After war, wildlife returns to Sudan

From the window of the small plane, Kolor Pino, who is also a general in the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, could see a few black ostriches and then a skittish mass of yellowish-brown kob, a kind of antelope. In a place where rebels and militiamen trained and fought for decades, where people suffered and fled and died, the sight amounted to a small mercy.

“The animals are coming back,’’ Pino said, a note of satisfaction in his voice.

For years, people here thought of the zebras, giraffes, buffalo, hartebeest, and other animals that once roamed this vast, trackless region as just another collective casualty of southern Sudan’s 20-year civil war. Parts of the area made up a main training base for the southern rebels, who dined regularly, along with locals, on an assortment of bush meat. The more agile creatures - white-eared kob, gazelles, and other species - fled in massive numbers to Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and northern Sudan.

But since the war ended in 2005, the animals have resumed their old migratory habits, crisscrossing this area east of the Nile River where Pino flew recently with President Obama’s Sudan envoy, retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, and others eager to see what some have called an animal El Dorado.

Wildlife experts say that the area is now the site of one of the largest migrations of mammals on earth, perhaps even larger than the famed annual movement of wildebeest between Tanzania and Kenya. A 2007 aerial survey by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society estimated that more than 1.3 million kob, tiang antelope, and mongalla gazelle were once again running around Boma.

“It’s an absolutely amazing and unique place,’’ said Albert Schenk, a project manager with the society, which is helping to develop a conservation plan for an area that covers about 125,000 square miles and includes a national park, game reserves, and two other proposed protected areas.

For Pino, the return of the animals to Boma is a reminder of what things were like before the war, when he was a student and his father was a farmer. In his ethnic community, boys of the same generation traditionally take the name of a local animal, and his was the white-eared kob.

“There were many, many animals then, but they decreased because of the war,’’ Pino said. “During the war, we had militias around here - they consumed the animals, and we, as guerrilla fighters, we consumed them. Now we are protecting them. We are making people aware.’’

As part of the 2005 peace deal with the Sudanese government, this oil- and land-rich southern region is set to hold a referendum on independence in 2011, and most southerners appear to think that secession is inevitable. During his visit here, Gration pointed out the need for southerners to develop economic engines for the region - and bringing tourists to Boma could be one of those.

“What the south needs is multibillion-dollar agribusiness, tourism, infrastructure, cement plants, trucking,’’ said Gration, who has said that some US sanctions against Sudan should be reconsidered to help address those needs.

Southern Sudanese officials and others hope that the Boma area will lure safari companies and tourists on a scale similar to neighboring Kenya. There has been some interest from a Spanish tour firm. And in an odd, little-scrutinized deal, a safari company connected to United Arab Emirates royalty has leased a vast swath of Boma.