She said Sabah has lost 21 elephants since the start of 2019 and urged all stakeholders to work together to end the senseless killing of the beast.

“Yet another elephant death, not even two weeks after the last one was found in a plantation in Beluran. I am totally at a loss for words on the spate of elephant deaths that occurred in Sabah this year.

“It has not even been two weeks since we received reports of an adult male elephant being found dead with its tusks removed in Beluran.

“We are now faced with yet another elephant death, this time in Kinabatangan,” she said in a statement after a briefing from the Sabah Wildlife Department today.

Sabah is now left with only a single female rhino and is looking to Indonesia for help in its reproduction programme.

A post-mortem report showed the elephant found dead in Kinabatangan on Sunday had its front toes cut off. Only about 30% of the torso was found intact.

The department also said that the dead elephant was probably a six-footer adult bull elephant and had been dead for more than a week.

The whole head, with tusks, was missing. Where the incident happened could not be ascertained as the carcass had been carried down the river.

“This is really very disheartening news for me. This is not good for this species to survive. If this carries on, we might be looking at another extinction of a large mammal in Sabah.

“We must not let this happen. I will not let this happen.

“We need to work together with all stakeholders to make sure we do not let the elephant go the same way the rhinos did,” said Liew, who is the Sabah tourism, culture and environment minister.

Towards this end, Liew welcomed the involvement of the police para-military unit, Tiger Platoon, to assist the Wildlife Department to stop the senseless killing of the elephants.

There are an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 elephants left in Sabah.