Wildlife Conservation in the Southern Sudan Sir Christopher Lever
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Wildlife conservation in the southern Sudan Sir Christopher Lever The wildlife of southern Sudan is profuse The region's topography is both its wildlife's and diverse but its potential for tourism is most valuable ally and also the principal impedi- scarcely developed. Its conservation is ment to its conservation. Much of the area is a vast, unbroken floodplain which, between May hampered by fuel shortages and the in- and December, is either inundated or a morass of accessible nature of the country, and mud, rendering it virtually impenetrable. While heavily armed poachers have slaugh- this has effectively prevented detrimental human tered large numbers of elephants for intrusion it has also largely inhibited active con- ivory. The author, who visited the servation measures. A perpetual shortage of fuel has added to the difficulties of transportation. country in 1982, reports on the conser- Another obstacle to the development of the vation work that is being carried out southern Sudan—the shortage of foreign cur- despite the problems. rency—may, however, eventually be removed by the exportation of oil, which has been dis- From 1955 to 1972 the people of the southern covered in viable amounts in the Nile floodplain. Sudan were involved in a fierce conflict with their During a recent visit to Juba—the principal town compatriots in the north. During this period three of the southern Sudan about 125 km north of the other East African countries—Tanzania, Uganda Ugandan border—I was able to see at first hand and finally Kenya—won their independence and the efforts being made to conserve the wildlife of began the formation of a series of national parks the region. and game reserves* which, largely through the medium of television, have become world The Wildlife Department in Juba, which operates famous and have generated both a flourishing under the provision of the Wildlife Conservation tourist industry and an influx of foreign funds for and Parks Act of 1975, receives invaluable conservation purposes. The southern Sudan— foreign assistance in its conservation ventures. Of which apart from Tanzania (and Uganda before these the earliest was the Sudan Wildlife Con- the bloody reign of Idi Amin) has a greater servation Project, which has been financially profusion of wildlife than any other country in supported since 1976 by the Frankfurt Zoological Africa and is almost unequalled for its variety of Society, with logistical assistance from German species—has remained undeveloped and largely Technical Aid. A more recent development has neglected. been the formation—again with German finan- cial support—of a Department of Wildlife in the *Broadly speaking the difference between a national park and College of Natural Resources and Environmental a game reserve is that in the former total protection of the Science at Juba University: this is geared to the fauna and flora is the primary objective and human activities production of graduates qualified both as field- are precluded, while in the latter, although nature conser- workers and researchers and in the education of vation remains of paramount importance, human utilisation of the land, such as the grazing of cattle and goats, may be their fellow-countrymen in the importance of permitted. wildlife conservation. The African Wildlife 190 OryxVoll7No4 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 01 Oct 2021 at 17:18:41, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605300025126 Leadership Foundation has also recently begun a programme of education in conservation for the people of the region. The New York Zoological Society is providing valuable aid in the small forested Bangangai Game Reserve near the border with Zaire, which has a wide variety of woodland primates and a considerable population of the elusive and largely nocturnal bongo Tragelaphus euryceros, and in the Boma National Park, north-west of the Boma plateau on the Ethiopian border, where research is being conducted into the population dynamics and migration of the white-eared kob Kobus kob leucotis, which probably numbers in excess of one million. Elsewhere the Italian government has financed African buffalo (Sir Christopher Lever). and conducted an ecological survey of the Southern National Park—the largest in the region—while on the west bank of the White Nile (a race of the tsessebi or topi) of which there are attempts are being made to enlarge the small some 500,000 in the Jonglei, and the largely Shambe Game Reserve and to raise it to the aquatic Nile lechwe Kobus megaceros, which is status of a national park, and at the same time to endemic to the floodplains of the southern study, under the auspices of the New York Sudan. Zoological Society, the Species Survival Com- mission of the International Union for the Con- While in Juba I made aerial surveys of the Boma servation of Nature, and the World Wildlife Fund, plateau and the Pibor river—a tributary of the the northern sub-species of the white rhinoceros Nile—in the national park, some 300 or so km to Ceratotherium simum. the north-east and, on a flight to Wau 500 km north-west in the province of Bahr-el-Ghazal, of The most important current development project the Southern National Park and the Numatinna in the southern Sudan is the construction of the Game Reserve. In all three areas large numbers of Jonglei Canal (scheduled to run from that town game were visible. on the Nile in the south past Kongor, Duk Faiwil, Duk Fadiat and Ayod to rejoin the Nile in the I was also able to visit the Badingilu Game vicinity of Taufikia in the north) which will bypass Reserve near the Badigero swamp, 75 km north- to the east of the Nile the notorious arid virtually east of Juba; here, among the more abundant impassable Sudd. With financial backing from the larger mammals are common zebra Equus European Development Fund, a group of scien- burchelli, African buffalo Synceros cafer, reti- tists under the leadership of Dr Stephen Cobb culated giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata, (1981), Director of the Jonglei Research Project, Jackson's hartebeest Alcelaphus buselaphus is attempting to discover some of the potential jacksoni, bohar reedbuck Redunca redunca, ecological consequences—both beneficial and giant eland Tragelaphus derbianus gigas, wart- detrimental—which are likely to result from the hogs Phacochoerus aethiopicus and kob. In the canal's construction: they are investigating the swamps the commonest birds include marabou possible effects on the fertility of pasturage; on the storks Leptoptilos crumeniferus, yellow-billed fecundity, diseases and seasonal nomadic move- storks Ibis ibis, little egrets Egretta garzetta, cattle ments of the cattle and goats of the Dinka, Nuer egrets Bubulcus ibis, and knob-billed geese and Shilluck tribesmen; on the region's water Sarkidiomis melanotos; grasshopper buzzards resources and on the area's wildlife, with par- Butastur ruflpennis axe the most abundant ticular emphasis on the population dynamics and raptors and griffon vultures Gyps ruppellii the migrations of the tiang Damaliscus lunatus tiangcommonest scavengers. Conservation in southern Sudan 191 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 01 Oct 2021 at 17:18:41, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605300025126 II i 0 100 200 300 400 km 16' Key -Northern border of southern Sudan Khartoum River Nile (White) River Bahr El Zeraf Proposed line of Jonglei Canal j 14' I Kuru (Chel) G.R. 2 Numatinna G.R. 3 Southern N.R 4 Zeraf Island G.R. 5 Shambe G.R\ 6 Badingilu G.R. 7 Nimule N.P 8 Bangangai 9 Kidepo G.R. 10 Boma N.R 12' Game Reserves and National Parks IOC 28° 30° 32° 34° 36° One of the main problems to be overcome in the ignored. As Dr Cobb points out, to the Dinka of development of wildlife conservation in the Jonglei and the Murle of Boma the successful southern Sudan is, as elsewhere, the sometimes hunting of tiang and kob respectively provides a uneasy relationship between conservationists valuable source of protein. If wildlife conservation and local tribesmen, whose traditional rights in the southern Sudan is to succeed, ways and to grazing, hunting and settlement cannot be means must be found of maintaining for the 192 OryxVoll7No4 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 01 Oct 2021 at 17:18:41, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605300025126 human inhabitants their age-old rights; only thus At the moment the possibilities for visiting the will conservationists secure their willing co- southern Sudan are few; Juba, which has only operation, without which little can be achieved. one small hotel, lies some 1200 km south of Khartoum and 900 km north of Nairobi in A recent report by Earthscan (Grainger, 1983), Kenya—a difficult journey by road of several produced with financial support from the United days from either capital. Transportation by air is Nations Environment Programme, draws atten- erratic and uncertain—my flight by Sudan Air- tion to another potential problem of the Sahel ways from Nairobi took off a day late and then region as a whole. Increasing desertification could overflew Juba to Khartoum. Those who wish to well lead to a similar period of drought such as visit the region, but are not fortunate enough that which between 1968 and 1973 was respon- to have someone with whom to stay, have the sible for the deaths of up to a quarter of a million option of either organising a private safari for people and some 3500,000 head of cattle.