Tourist killed by elephant in Zimbabwe's Mana Pools nature reserve
A South African tourist died in a Zimbabwe game park on Wednesday after being trampled by an elephant, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZIMPARKS) said Thursday.
A 71-year-old South African tourist was trampled to death by an elephant “in full view” of his son. Michael Bernard Walsh, a veterinarian from Cape Town, was a “loyal tourist” who had been visiting Mana Pools “almost every year” for the past 35 years.
ZIMPARKS spokesperson Tinashe Farawo said Michael Bernard Walsh (71) was killed while taking an unguided tour with his son in Mana Pools National Park in the north of Zimbabwe.
The two had walked about 40 meters from where they had parked their car when they encountered the elephants, with one of them charging at them, Farawo said. For some unknown reason an elephant bull charged from about 120 meters away and seized the man and killed him, the organization said in a statement.
The son managed to escape and reach the car while Walsh could not outrun the elephant which trampled him to death.
"We allow people to take unguided tours in our parks and in this instance, the man was walking with his son when they met an elephant which charged at them.
"Unfortunately, maybe due to advanced age, the man could not escape and was trampled by the elephant," Farawo said.
“We are extremely concerned because two people have been killed in one week alone,” he said, referring to an earlier fatality in which an anti-poaching coordinator with a conservation group was trampled to death by an elephant in Victoria Falls in western Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s national parks and environmental groups are reporting increasing cases of conflict between humans and wildlife in recent years.
More than 40 people have died from such conflicts in parks and other rural areas in Zimbabwe so far this year. Zimbabwe has an estimated 85 000 elephants and neighboring Botswana has more than 130 000.
The two countries have the world’s largest elephant populations. The two southern African countries say they are struggling to cope with the booming numbers of elephants and are pressing to be allowed to sell their stockpile of ivory tusks that have been seized from poachers.
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