BOTSWANA — The carcasses of 87 elephants have been found near the Okavango Delta wildlife sanctuary in Botswana.

It appears the animals were killed for their tusks, reports the BBC.

Elephants Without Borders, a conservation nonprofit organization, discovered the dead elephants while conducting an aerial survey.

The report says the poachers tried to hide the massacre by concealing the carcasses with drying bushes.

The organization believes the carcasses were poached as the skulls of the elephants were chopped off, presumably to remove the tusks.

Botswana has the largest elephant population in the world, and in the midst of its anti-poaching unit being disarmed, poachers have begun to breach its borders.

According to data from the Great Elephant Census, a third of the elephants in Africa are estimated to have been killed in the last decade alone.

The organization claims the incident is the largest scale of poaching deaths ever seen in Africa.