South Sudan's antelopes start migration, but poaching on the rise

Seen from the air, they ripple across the landscape – a river of antelope racing across the vast grasslands of South Sudan in what conservationists say is the world's largest land mammal migration.

The country's first comprehensive aerial wildlife survey, released Tuesday, found about 6 million antelope. The survey conducted over a two-week period last year in two national parks and nearby areas relied on spotters in airplanes, nearly 60,000 photos and tracking more than a hundred collared animals over about 120,000 square kilometers.

The estimate from the nonprofit African Parks, which conducted the work along with the government, far surpasses other large migratory herds, such as the estimated 1.36 million wildebeests surveyed last year in the Serengeti straddling Tanzania and Kenya. But they warned that the animals face a rising threat from commercial poaching in a nation rife with weapons and without strong law enforcement.

"Saving the last great migration of wildlife on the planet is an incredibly important thing," said Mike Fay, a conservation scientist who led the survey. "There's so much evidence that the world's ecosystems are collapsing, the world resources are being severely degraded, and it's causing gigantic disruption on the planet."

Billboards on the migration recently went up in the capital of Juba, and the government has aspirations that the animals may someday be a magnet for tourists.

South Sudan has six national parks and a dozen game reserves covering over 13 percent of the terrain. The migration stretches from east of the Nile in Badingilo and Boma parks into neighboring Ethiopia – an area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Georgia. It includes four main antelope: the white-eared kob – of which there are some 5 million – the tiang, the Mongalla gazelle and the bohor reedbuck.

The survey said some animals have increased since a more limited one in 2010. But it described a "catastrophic" decline of most non-migratory species in the last 40 years, such as the hippo, elephant and warthog.

In recent years, new roads have increased people's access to markets, contributing to poaching. Years of flooding have meant crop failures that have left some people with little choice but to hunt for food. Some 30,000 animals were being killed each month between March and May this year, African Parks estimated.

Less than 1 percent of the country's government budget is allocated to the wildlife ministry, which said it has few cars to move rangers around to protect animals. Those rangers say they haven't been paid a salary since October and are outgunned by poachers.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit said the country is committed to turning its wealth of wildlife into sustainable tourism. He called on the Ministry of Wildlife to prioritize training and equipping rangers to fight poaching.

Matthew Kauffman, an associate professor of zoology at the University of Wyoming who specializes in research into migration and ecosystems, said the work fits a growing global effort "to map these migrations." One benefit is to be smarter when landscapes are developed to make way for these seasonal movements, he said.

(Cover: Antelopes migrate in national parks and surrounding areas in South Sudan, June 19, 2024. /CFP)