after eating the carcasses of three elephants killed by poachers in Botswana, the government said in a statement.<br>A total of 537 vultures, along with two tawny eagles, were found dead at the site in the north of the African country.<br>The Botswanan wildlife and national parks department did not say when the dead vultures had been found or why the three elephants were laced with poison after being killed.<br>But poachers are known to poison carcasses to target vultures as the birds circle in the sky and help rangers to track poaching activity.<br> Most of the birds, 468 of them, were white-backed vultures, which are classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> Also among the dead were 17 white-headed vultures and 28 hooded vultures &#8212; also critically endangered.<br>&#8220;The poisoning was believed to have been caused by lacing of three poached elephant carcasses with a poisonous chemical,&#8221; the wildlife department said.<br>Teams decontaminated the area and samples were taken for laboratory analysis.<br>Conservationists last week warned of surging elephant poaching in parts of Botswana and estimated nearly 400 were killed for their ivory tusks in 2017 and 2018.<br>The country recently sparked controversy by lifting its ban on hunting, saying it would help control a booming elephant population that was damaging farmers&#8217; livelihoods.<br>In 2016, two lions and over 100 vultures in South Africa&#8217;s Kruger National Park died after eating a poisoned elephant carcass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20190620-500-vultures-die-botswana-after-eating-poisoned-elephants\">Original article: France24<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By France24 More than 500 endangered vultures died of poisoning after eating the carcasses of three elephants killed by poachers in Botswana, the government said in a statement.A total of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}