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A huge herd of animals thought to have been wiped out by decades of civil war in southern Sudan has survived against the odds and could be one of the largest migrations of large mammals on the planet.
The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society delivered that assessment, unveiling the results of an aerial survey that revealed the existence of more than 1.2 million antelope, gazelle, elephants and other animals.
"This is wonderful news for the world and southern Sudan," said Wildlife Conservation Society president Steven Sanderson.
Conservationist Michael Fay, who conducted the survey, said he had never seen wildlife in such numbers, "not even while flying over the mass migrations of the Serengeti".
"This could be the biggest migration of large mammals on Earth," he said.
But the animals were still in danger because hunters had automatic weapons which could kill huge numbers of beasts, the director of the group's Southern Sudan programme, Paul Elkan.
Also, thousands of refugees were returning to the region and oil exploration was taking place within the migration corridors.
Southern Sudan's wildlife had not been surveyed since the early 1980s because of civil war that raged for 20 years before a peace deal in 2005. A separate war erupted in the Darfur region of western Sudan four years ago.
Based on experiences in other regions where war has ravaged man and animals - such as in Angola and Mozambique - officials believed wildlife in southern Sudan would also have been badly hit.
Not all areas in the country have fared well in preserving wildlife. Southern National Park, west of the Nile, has lost up to 90 per cent of some species since the early 1980s.
"We saw no buffalo where in 1981 there were an estimated 60,000," Elkan said. "And only one group of elephants was sighted where 10,000 had been estimated to roam in the past."
But for reasons yet to be explained, some animal herds remained intact, and in a few instances increased, from levels surveyed about 25 years ago.
White-eared cob, a species of antelope, numbered 800,000 in southern Sudan, Fay said.
He had been sceptical of field reports that said thousands of cob could still be found. "I thought, 'That's crazy'."
But in January, he and others replicated a 1980s survey, flying 150 hours in a small aircraft over 150,000sq km.
It is rare to see large groups of animals in Africa outside protected areas, but once the spotting team's plane crossed into Southern Sudan from Kenya, Fay said they were stunned.
"It looked like the entire landscape was moving with cob," Fay said. "It was infested. These are 100kg antelope.
"If anything we underestimated the number of animals."
- REUTERS
