BOTSWANA — The carcasses of 87 elephants have been found near the Okavango Delta wildlife sanctuary in Botswana.<br /><br />It appears the animals were killed for their tusks, reports the BBC.<br /><br />Elephants Without Borders, a conservation nonprofit organization, discovered the dead elephants while conducting an aerial survey.<br /><br />The report says the poachers tried to hide the massacre by concealing the carcasses with drying bushes.<br /><br />The organization believes the carcasses were poached as the skulls of the elephants were chopped off, presumably to remove the tusks.<br /><br />Botswana has the largest elephant population in the world, and in the midst of its anti-poaching unit being disarmed, poachers have begun to breach its borders.<br /><br />According to data from the Great Elephant Census, a third of the elephants in Africa are estimated to have been killed in the last decade alone.<br /><br />The organization claims the incident is the largest scale of poaching deaths ever seen in Africa.
