Tsavo Mobile Veterinary Unit for April 2020

Published on the 15th of May, 2020

The rains continued in April but with less intensity than in the previous month. Due to plentiful water sources and available browse, veterinary cases within the ecosystem remained low, with the Mobile Vet Unit being called upon to handle five cases.

These cases included treatment of an injured elephant bull with a deep wound to his rear and coming to the aid of a zebra with an arrow stuck in its neck, spotted near to the airstrip at SWT’s Field Headquarters. An autopsy was carried out on an elephant bull carcass. Sadly the case load this month included a number of other postmortems for the SWT/KWS Tsavo Mobile Vet Unit, with the death of a lion, a leopard and a jackal being investigated due to a suspected poisoning incident and another lion being killed in an instance of human-wildlife conflict. Headed by KWS Vet Dr Poghon, the team also examined a number of wildlife products confiscated from suspects and produced expert reports to assist in prosecutions against wildlife crime.