Everything we know about the extraordinarily rich wildlife of South Sudan seems impossible. The country suffered decades of civil war, genocide, famine and a devastating refugee crisis. It has known human suffering on an unprecedented scale and has been subjected to countless crimes against humanity.
Before that, it was subjected to the Arabic slave trade, British colonialism and the Mahdi uprising. Add to this deeply rooted ethnic differences. An estimated 400,000 people died in the civil war between 2013 and 2020 and around 100,000 are likely to have died of starvation.
With an almost non-existent economy and ruined infrastructure, it is a country battling to gain stability as a fledgling nation. Although the country is rich in minerals and oil, none of this wealth seems to be reaching the people from whose land these minerals are being extracted.
Furthermore, the country is flooded with firearms. AK-47 assault rifles are said to be almost standard utensils in every household. How has wildlife survived in circumstances like this?
I worked in Uganda often in the first decade of the 2000s and remember seeing the United Nations aid aircraft being loaded with food, blankets, equipment, medical supplies and other essentials for refugee camps in Darfur. Pilots told heart-rending tales of human suffering.
The Namibian problem
Namibia, which gained independence from South Africa in 1989, couldn’t be more different. Although a desert country, it boasts a healthy economy, well-established infrastructure and 35 years of peace. Its mining industry in diamonds, uranium, precious metals and recently discovered offshore oil ensures foreign investment.
It also has a strong fisheries industry which ensures a steady food supply to alleviate drought that often hampers livestock. It also has a thriving tourism industry. The well-kept infrastructure and comfortable lodges and campsites make these areas easily accessible for tourists from all over the world.
In the remote Kunene Region of the northwest, the communal conservation programme has often been lauded as a conservation success story. It has been described as the largest return of wildlife in Africa.
In 1995, six years after Namibian independence, the northwest experienced a prolonged and abundant wet cycle that sparked a proliferation of desert wildlife. Within the first years of good rains springbok, gemsbok, mountain zebra, giraffe, black rhino and elephant numbers increased dramatically. Soon predators such as lion and spotted hyena also showed an upsurge in numbers.
The community-based conservation project in the Kunene Region provided a golden opportunity for foreign investment. Financial benefits from wildlife would ensure prosperity for rural, previously disadvantaged communities as well as ensure the survival of desert-adapted wildlife species. A win-win situation.
Before long more communities of northwestern Namibia were registering conservancies. Community game guards and other staff were appointed. Tour and safari operators were invited to invest and to help establish a prosperous tourism industry. Foreign investors were lining up and funds were available to aid this revolutionary conservation project.
Soon, safari camps and lodges were springing up all over the place where tourists would enjoy the natural beauty and unique desert-adapted wildlife. All this was aimed at creating a sense of value for wildlife in rural communities through financial benefits.
Hunting and more hunting
Part of the community conservation programme in Namibia included hunting. This was considered as “sustainable utilisation”. Annual game counts were done and quotas were worked out accordingly. Funds were made available for conservancies to buy vehicles, rifles and ammunition which effectively enabled the increase in hunting.
Hunting pressure came from multiple fronts. Conservancy members were legally allowed to hunt desert wildlife for domestic consumption. Professional hunting outfits were also invited to run trophy hunting operations.
Around 2010, the conservancies initiated a “shoot and sell” policy. This enabled outside contractors to cull desert-adapted wildlife in large numbers, on an industrial scale, for their businesses elsewhere. Shooting wildlife from vehicles escalated dramatically, with little or no oversight or control. Soon the communal conservancy project was enabling the very practices that they accused the South African Defence Force of before independence.
All these hunting activities had a cumulative effect that soon became visible on the land. The great herds of springbok, gemsbok, mountain zebra and even greater kudu shrank dramatically and melted away in the vastness of the desert.
Then the drought struck and the desert wildlife had to contend with environmental pressure on top of increased human-induced stressors. It soon became clear that northwest Namibia was losing wildlife. The uncontrolled hunting activities paved the way for disaster.
The lines between legal hunting and poaching became blurred. Increased hunting during the drought further undermined the drought-resistant genes of the wildlife, making it even more difficult for them to recover. The drought finished off already compromised herds.
Soon the only wildlife visible in the area were the megafauna, like black rhino, elephant and giraffe. The decimation of the plains game had a knock-on effect. The super-predators of the region began to target the livestock of the inhabitants. The growing lion population paid the ultimate price with their lives by being shot or poisoned. Then the drought claimed the livestock, anyway. This impoverishment created a climate for rhino poaching. Since 2012 rhino poaching has become a common occurrence.
Desert elephants began breaking up water installations and were captured and sold off to zoos in the Middle East. The official game count numbers have shown just that (see below). The desert-adapted wildlife numbers have crashed and are still in free fall
The animals in the drylands of Namibia are supremely desert-adapted. If left alone, or even hunted in moderation, they can withstand the severest drought conditions. Natural die-offs always take place, but the drought-resistant genetics within the population ensure the survival of the species. However, this survival is not guaranteed, especially if the wildlife has to contend with uncontrolled large-scale hunting.
It got worse. The Namibian Ministry of Environment, Tourism and Forestry recently announced that a further cull of the already depleted wildlife numbers will be conducted. This will account for 723 head of wildlife, including 83 elephants, 60 buffaloes, 30 hippos, 300 zebras, 100 wildebeest, 100 elands and 50 impalas, for drought relief. Many of these animals will be sourced out of National Parks, where wildlife should enjoy the highest protection under the law of the land. The elephants, however, will be removed from the communal lands.
Read more: Conservationists decry drought-hit Namibia’s plan to cull national park wild animals for meat
Then there’s South Sudan
In South Sudan, by comparison, a recent national game count conducted by the African Parks Foundation found that South Sudan, for all its civil strife, is host to the world’s largest wildlife population – 5.8 million head.
In Boma and Bandingilo National Parks, white-eared kob, tiang (topi), reedbuck, Mongala gazelle and Nubian giraffe migrate over a vast landscape in their millions. These animals are predated upon by healthy populations of lions, leopards and wild dogs in an intact ecosystem.
Additionally, new populations of elephant and buffalo are being discovered in other remote parts of the country. In the vast Sudd marshes of the White Nile, the rare Nile lechwe and countless other aquatic species find shelter.
This flies in the face of logic. While other countries like Angola and Mozambique have lost their wildlife during prolonged civil wars, South Sudan’s wildlife has flourished. Namibia is losing its wildlife in a time of peace and prosperity.
How can a country like Namibia, with its countless resources, infrastructure, drought-resistant food-producing capacities, lucrative mining industry and access to foreign investors be losing its wildlife? Why should it be compelled to dip further in its already besieged wildlife population?
The old excuse is the extreme aridity of Namibia, but that does not hold water. Botswana, to its east, is also an arid country and so is Kenya. Both countries boast abundant wildlife populations.
Namibia in recent history cannot begin to compare the absolute horrors and human suffering South Sudan has faced. But through all that the South Sudanese government did not embark on an official cull of wildlife to feed its hungry and impoverished populations. Obviously, subsistence hunting would have taken place, but not enough to impact the general wildlife population.
Perhaps the absence of large-scale commercial hunting and culling makes the difference. Namibia will do well to learn from South Sudan. In turn, South Sudan will do well not to repeat Namibia’s mistakes
As someone who loves arid northwest Namibia and has worked for more than 20 years there to help create a sustainable tourism and wildlife economy, I have come to learn that hunting and culling at a large scale is not the answer. It is not sustainable. There are other solutions, like fisheries, for drought relief.
The Namibian Constitution enshrines the conservation of its wildlife for the benefit of both present and future generations. Unsustainable hunting of animals for the present generation at the expense of future generations should not be allowed. It steals from the survivability of future generations. DM