Elephant herds found on isolated south Sudan island
Posted by sky | Tags: Animals, Photos, environment, nature, wildlife
From Reuters.International wildlife experts have located hundreds of wild elephants on a treeless island in the swamps of south Sudan, where they apparently avoided unchecked hunting during more than 20 years of war. "We flew out of a cloud, and there they were. It was like something out of Jurassic Park," said Tom Catterson, working on a U.S.-funded environment program in south Sudan. Environmentalists are keeping the location of the island in the Sudd area secret to prevent poachers from killing the animals. Environmentalists are only now beginning to discover the extent of the damage on animal populations, and are looking for additional pockets where animals could not be reached by rebels or armed groups looking for meat and export products like tusks. It is possible there are other herds of elephants -- mostly unheard of in the contemporary south -- hiding out in the Sudd, an area so flat the Nile River breaks up into hundreds of channels and lakes. Two oil companies have been given concession rights by the southern government in areas deep in the Sudd previously undisturbed by seismic testing and exploratory drilling. Both the ministry and international experts are worried about the potential for damage in the fragile swamp.Related: Huge Wildlife Migration Discovered in Southern Sudan.
More than a million animals, including elephants, buffaloes, ostriches, lions, giraffes and a rare type of stork, have been unexpectedly seen living and migrating across Southern Sudan, where no surveys of wildlife had been conducted for the past 25 years due to civil war in the region. Scientists were finally able to conduct aerial surveys of the savannahs for wildlife. To their surprise, they counted more than 1.2 million white-eared kob, tiang antelope and Mongalla gazelle. They also saw at least 8,000 elephants Photo: Herd of white-eared kob, Boma National Park.Previous Post Next Post
