South Sudan: A new state has a chance to benefit from its astonishing wildlife wilderness

THE rain clouds have gathered in liquid grey over the wetlands of the Sudd, the vast swamp that oozes either side of the White Nile as it curls through the heart of the new state of South Sudan. It is not possible for the low-flying Cessna to punch a way through.

Somewhere under the storm a megaherd of tiang antelope are migrating. The little aircraft has been flying a long loop out of Juba, the capital, over what will become the Bandingalo National Park. The tiang are heading south into it. From the border with Ethiopia in the east come the white-eared kob, another breed of antelope. For an hour the kob course under the plane, almost like a river, flowing across the broken soil and around the trees. There are Nubian giraffe that some scientists think may be the closest to the animal’s original ancestor; the sparse savannah and thick heat are its original habitat. From just above the treetops, elephants can be seen bulldozing through thick brush.

Taken together, Bandingalo’s migration of some 1.2m large animals is second only to the Serengeti’s in Tanzania. But in many ways it is more impressive. There is only a single track through the black-cotton soil cutting across an area the size of the Netherlands. There are no cattle, no people, no human footprints at all.

The government of South Sudan, which became independent on July 9th, says it wants to keep Bandingalo pristine. It has signed a deal with an Anglo-Ugandan outfit to set up a handful of luxury safari camps. Officials say they owe a “moral debt” to nature after living off game during decades of fighting a bush war for freedom from the Arab north.

Whether they will keep such a large area off-limits to prospectors is harder to say. The Wildlife Conservation Society, a charity backed in South Sudan with American government cash, hopes so. It is building a park headquarters and setting up anti-poaching patrols. The aim is not only to protect the animals. It is hoped that this no-man’s-land can act as a buffer between cattle-raiding groups—and brand the new country as the green heart of Africa.