How supporting rangers and capacitating them to screen for disease, poisoning and poaching assisted in diagnosing a novel disease in African elephant

Zimbabwe and its neighboring countries have the largest African Savanna elephant population in the world.  Some areas have a plethora of animals and these high densities are concern for diseases, poisoning and poaching.  VFWT worked with conservation partners to train ZimParks rangers in North West Zimbabwe on differentiating elephant mortality events to determine natural disease incidents vs. wildlife crime scenes, and how to secure and document a crime scene.  This all came to fruition when there started to be a number of elephant mortality events in the region.  Through investigation and collection of samples, that were subsequently analyzed in the laboratory a novel disease  Bicaard taxon 45 was discovered to be the cause of the mortality event.  The disease had not been found in African elephant previously, and as a close relation to Pasturella multocida, was cause for concern as to how the disease would affect elephant species.