Poachers in Zimbabwe murder 300 elephants and other safari animals with cyanide as poaching trade soars-UK Telegraph

.
10/20/13, “Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide,” UK Telegraph, Peta Thornycroft, and Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

“Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe’s biggest nature reserve – three times the original estimate – as new photos show the scale of the slaughter.”

“Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned.

The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country’s largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. 

Pictures taken by the hunters, which have been obtained exclusively by The Telegraph, reveal horrific scenes. Parts of the national park, whose more accessible areas are visited by thousands of tourists each year, can be seen from the air to be littered with the deflated corpses of elephants, often with their young calves dead beside them, as well as those of other animals. 

There is now deep concern that the use of cyanide – first revealed in July, but on a scale that has only now emerged – represents a new and particularly damaging technique
in the already soaring poaching trade. 
.

Zimbabwean authorities said that 90 animals were killed this way. But the hunters who captured these photographs say they have conducted a wider aerial survey and counted the corpses of more than 300.”...via Free Republic


.