Fifteen elephants died near Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya between June 24 and July 24, 2026. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has confirmed that cyanide poisoning was the cause. Lab tests on tissue samples from the elephant carcasses found traces of the chemical, KWS director general Erustus Kanga told Citizen TV. Results were publicly reported on July 29.

The poisoning traces back to tomato farms. Isaac Lekolool, head of veterinary and capture services at KWS, told Citizen TV that the stomach of one elephant from the herd was full of tomatoes. Combined with the cyanide found in the carcass samples, this led investigators to agricultural chemicals rather than disease or poaching. KWS had announced on July 28 that 10 of the elephants showed signs of partial paralysis before dying.

Kimana town is a major tomato-producing area. Researchers at the Route to Food Initiative had already documented that cyanide-based chemicals were being used on crops there. Cyanide is a highly toxic compound sometimes used in farming to kill pests in the soil. When elephants raid farm fields and eat treated tomatoes, they swallow the poison directly. It works fast, shutting down the body's ability to use oxygen, which causes the paralysis KWS described.

The Amboseli ecosystem, which includes the national park and nearby conservancies, is home to more than 1,600 elephants. The 15 deaths are about one percent of that population, all within a single month and a small geographic area. The International Fund for Animal Welfare called the deaths "deeply alarming." Benson Leyian, CEO of the Big Life Foundation, a conservation group working around Amboseli, has been part of the local response. The Associated Press reported the suspected link between the deaths and cyanide-contaminated tomatoes from nearby farms.

The broader context here is the tension between farming and wildlife conservation in Kenya. Amboseli's elephants roam across an unfenced landscape that includes community land, ranches, and small farms. As irrigated farming has expanded in areas around Kimana, the space between crop fields and elephant migration routes has shrunk. Elephants follow the same paths they have used for centuries between water sources and grazing areas. Those paths now cut directly through cultivated fields.

The Route to Food Initiative's earlier documentation of cyanide use on Kimana-area tomato crops means the risk was known before these deaths. Whether any action was taken after that documentation is unclear from available reporting. Kenya's pesticide control is handled by the Pest Control Products Board, and KWS only has authority inside national parks and reserves, not over farms. So regulating what chemicals farmers can use near wildlife areas falls to a different set of agencies.

This is different from the ivory poaching crisis that has shaped Kenya's elephant conservation efforts for the past two decades. There is no sign the elephants were deliberately targeted. The mechanism is environmental: a toxic farming chemical entered the food chain because elephants ate crops treated with it. Conservation groups including IFAW and the Big Life Foundation have called this event a warning about how current land use around Amboseli may not be sustainable. The number of deaths, how fast the poisoning worked, and how concentrated it was in one area all point to a risk that could grow if chemical-intensive farming keeps expanding into the paths elephants travel.