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Eight critically endangered black rhinos are dead in Kenya following an attempt to move them to a national park of hundreds of kilometers away, the Kenyan government said on Friday, calling the toll "unprecedented" in more than a decade of such transfers.
Preliminary investigations of salt poisoning in the new home, the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife said in a statement. It is the continuing movement of other rhinos and the surviving ones are being closely monitored.
Losing the rhinos is "a complete disaster," said prominent Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect. Conservationists in Africa, Asia, Asia, the United States
Tsavo East National Park in Nairobi, Kenya Wildlife Service.
"Disciplinary action will definitely be taken" if an investigation into the deaths indicates negligence by agency staff, the Wildlife Ministry said.
"Moving rhinos is complicated," says Ms. Kahumbu in a statement. "Rhino translocations also have major welfare considerations and I believe that they suffer from these diseases before they die."
Transporting wildlife is a strategy used by conservationists to help build up, or even bring back, animal populations.
In May, six black rhinos were moved from South Africa to Chad, restoring the species to the country in north-central Africa, nearly half a century after it was wiped out there.
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