Fifty-two hippos have died of anthrax in a western Ugandan game park since the beginning of the year.
The disease killed 250 in the same park in the second half of 2004, Deputy Tourism Minister Jovino Akaki Ayumu said on Thursday.
Wildlife officials need 246-million shillings ($144 000) to buy drugs to vaccinate animals around Queen Elizabeth National Park, dispose of the hippo carcasses floating on the park’s water bodies, and carry out awareness projects for people living near the park, getting them to stop eating hippo meat.
Anthrax, caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium, which can stay for decades in the soil and form toxic spores that kill the animals once eaten, struck the park bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo last July.
The park has about between 4 500 and 5 000 hippos, roughly half of the national total. — Sapa-DPA