At the beginning of this week on Monday, a fully grown male elephant was found dead within the Mweya Peninsula of the renowned Queen Elizabeth National Park of Uganda.
Jossy Muhangi The Public Relations Manager of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) said that the carcass of this dead elephant which was alleged to be 35 years old was discovered lying close to a ground transformer and the electrical cables attached were attached to an electricity pole close by.
Mr. Muhangi went on to say that that they also discovered that the wire-mesh fence that was surrounding this ground transformer, just a couple of meters from the Queen Elizabeth National Park Visitor’s Information Centre, was found smashed possibly by this very large animal as it was attempting to make its way into that enclosure. Game rangers who were on their routine patrol managed to discover this dead elephant.
The Uganda wildlife Authority immediately called the authority in charge of managing and distributing electricity in the country – UMEME who immediately temporarily turned off the electricity power in that area to enable the park management remove the carcass from that spot. Veterinary experts within Queen Elizabeth National Park are still carrying out a postmortem.
Elephants are among the most loved animals by holidaymakers who take Safaris in Uganda unfortunately this was very bad news to the tourism fraternity of Uganda and well-wishers across the globe.
In just less than 4 years, this is the third unfortunate case of deadly electrocution after previous cases elephants within Katunguru as well as in the Fig tree regions of Rubirizi district.
For more information about Queen Elizabeth National Park, please visit http://gorillatrekking.org/queen-elizabeth-national-park-uganda