Up to six million animals sweep across the floodplains of South Sudan each year in what researchers now confirm is the largest land mammal migration on Earth. To protect it, the South Sudanese government has signed a landmark 10-year agreement with the nonprofit African Parks — a partnership that blends satellite tracking, aerial surveys, and generations of Indigenous ecological knowledge to keep one of nature’s great spectacles alive.
At a glance
- White-eared kob migration: The circular migration follows rainfall patterns across the east bank of the White Nile, with species including tiang, Mongalla gazelle, and bohor reedbuck traveling ancient routes through areas local communities deliberately leave open for wildlife.
- Aerial wildlife surveys: In 2023, African Parks conducted six months of aerial surveys alongside students from Juba University and members of local ethnic groups, collecting eight hours of daily data to count and identify every species observed.
- Animal collaring program: Rangers collared 126 animals across multiple species in one year and 127 the next — including giraffes, lions, elephants, and cheetahs — with the number set to grow each subsequent year.
An ancient route through a modern crisis
South Sudan has endured flooding, famine, and a devastating civil war. Yet the migration has persisted, in part because of a quiet agreement between the land and the people who live on it.
Seventeen ethnic groups share this landscape. For generations, they have left strips of territory — informally called “No Man’s Land” — free of settlement, allowing animals to move between tribal areas undisturbed. These are not legal designations. They are cultural ones, passed down through oral tradition and observed with genuine care.
“Most of the people view the migration as something that has been going on for centuries,” said Anthony Abang John Urbano, a member of the Bahr el Ghazal tribe and a field operator with African Parks. “When it comes to some specific communities, it’s a mystery — but they all are benefiting from the same migration. It’s a mutual benefit.”
The 2022 agreement between the South Sudanese government and African Parks formally extended that protection to Boma National Park and Bandingilo National Park, two parks that sit within those traditional corridors.
Seeing it for the first time from above
Scientists had long known the migration existed. What they lacked was precise data on how it moved, what drove it, and how many animals were actually involved.
The 2023 aerial surveys changed that. Researchers and local observers flew daily transects for six months, logging every animal in view. David Simpson, park manager for African Parks, described the moment the scale of the migration became visible from the air.
“We flew for the first 30 to 40 minutes and didn’t see anything,” he told ABC News. “Then we get out there and we start hitting one, two, three, four. Then hundreds. Then thousands. Then tens of thousands. Then hundreds of thousands.”
The data confirmed that the animals follow rainfall in a roughly circular loop — moving toward water as it arrives and away as it retreats. That pattern, once mapped, became the foundation for the collaring program and for decisions about where protection is most urgent.
Indigenous knowledge as conservation infrastructure
African Parks has made a deliberate choice to center South Sudanese community members in its operations. Tribal members serve as aerial survey observers, control operators, and field technicians. The organization works with ethnic communities to explain the threats wildlife now faces and to develop conservation practices that fit local life.
Juanna Kenneth Ali, a member of the Moru tribe and an African Parks technician, described the pride that comes with that role. “They are really proud that we are exposing that natural resource — especially the wildlife — under conservation of South Sudan,” he told ABC News. “They are really proud that I am part of a group who did great work exposing our nature to the world.”
That relationship matters practically as well as symbolically. The animals provide clothing, shelter materials, and medicine for the communities that share the land with them. Conservation that ignores those dependencies doesn’t last. Conservation built around them might.
This approach echoes growing evidence from across the continent and globally that Indigenous-led land stewardship produces better ecological outcomes than top-down management models. A 2023 report from the IUCN found that lands managed or co-managed by Indigenous communities tend to hold higher biodiversity than comparable protected areas managed without community involvement.
What’s at stake — and what remains unresolved
The threats are real and accelerating. Road construction, commercial bushmeat poaching, and expanding human settlement are all pressing into the migration corridors. African Parks has warned that without continued partnership and sustained community education, the migration could collapse within five to ten years.
Tourism offers one path to economic sustainability — but that balance is still being worked out. Conservation that costs local communities without returning tangible benefits rarely holds over time, and the program’s long-term success will depend on whether it can deliver both ecological protection and genuine economic participation for the people who have always lived alongside these animals.
The migration has survived wars and floods and famine. Whether it can survive roads and markets and the slow erosion of traditional practice is the harder question — and the one this partnership is now racing to answer.
For now, six million animals are still moving. That is, by any measure, something worth protecting.
Read more
For more on this story, see: ABC News
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights recognized at COP30 across 160 million hectares
- U.K. cancer death rates fall to their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on South Sudan
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