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.
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.
“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.
Their working theory is that the elephants were exposed to the toxin through pesticides sprayed on nearby tomato farms.
“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.”
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”.
Wangunyu Njuguna, the author of the report, said that despite being illegal in Kenya, some toxic agrochemicals were smuggled through the border with Tanzania.
“The biggest problem is we’re not enforcing similar standards in the region,” Njuguna said. “There is no-one checking what I go and buy across the border, so I can just go buy anything and walk through the border and no-one stops me.”
Highly hazardous substances are common on Kenyan farms and some have been linked to serious diseases.
While regulations against illegal agrochemicals exist, there is weak enforcement and little attention paid to how they can affect animals.