News that the recent deaths of 15 elephants may have been caused by pesticides sprayed on tomato crops surrounding Amboseli National Park has raised concerns and questions in Kenya.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said that some of the elephants that had died between 24 June and 24 July had shown signs of "partial paralysis" that pointed to poisoning from cyanide used in pesticides.<\/p>\n
But conservationists have told the BBC that, perhaps, is not the full story. Farmers we have spoken to in the area were also sceptical.<\/p>\n
"We have stayed with this wildlife for decades and have never experienced this," Daniel Nina, who represents some of the landowners in the area, told the BBC.<\/p>\n
"So that's why we are wondering why it is happening today."<\/p>\n
The tomato farms are found in the Kimana area, which is part of a corridor between Amboseli National Park and the Tsavo National Park in the south of Kenya.<\/p>\n
It is a vast area known as the Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles the border near Tanzania where more than 2,000 elephants move along in search of food and water.<\/p>\n
These farms thrive thanks to the streams from nearby Mount Kilimanjaro and supply markets in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and beyond.<\/p>\n
The 15 elephants were found dead outside the Amboseli National Park between June and July<\/p>\n
The chief vet of Kenya's Wildlife Service, Dr Isaac Lekolool, told us that they had found traces of cyanide in samples taken from the elephants' stomachs.<\/p>\n
He says that they are not ruling out deliberate poisoning but it's impossible at this stage to tell what could have killed the elephants.<\/p>\n
"It's difficult to tell because we've not seen these kind of cases before. It is almost like a one-off, and it was within a period of about a month," Lekolool said.<\/p>\n
Their working theory is that the elephants were exposed to the toxin through pesticides sprayed on nearby tomato farms.<\/p>\n
"It could be unintentional. Maybe people are trying to do some controls of pests on their crops, and that could have been maybe a source."<\/p>\n
A 2024 report by Kenyan food safety initiative Route to Food found a farmer in Kimana area using an insecticide that had an "active ingredient" that was "a chemical compound of cyanide".<\/p>\n