Wildlife Thunders Along Despite War in Sudan

By Carl Zimmer

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. 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 by telephone 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.

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.

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.

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.

(c) 2007 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.