NEWS: Animal Migration Rivals Serengeti

Despite a devastating ongoing 25-year civil war that ground wildlife research to a halt in 1983, migrating herds are traversing across southern Sudan plains in numbers that now rival Serengeti National Park.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) first aerial survey of the 225,000-square-mile region showcases how these herds managed to survive the warfare in extraordinary numbers: more than 1.3 million white-eared kob, tiang, and mongalla gazelle and an estimated 8,000 elephants were observed.

Many scientists deemed the WCS’s findings as astonishing since historically wildlife tends to vanish during wartimes. Mozambique and Angola, for example, both saw their wildlife numbers drop significantly during wartime.

“I have never seen wildlife in such numbers, not even when flying over the mass migrations of the Serengeti,” said J. Michael Fay, surveyor and a WCS field scientist, according to a press statement. “This could represent the biggest migration of large mammals on Earth.”

Photo courtesy of WCS.