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From An aerial view, golden-brown spots guard the grass like ants. Zoom in and you’ll see the horns, back, legs moving – all in the same direction. Antelope, by the hundreds, are crossing the Savanna of South Sudan.
The Central African country has been devastated by war over the years, making it unsafe for medical research, and data on natural world activity there has been limited. However a recent report estimates that South Sudan is home to the largest recognized migration of land mammals on Earth.
5 million white-eared kob, 300,000 tiang, 350,000 mongla gazelle and 160,000 bohor reedbuck (all species of antelope) are found in the soil at all times, moving from the savannah in the south of the country to the wetlands in the north. And East.
The estimate comes from a 2023 aerial survey of land in the nationwide areas of Boma and Bedingilo and the Jonglei Pocket, known as “the Great Nile Migration Landscape.” An airplane flew over parts of the land on a continuous ridge above the farm, sampling about 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 sq mi) of the 122,000-square-kilometre (47,000-sq-mi) branch, on which day a witness recorded what it saw, and a camera attached to the plane took a picture every two seconds. The mode is frequently applied to estimate the distribution of wild animals in widely visited areas and was previously used during relatively nonviolent periods between disturbance ranges in the 2000s and 1980s.
The unedited effects have baffled scientists: As the natural world has diminished in many areas of the world due to human construction and environmental change, this data shows that migration has not only survived years of conflict but has increased.
“If the numbers of these species are correct, it looks like they have increased since 2007. It looks like they have also increased since the 1980s,” says Mike Fay, domestication researcher and conservation director of African Grounds in South Sudan. Are.” He cautions that the margins of error are very high, although even at the minimum estimate of 4 million antelope, that figure dwarfs the approximately 2 million wildebeest that grow in Tanzania’s Serengeti, long considered the region’s largest land mammal. It is believed. Travel.
The distances covered rival even the region’s longest annual land migration. Current routes vary between species, with surveys showing that some tiang span distances of more than 3,000 kilometers (1,864 mi) – putting them on par with caribou in the Canadian Arctic.
Fay, who has been working on conservation projects in Africa for more than 40 years, admits that his exposure to natural phenomena has been extensive. He has countless elephants, lions, gorillas and other iconic animals. “It’s hard to impress me, isn’t it?” He says.
But, when he saw hundreds of deer roaming around the soil, he too was astonished.
“How is it possible that there can be so many wild animals?” he is surprised. “It’s not so much an emotional thing for me, it’s about the biological and ecological capacity of this land to produce so much wildlife. This is truly unprecedented.”
struggle and ease
Fay says that the existence – and expansion – of migration may be linked to many years of instability within the country. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after several years of civil conflict. It then temporarily descended into its own civil conflict, resulting in a ceasefire in 2018, despite the fact that local violence continues. due to this reason, The human footprint remains low – United Nations has listed it among the least developed countries on the planet.
“Maybe it created this opportunity where animals were left alone for a period of 10 to 12 years, and that’s when they became very numerous,” Fay speculated.
This hypothesis is supported through data from GPS units that were fitted to approximately 125 antelope, monitoring their movements during the peak period. Fay says that while the patterns are so small that it’s difficult to make heavy estimates, there is some sunshine: “These animals try to avoid humans as much as they can.” He says their tracks trend like a doughnut, with antelope circling around human settlements.
In contrast, non-migratory animals that were not able to survive away from human populations have not fared so well. The survey cites catastrophic declines in sedentary species such as giraffe, buffalo, zebra, hartebeest and waterbuck.
“There was a huge proliferation of guns in the country, and you had thousands and thousands of people living in the bush. They weren’t farming, so they were eating a lot of wildlife and feeding wildlife to the soldiers,” Fay says. The current changing natural world Populations could move to remote hinterlands, sedentary species were simple targets. “Those species got hammered,” he says.
On the other hand, the rarity of the formation assumes that the herbal ecosystem remains relatively intact during migration. South Sudan often refers to itself as “the land of abundance,” Fay says, and many countries hold it at that level.
Despite being landlocked, South Sudan has vast sources of freshwater, including Africa’s largest wetland, the Sudd, which is fed through overspill of the White Nile. The title is derived from the Arabic commitment to barrier, and for hundreds of years the branch was considered impenetrable – the Sud marked the southern limit of the Roman Empire’s expansion into Africa. This foresight has helped protect the pocket’s biodiversity.
“In most places on Earth, levees have been built along major river floodplains, or they have been overused and eroded,” Fay says. “Here, the water comes out of the mountains, hits that huge flood zone and just runs out… The fact that you have this huge flood zone still functioning in this modern world is phenomenal.”
This is the specific flood zone that introduced conservation biologists Steve Boyce went to South Sudan to assist in the African Plains Survey. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, as part of their commendable Backbone of Africa campaign, they I wanted to report how watersheds and rivers – what he calls “the lifelines of these landscapes” – were playing a role in the annual migration.
He explains that the region has recently experienced record-breaking flooding, partly caused by air pollution from South Sudan’s capital, Juba, as plastic and human waste enter the river that flows into the Sudd and clog waterways. . It is capable of threatening wider ecosystems and natural world populations.
“We have absorbed water into the landscape,” he says, “which has restricted migration.” “We have increasing human settlements, creating a small corridor. Those dynamics – human development, encroachment, and flooding of the White Nile – will become more problematic for migration.
“Often in these post-war forests, peace poses a serious threat to wildlife populations,” he says.
Fay has a similar fear. The natural world has flourished in the “no man’s land” imposed by war, but now that people are in a period of relative peace, efforts to revive it are intensifying. “Roads are being built, industrial activities are starting, mobility of people is increasing, tribal boundaries are weakening,” he says.
“As they degrade, as transportation infrastructure becomes possible, that’s when we’ll see mass declines of these animals.” He explains that migratory species are particularly sensitive to direct features such as roads because a physical barrier can reduce their migration path, which also increases the number of prey they have to face on a day-to-day basis.
However, he argues that construction should not be catastrophic for the natural world. If seen this way, migration can bring many benefits – it can even be “an engine for development”, Fay says, pointing to Tanzania, where the Serengeti National Land, home to vast wildebeest migration, Attracts over 200,000 tourists each year.
Boyce says there are also options for generating carbon income from wetlands or establishing community-driven conservation that benefits each nature and community.
However Fay cautions that conservation is always dry, and it takes time. “If you’re going to build an economy around this migration, the gap between costs and benefits is too great,” he says. Accumulation tourism is still a long way off in a country that has a reputation for being one of the worst in the world, and because it struggles with a fragile and stable financial system and the ongoing war and situation in neighboring Sudan, the natural world Possibly pay associated fees.
“Liquidating natural resources is the quickest way to make money,” he says. “In a country like South Sudan, giving up some aspect of development for something that may not produce tomorrow, that’s where the political will and the people are needed.” The desire comes.”
Recently, the political will appears to be there. African Grounds conducted the survey with the assistance of the Government of South Sudan and will be used to inform the country’s natural world conservation strategy for the branch.
Announcing the survey results at a press conference, the country’s President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, said, “As South Sudan continues to develop, we are committed to transforming the wildlife sector into a sustainable tourism industry. To activate this, I call on security forces, especially the Wildlife Ministry and its partners to prioritize the training and equipment of wildlife rangers to combat poaching and trafficking of illegal wildlife products in protected areas.
Fay believes the investment will be significant. “The country has to decide whether we want to continue this migration or not?” He says. If certain, it may want to play a closer role in conservation and land control to protect those specific herbal grounds.
“We have a window of opportunity, but it’s closing as we speak,” he says.