The
mass movement of at least a million antelopes - one of the greatest wildlife
spectacles in the world - is endangered by South Sudan's bloodshed.
The
landscape of South Sudan has turned a verdant green under the annual rains,
beginning one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth. At least one
million antelopes are now converging on a vast savannah east of the White Nile.
This
mass movement of two species - the tiang and the white-eared kob – rivals the
wildebeest herds of the Serengeti as the biggest migration of land animals in
the world.
During
South Sudan’s long war for independence from Khartoum, no outsider could be
sure whether this migration was still happening. After the fighting ended in
2005, aerial surveys discovered that vast herds had somehow survived – and the
antelopes were still travelling the same routes they had used for millennia.
Yet South Sudan is now enduring another war and its unique migration is
threatened all over again. At present, about a million white-eared kobs are
moving westwards from their dry season habitat in Boma National Park to the
plains near the White Nile. They will be joined in Bandingilo National Park by
125,000 tiangs, which migrate southwards from their dry season refuge in the
swamps of the Sudd region.
“This
is one of the great wonders of the world,” said Paul Elkan, the head of the
South Sudan programme for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “The country’s
wildlife is one of those special features of South Sudan which still arouses
some hope.”
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