Anthrax kills fifty hippos in the DRC's Virunga National Park.
The administrator of the Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo said Tuesday that at least 50 hippos and other huge animals have been killed by anthrax poisoning and have been seen floating along a key river that feeds one of Africa's largest lakes.
The director of Virunga Park, Emmanuel -De Merode, stated that tests confirmed anthrax poisoning and that buffalo had also been killed. The exact cause of the poisoning was still unknown. The park posted pictures of the hippopotamuses, which are either ensnared in the greenery on the muddy banks of the Ishasha River or still on their sides and backs.
After poaching and other forms of violence reduced the park's hippos population from more than 20,000 in 2006 to fewer than a few hundred, the park has made efforts in recent decades to restore the population. The park suffers a significant loss as a result of the fatalities. There are currently 1,200 hippos in the park.
When the dead animals began to show up along the river, which forms Congo's boundary with Uganda and passes through a territory controlled by rebel rebels, around five days ago, park guards realized something was off.
Most of the time, soil-dwelling bacteria are the ones that cause the deadly disease anthrax. Inhaling anthrax spores from polluted soil, plants, or water can infect wild animals.
The Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation issued a statement on Tuesday cautioning locals to boil water from local sources before consuming and to stay away from wildlife in the region.
De Merode says that a team was on the scene and tried to get the hippos out of the water and bury them, but it was hard because they didn't have excavators. De Merode stated to Reuters, "The lack of access and logistics makes it challenging." "We can stop the disease from spreading by burying them with caustic soda."
Locals saw more corpses at Lake Edward, where the river flows north.
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Thomas Kambale, a leader of Nyakakoma's civil society, told Reuters, "There are more than 25 hippopotamus bodies floating in the waters of the lake, from Kagezi to Nyakakoma." He was referring to the lake's waters. Virunga is a vast expanse of deep forests, glaciers and volcanos, with more species of birds, reptiles, and mammals than any other protected area in the world.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, when there were civil wars, it has been at the center of militia activity.