As another exam­ple of how bad the drought is in Kenya, now even the ele­phants are dying. 40 ele­phants have died in the last two months, and there are no traces of dis­ease found in them.

For more on the droughts effects on Kenya’s nature, we go to this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle hosted at Google News, writ­ten by Katharine Houreld.

The bones of the ele­phants bleach­ing under a relent­less African sun under­score how bad the drought is. It has killed hun­dreds of cat­tle and many acres (hectares) of crops, threat­en­ing the lives of peo­ple who depended on them for food. There are no tal­lies of deaths among peo­ple attrib­uted to the drought but the U.N.‘s World Food pro­gram said recently that 3.8 mil­lion Kenyans are at risk and need emer­gency food aid.

Zool­o­gist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who founded Save the Ele­phants, said the drought is the worst he has seen in 12 years and poses a seri­ous threat to the large and majes­tic ani­mals, whose strik­ing sil­hou­ettes roam­ing Kenya’s broad savan­nah help draw 1 mil­lion tourists each year.

“It may be related to cli­mate change, and the effect is ele­phants, par­tic­u­larly the young and the old, have began to die,” he told AP Tele­vi­sion News on Mon­day. “When they do not have enough food they also seem to be vul­ner­a­ble to dis­ease, their immune sys­tem weak­ens and they catch all sorts of diseases.”

Instead of majes­tic, many ele­phants are pitiable.

Ele­phants, which have no preda­tors, must roam widely to get their daily ration of as much as 200 liters (52 gal­lons) of water and about 300 kilo­grams (660 pounds) of grass, leaves and twigs. But the water is dis­ap­pear­ing and the grass is all but gone.

In the Sam­buru National Reserve, APTN video showed a baby ele­phant appear­ing to strug­gle to extract mois­ture from a dry riverbed. It repeat­edly drew its empty trunk up to its mouth. Along the banks of a river in the shadow of Mount Kenya, whose glac­i­ers have been shrink­ing, an elephant’s car­cass lay in the bak­ing sun. A dirt field was lit­tered with ele­phant bones.

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