Dead Bodies Exposed Amid Melting Glaciers in Mount Everest

Tourist photographs Mt Everest. Reuters: Navesh Chitrakar, file.
Tourist photographs Mt Everest. Reuters: Navesh Chitrakar, file.
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Dead Bodies Exposed Amid Melting Glaciers in Mount Everest

Tourist photographs Mt Everest. Reuters: Navesh Chitrakar, file.
Tourist photographs Mt Everest. Reuters: Navesh Chitrakar, file.

Expedition operators are concerned at the number of climber bodies that are becoming exposed on Mount Everest as its glaciers melt. Nearly 300 mountaineers have died on the peak since the first ascent attempt and two-thirds of bodies are thought still to be buried in the snow and ice.

Bodies are being removed on the Chinese side of the mountain, to the north, as the spring climbing season starts. According to the BBC, more than 4,800 climbers have scaled the highest peak on Earth.

Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, said: "Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed. We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out."

A government officer, who worked as a liaison officer on Everest, added: "I myself have retrieved around 10 dead bodies in recent years from different locations on Everest and clearly more and more of them are emerging now."

Officials with the Expedition Operators Association of Nepal (EOAN) said they were bringing down all ropes from the higher camps of Everest and Lhotse mountains this climbing season, but dealing with dead bodies was not as easy.

They point at Nepal's law that requires government agencies' involvement when dealing with bodies and said that was a challenge.

"This issue needs to be prioritized by both the government and the mountaineering industry. If they can do it on the Tibet side of Everest, we can do it here as well,” Prresident of EOAN Dambar Parajuli said.

In 2017, the hand of a dead mountaineer appeared above the ground at Camp 1. Expedition operators said they deployed professional climbers of the Sherpa community to move the body.

The same year, another body appeared on the surface of the Khumbu Glacier. Also known as the Khumbu Icefall, this is where most dead bodies have been surfacing in recent years, mountaineers say.



10 Endangered Black Rhinos Sent from S.Africa to Mozambique

Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
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10 Endangered Black Rhinos Sent from S.Africa to Mozambique

Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)

Ten black rhinos have been moved from South Africa to Mozambique to secure breeding of the critically endangered animals that became locally extinct 50 years ago, conservationists said Thursday.

The five male and five female rhinos were transferred to Mozambique's Zinave National Park in a 48-hour road trip last week, said the Peace Parks Foundation, which took part in the translocation.

"It was necessary to introduce these 10 to make the population viable," communication coordinator Lesa van Rooyen told AFP.

The new arrivals will "secure the first founder population of black rhinos since becoming locally extinct five decades ago,” South Africa's environment ministry, which was also involved, said in a statement.

Twelve black rhinos had previously been sent from South Africa to Zinave in central Mozambique but the population was still not viable for breeding, Van Rooyen said.

Twenty-five white rhinos, which are classified as less threatened, were also translocated in various operations.

The global black rhino population dropped by 96 percent between 1970 and 1993, reaching a low of only 2,300 surviving in the wild, according to the International Rhino Foundation.

Decades of conservation efforts allowed the species to slowly recover and the population is estimated at 6,421 today.

Once abundant across sub-Saharan Africa, rhino numbers fell dramatically due to hunting by European colonizers and large-scale poaching, with their horns highly sought after on black markets particularly in Asia.

Mozambique's population of the large animals was depleted during the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1992 and pushed many people to desperate measures to "survive in very difficult circumstances", van Rooyen said.

Years of rewilding efforts have established Zinave as Mozambique’s only national park home to the "Big Five" game animals -- elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo.