JOHANNESBURG (AP) – South African officials say poachers have killed 19 elephants so far in 2015 in the country’s biggest national park, whose elephant population had largely been spared attacks by poaching syndicates until this year.
South Africa’s national parks service said in a statement Thursday that 12 of the elephants killed in Kruger National Park this year were poached in September and October. Poachers are already killing record levels of rhinos in the park.
Officials had feared that the widespread slaughter of elephants elsewhere in Africa could eventually threaten Kruger park, which has been vulnerable to poachers who enter through the border with neighboring Mozambique.
Kruger park reported the first confirmed elephant poaching in more than a decade in May 2014, and the toll of poached elephants for that year was two.
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