At least 100 elephants have died in Zimbabwe's largest national park due to a lack of water, an animal rights organization said on Monday.
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“The prolonged dry season has dried up once abundant watering holes in Hwange National Park into mud puddles,” the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said in a statement.
“At least 100 elephants have been reported dead due to lack of water,” he added.
Hwange National Park covers 14,600 km2 and is home to around 45,000 elephants.
“The park is equipped with 104 boreholes that are powered by solar energy, but management says they are not enough to withstand the extreme temperatures that dry up watering holes and force wild animals to travel long distances to find water and food,” he adds to IFAW.
Last September, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority reported that “many animals” had left the national park to search for water and food in neighboring Botswana.
The expected animal deaths “must be seen as a symptom of the complex and profound problems that threaten the conservation of the region's natural resources and are exacerbated by climate change,” said Phillip Kuvawoga, an IFAW expert.
More than 200 elephants died in Zimbabwe in 2019, according to IFAW, which warns of this “recurring phenomenon”.
Conservationists say Zimbabwe is home to around 100,000 elephants, the second largest pachyderm population in the world and twice the theoretical capacity of its parks.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified southern Africa as a region at particular risk from extreme heat and reduced rainfall due to global warming.