Heartbreaking images have revealed the devastating impact of Zimbabwe's brutal drought on Zimbabwe's elephant population – and experts fear there could be more deaths.
Around 160 of the gentle giants died within weeks in the country's Hwange National Park, where not a single drop of rain fell between February and November 2023.
By August, the park's animals were struggling to find food, as the lack of water also had a significant impact on the abundance of food sources and nutrition.
Some images showed collapsed elephants on the bone-dry grass, their corpses painted with the droppings of opportunistic vultures burrowing into the rough skin.
Other even more striking images showed elephant carcasses lying in a pool of water after the rains began in late November. A park spokesman claimed many of the animals died just a few hundred feet from a water source.
When the rains came, more elephant calves died because they got stuck in the mud and were unable to free themselves in their weak, starving state.
The shocking photographs highlight the harsh but unbiased brutality of Mother Nature and reveal the cruelty of drought conditions in which only the strongest survive.
A vulture can be seen standing on the head of a young elephant that has died of thirst or starvation
Carcasses littered the park, where food sources were destroyed by a complete lack of water
Within a few weeks, more than 160 elephants died in the Zimbabwe park
Other even more striking images showed elephant carcasses lying in a pool of water after the December rains began. A park spokesman claimed many of the animals died less than 100 meters from a water source
In this photo provided by IFAW, an elephant lies dead just meters from a watering hole in Hwange National Park on Tuesday, December 5, 2023
The rotting carcasses are a grisly sign of what wildlife officials and conservation groups say are the effects of climate change and the El Niño weather phenomenon
The head of conservation group Bhejane Trust, Trevor Lane, described the terrible conditions faced by animal populations in the park in a statement late last year.
“The last three months have been a terrible spectacle, with elephants too weak to carry on, falling over and waiting to die, calves that have lost their mothers and are running doomed, and the terrible smell of death hung over the park.”
“We'll never know how many died as we found carcasses deep in the bush, but probably several hundred.” Heat and food stress were the killer!
“This is nature at work, survival of the fittest.” “The fact that the rains stopped in February meant that grass growth was not fully achieved, so there was less grass nutrients available and then the trees lost their leaves in the winter,” explained he.
“What was available dried up, and combined with the fight for water and competition for water, it created a very stressful situation that led to many deaths.”
“It was almost impossible to prevent this with the resources available. 'Nature can be very harsh!' he concluded.
Another conservationist told the Guardian that at one point more than 1,800 elephants tried to drink from a single water source.
“It was terrible to see orphaned calves aimlessly waiting to die, and it is terrible to drive around and see and smell dead elephants,” they said.
Authorities warned that more people could die as forecasts suggest there will be little rain and increasing heat in parts of the southern African country, including the national park affected by the El Niño weather phenomenon
After the rain, park workers desperately try to free a weak elephant calf stuck in the mud
An elephant drinks from a scarce water source while one of the herd's calves lies dead in the background
A herd of elephants stands in the middle of the Zimbabwean bush in a desperate search for water
Lane also warned that similar drought conditions could occur in 2024.
Last year, a weather system called El Niño caused flooding across East Africa – but had the opposite effect in the south of the continent.
“We are aware that there could be an El Niño and a major drought in 2024,” he said.
“We'll see what we can do to mitigate this, but it will just be survival of the fittest – if there's another drought we'll have to go through the same thing again.”
In a desperate attempt to prevent a repeat of last year's horrific wave of deaths, Hwange Park workers are drilling boreholes in the cracked earth and installing solar-powered pumps.
This is intended to help ensure water supplies for as long as possible during drought and also serves to spread the elephants over a larger area, reducing competition for a small number of watering holes.
The rainy season in Zimbabwe reliably began in October and lasted until March. It has become more erratic in recent years, and conservationists have noted longer and more severe dry spells, which many attribute to climate change.
Elephants are an important ally in the fight against climate change in the ecosystem by spreading vegetation over long distances through dung containing plant seeds, conservationists said.
The animals enable the forest to spread, regenerate and thrive. Trees suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
“They play a far bigger role in reforestation than humans,” Lane said.
“That’s one of the reasons we fight to keep elephants alive.”