The Times of Zambia (Ndola)

Posted to the web March 1, 2006


ZAMBIA Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) officers have shot one of the two elephants that killed three people in Livingstone on Monday.

ZAWA public relations officer, Maureen Mwape, confirmed in an interview yesterday that the officers had killed one of the mammals and were still hunting the second one to safeguard the lives of residents.

Ms Mwape said it was important to kill an elephant whenever it killed human beings because once it had tasted human blood it would continue killing people.

She said the remaining elephant had one tusk and had become hostile to humans beings because it had probably been wounded.

ZAWA in Livingstone also warned that more attacks by elephants on human beings were possible because of the greener vegetation which had not seen in the past due to years of drought.

Meanwhile, police in Livingstone have picked up three bodies of people killed in unknown circumstances.

Southern Province police chief, Chewe Bowa, confirmed in an interview yesterday that the bodies had been taken to Batoka Hospital mortuary.

Livingstone General Hospital spokesperson Loveness Chikumbi said three bodies had been brought into the hospital mortuary.

Mr Bowa said one body of a man was found in Kabuyu area near Senkobo at about 01:00hours. Another body was picked up from Malota township on Monday night.

According to the information collected by the police, the Malota body was identified as that of Bishop Mufaya, 46.

Mr Bowa said Bishop Mufaya had swollen feet but no marks on his body to warrant suspicion of murder.


He also had on him a clinic record in the form of a book.

Details of the third body were yet to be established.

Kathi,
thanks for posting these articles. i find them very interesting.

Kathi:

I join with degoins in complimenting you for posting this article.

I would like to add that I wish you could get the mainstream media in the US to pick up the story. It might do a lot to help make the non hunting US public understand that Nature can be unrelenting sometimes -and that even those awful "sport" hunters are not necessarily shooting at Bambi.

quote:

Ms Mwape said it was important to kill an elephant whenever it killed human beings because once it had tasted human blood it would continue killing people.

Carnivorous elephant? This whole "kill it before it kills again" argument has always seemed nonsensical to me, insofar as elephant are concerned.

Generally, unwounded, healthy elephant only kill people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time or who somehow provoke the attack.

Then revenge takes over and the people kill the elephant. Like that hundred pounder that was killed by game scouts in southern Tanzania last year after it had killed a boy. Of course, the boy had been above the elephant in a tree beating it with a stick.