The New York Times, June 12, 2007
NEW YORK — The first aerial survey of southern Sudan in 25 years has revealed vast migrating herds, rivaling those of the Serengeti plains, that have managed to survive 25 years of civil war, the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York and officials from southern Sudan were to announce Tuesday at a news conference here.
J. Michael Fay, a conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, who participated in the survey, said in a telephone interview from Chad that southern Sudan’s herds of more than a million gazelle and antelope might even surpass the Serengeti’s herds of wildebeest, making the migration the largest on Earth.
“It’s so far beyond anything you’ve ever seen you can’t believe it,” Fay said. “You think you’re hallucinating.”
Southern Sudan, an area of about 580,000 square kilometers, or 225,000 square miles, sits between the Sahara and Africa’s belt of tropical forests. Wildlife biologists have long known that its grasslands, woodlands and swamps were home to elephants, zebras, giraffes and other animals. Before the civil war, an estimated 900,000 white-eared kob (a kind of antelope) had been seen migrating there.
But in 1983 wildlife research ground to a halt with the outbreak of civil war. Rebel fighters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army battled government forces, as well as Arab militias that swept down from the north on horseback. In the next two decades, more than two million people died.
In 2005 the Sudanese government and the rebels signed an agreement, establishing the entity known as the Government of Southern Sudan.
Wildlife biologists could only wonder what happened to Sudan’s animals during the conflict. Experience has shown that wars can be devastating to wildlife. As peacetime protections collapse, poachers sweep in to kill animals for meat, horns and ivory. Armies shoot game to feed themselves.
“In places like Angola and Mozambique, the parks just got wiped out,” Fay said. In the 1990s, pilots returning from relief missions to southern Sudan told bleak stories. “People were saying that wildlife is finished there,” Paul Elkan, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Southern Sudan country program, said in a telephone interview from Nairobi. Some species, like the oryx, a long-horned antelope, were thought to have been wiped out.
But signs of hope showed up near the end of the war. Malik Marjan, a Sudanese graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, conducted a ground survey in Boma National Park. He and his colleagues saw healthy populations of white-eared kob.
Last January, Marjan joined Fay and Elkan in the first aerial survey of southern Sudan in 25 years. On their first day surveying in Boma, they flew over thousands of white-eared kob. Fay, who has flown more than 70,000 miles, or 110,000 kilometers, of aerial surveys in Africa, was taken aback. “As soon as we saw that, we said, ‘This place is insane.’ “
For the next month, Fay and his colleagues retraced the path of the last aerial surveys before the war. The white-eared kob were joined by hundreds of thousands of mongalla gazelles and tiang, a species of antelope. They formed a gigantic column that stretched 30 miles across and 50 miles long. “It was just solid animals the whole way,” Fay said.
The biologists estimated there were 1.3 million kob, tiang and gazelle in their survey area – nearly the size of roaming herds of wildebeest on the Serengeti, considered the biggest migration of mammals. But Fay and his colleagues suspected that because they were replicating prewar survey methods, their estimates were low. New methods, such as digital photography, were likely to raise their numbers.
“My personal feeling is that it’s the biggest migration on earth,” Fay said, “but we just haven’t proved it yet.”
Other animals are also thriving in parts of southern Sudan, including elephants, ostriches, lions, leopards, hippos and buffalo.
But some species are faring badly. Southern Sudan used to be home to many zebras. In the 1982 survey, scientists estimated that 20,000 were living in Boma National Park alone. The Wildlife Conservation team found no zebras in Boma, and only a few elsewhere.
The scientists also found that most species suffered in the western part of the region. In 1981, about 60,000 buffalo lived in Southern National Park. Now, Fay said, “Not one buffalo did we see.”
Geography may explain much of their results. Poachers on horseback could ride into the western part of southern Sudan, but the Nile River and a giant swamp called the Sudd proved to be an impenetrable shield protecting the eastern region of southern Sudan.
Migrating animals fared better than animals that stayed put year-round. “Their wet-season refuge is very isolated, so even if they were heavily hunted in the dry season, they would have a buffer,” Elkan said.
The survey was conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in cooperation with the Government of Southern Sudan, which is taking steps to protect its wildlife, said Major General Alfred Akwoch, undersecretary of the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife Conservation and Tourism. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army is deploying some soldiers to protect the parks.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.