Fifteen elephants found dead in southern Kenya outside the Amboseli National Park are suspected to have been poisoned by eating tomatoes that had been sprayed with pesticides on nearby farms.<\/p>\n
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) says preliminary laboratory tests found cyanide in samples taken from the animals’ carcasses.<\/p>\n
Ten of the elephants had been found with signs of paralysis and then died within two days. The other five elephants were already dead by the time they were discovered.<\/p>\n
Investigations are continuing, but for the time being wildlife officials have ruled out foul play. <\/p>\n
Seeking to reassure the public, wildlife authorities have told local media the toxic substances eaten by the elephants pose no immediate risk to humans.<\/p>\n
This incident has raised concerns about expanding farming activities near the park as elephants often stray on to farmland in search of food and water.<\/p>\n
The park and its surrounds are known as the Amboseli ecosystem, a vast area that straddles the border with Tanzania, which is famous for its wildlife.<\/p>\n
Officials say this is the first time in decades that elephant mortalities on this scale have been recorded in the region where they have successfully cracked down on poaching.<\/p>\n
The carcasses include elephants of different ages and sexes, suggesting the deaths are not limited to a single family or demographic.<\/p>\n
The KWS said the deaths had occurred over a month between 24 June and 24 July 2026. <\/p>\n
According to figures from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, which monitors the movements of the animals, there were more than 2,000 elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem as of 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifteen elephants found dead in southern Kenya outside the Amboseli National Park are suspected to have been poisoned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-719344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}