OWN CORRESPONDENT, Hoedspruit | Sunday 11.00pm.
A STUDY of bovine tuberculosis has begun in the Kruger National Park, KNP director David Mabunda announced on Sunday.
The survey aims to find out more about the disease, its geographic spread through the park and the risk to animals. Buffalo are the carriers of BTB and other animals can contract it from contact with infected beasts.
The survey will be conducted by KNP staff, the animal health directorate, the Agricultural Research Council and the universities of Pretoria, California and Davis, as well as the Smithsonian Institute.
Mabunda admitted that he misled the public when he denied last week that lions in the park were dying of the disease. However, he said, the information should not have been given to the press, and said that action would be taken against those people who had done so.
Dr Johan Krige, a director of animal health at the Departmnet of Agriculture, had told the Sunday Times that lions were “dying like flies” from the disease.
Senior park vetinarian Dr Douw Grobler said in The Citizan last week that “no lion has died of TB in the park yet”.
Hoever, the Sunday Times quoted Dr Kobus du Toit, chairman of the SA Veterinary Association’s wildlife group, as saying: “The lions are dying in front of our eyes.”
Mabunda later admitted that post mortems showed infected lions in the park had died, and were dying, of BTB.
BTB was first found in KNP buffalo in 1991 and since then up to 89% of herds in the southern part of the park have been infected. However, herds in the north are relatively unaffected. A total of 600 buffalo have been removed to monitor the disease, Mabunda said.
According to a report by state veterinarians, some 70 of 80 lions tested in the southern area of the park were infected with the disease.
Mabunda said the “spill-over” from diseased buffalo to other species was also under investigation. Besides lions, kudu, baboons, leopard and cheetah have been found to be infected.