More than 80 buffalo drowns after falling off a rock

More than 80 buffaloes have been killed after stepping on top of one another and drowning into a river, said the Namibia Environment and Tourism Department.

The Buffali were chased by lions in a neighboring Botswana when they “fell from a deep rock” into the Chobe River from the Namibian side of the border, she added in a statement.

Hundreds of buffaloes were killed in similar circumstances in the past.

In one of the worst cases around 400 died In 2018, after they encountered the river, which passes through the Botswana National Park, a major tourist attraction, known for its huge number of elephants, buffaloes and giraffes.

An employee of Kabulabula’s conservation in Namibia told the BBC that the Buffaloes flock was running away from lions to Chobe National Park.

“Every time they are persecuted by lions, they try to go to Namibia and start (trampling each other,” said MBEha Tadeus of Conservation.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Namibian environment, forestry and tourism, Ndeshipanda Hamunyela, confirmed that the animals come from Botswana, but cannot say if they are from Chobe National Park.

Hamunyela told the BBC that carcasses will be “distributed to communities in the immediate vicinity”.

In a video shared by the Namibian public operatorNBC, on their X page, residents can be seen, dividing the meat from each other near the river banks.

NBC put the number of buffaloes killed in 90, reporting that the incident happened around 5:00 local time (07:00 GMT).