The great migration

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.

By David Blair, Tuesday 27 October 2015

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.”

Read on …

New effort to save South Sudan’s elephants

Security issues still plaguing wildlife
July 2013. South Sudan has launched an effort to save its remaining elephants, probably numbering just 5,000 now compared with more than 10 times that number 30 years ago.
With expert assistance from the Wildlife Conservation Society and funding from USAID, South Sudan's Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism (MWCT) has ramped up efforts to protect its last elephants by fitting individual animals with GPS collars for remote tracking, a critical practice in the fight against ivory poachers.

Tracking collared elephants
In late May and early June, participants from WCS and MWCT succeeded in collaring elephants to track and monitor the majority of South Sudan's remaining populations, which collectively are estimated to total fewer than 5,000 elephants, down from the 80,000 thought to inhabit the region in the 1960s-70s. Elephant herds in South Sudan were decimated during years of civil war and the survivors are under increasing threat due to insecurity and an increase in ivory poaching. The situation has been made worse by the presence of rebel groups in the sub-region, including the Lord's Resistance Army, which have poached elephants and trafficked ivory as means of sustaining their operations, according to confirmed reports.

The GPS/satellite tracking effort is part of a USAID/WCS funded elephant monitoring and protection program launched in 2009, an initiative that also includes aerial surveillance from planes, land-based anti-poaching patrols, and intelligence-led enforcement.

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New Genus of Bat Discovered: Fluffy, Badger-Colored Mammal Found in Sudan

Catherine Griffin

First Posted: Apr 09, 2013 01:21 PM EDT

A new genus of bat has been discovered in South Sudan. The fluffy, black and white striped mammal was spotted in the Bangangai Game Reserve during a mission to conduct field research and improve conservation efforts.

At first, researchers believed that the bat was actually the same as one originally captured in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1939. Named Glauconycteris superba, this bat also possesses the intricate black and white markings that the new one does. Yet after studying the new specimen closely, researchers kept finding more and more dissimilarities.

"After careful analysis, it is clear that it doesn't belong in the genus that it's in right now," said DeeAnn Reeder, one of the researchers who first discovered the new bat, in a news release. "Its cranial characters, its wing characters, its size, the ears--literally everything you look at doesn't fit. It's so unique that we need to create a new genus."

That's just what they did. The researchers proposed that the new bat should be put into the genus Niumbaha, which means "rare" or "unusual" in Zande, the language of the Azande people who live near where the bat was first captured.

"To me, this discovery is significant because it highlights the biological importance of South Sudan and hints that this new nation has many natural wonders yet to be discovered," said Matt Rice, FFI's South Sudan country director, in a news release. "South Sudan is a country with much to offer and much to protect."

Bats are currently experiencing a huge decline in numbers. In the U.S., white-nose syndrome has decimated bat populations. The fungus-associated disease causes hibernating bats to fly outside during the winter when there are no insects available. Eventually, the bats starve to death. A similar fungus has also been discovered in Europe, which could mean that issue could eventually impact bats globally.

This latest finding, though, reveals that there are still more bats to be discovered. The details of the new bat are published in the journal ZooKeys.

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/6127/20130409/new-genus-bat-discovered-fluffy-badger-colored-mammal-found-sudan.htm

South Sudan's elephants face extinction: experts

Elephant, giraffe and zebra in the world's newest nation South Sudan could soon be extinct due to rampant poaching and trafficking, conservation experts warned Tuesday.

Ironically, animals in South Sudan's vast wildernesses had been largely protected by almost five decades of civil war, despite poaching by rebels.

The war stifled development and preserved the largest intact savannah in East Africa, according to the United States-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

But war also left the fledgling nation awash with guns, and in the years since a 2005 peace deal, increasingly organised armed groups are trafficking ivory and killing animals for food.

The elephant population, estimated at 130,000 in 1986, has crashed to 5,000 if South Sudan is "lucky", WCS director in South Sudan Paul Elkan told reporters.

"Within the next five years, they could completely be gone with the current rates of poaching," Elkan said, adding that even security forces are "involved in trafficking."

South Sudan's animal migration is one of the largest in Africa, potentially topping in size even the world famous Maasai Mara and Serengeti migrations between Tanzania and Kenya, WCS said.

But the wildlife faces major challenges.

"Other species such as the zebra may already be gone, the rhino is probably already gone, giraffes are on the way out, so commercial bush meat also needs to be brought under control", Elkan added.

But a lack of laws and weak institutions prevent poachers and traffickers who are caught from being brought to book.

"We have apprehended so many poachers, caught red handed ... but because of this legal vacuum it is very difficult to prosecute them", said Gabriel Changson Chang, the country's wildlife, conservation and tourism minister.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/south-sudans-elephants-face-extinction-experts-180935660.html