Survival of giant sable forces Angolans to confront war's impact on wildlife
By John Reed
Published: August 30 2005 03:00 | Last updated: August 30 2005 03:00

On a sunny morning last February a hidden camera deep in Angola's Cangandala nature reserve captured a remarkable sight: a herd of nine Giant Black Sable, two of them visibly pregnant.


After nearly three decades of war, scientists had feared that the majestic animals were on the verge of extinction, if they had not died out already. When published in March the pictures were greeted with jubilation, nowhere more so than in Angola where the giant sable is a national icon.

The animal, whose curving horns can grow to more than 60 inches in length, appear on Angola's Kz20 bank notes and the tailfins of Taag, the national airline. Angola's soccer team are known as the palancas,a reference to the animal's Portuguese name.

But no definitive sightings of living sable had been reported since 1982, when fighting between government troops and Unita rebels swept through its habitat in a remote section of north-central Angola.

Now the palanca negra's reappearance has excited Angolans' imaginations and prompted a reckoning about the massive loss of wildlife during the war, which lasted with interruptions from 1975 until 2002.

"It's something that unites everyone - all races and ideologies," says Pedro Vaz Pinto, the Angolan naturalist whose cameras confirmed the sables' survival.

Before the war the sparsely populated country, larger than South Africa, abounded in lion, giraffe and other big game. During colonial times the giant sable, first identified by a British railway engineer in 1909, was a favoured quarry of trophy-hunting foreigners.

Angola's wildlife came under attack during the war; stories are told of Cuban and South African soldiers who aided the country's warring sides, using elephants for target practice. Hungry people from Luanda killed animals for meat in the Kissama nature reserve, a vast tract near the capital about half the size of South Africa's famed Kruger Park.

Some big game survived the war, but habitats are still under threat from human settlements and the felling of trees for charcoal. The huge areas marked as national parks are little more than "paper parks", says Mr Pinto.

Now a charitable trust that Mr Pinto serves as general director is trying to restore Angola's natural patrimony. The Kissama Foundation has restocked a fenced-off section of the park of the same name with elephant, giraffe and wildebeest, among other animals.

The animals were airlifted from South Africa and Botswana in 2001 and 2002 on a Russian IL-76 cargo aircraft in an action dubbed Operation Noah's Ark. They now roam in an enclosure of 12,000 hectares, a tiny section of Kissama, which is about 1m hectares in size.

The Kissama Foundation, which has struggled with financial and logistical constraints, has secured corporate sponsorship, mostly from the oil sector that dominates Angola's economy. President José Eduardo dos Santos sits on its board, supplying key support in a bureaucracy-plagued, highly centralised country.

Controversially the foundation, which began operating in the last years of the war, has also received support from Angola's military.

Shell Angola provided most of the funding for the relocation of wildlife for Operation Noah's Ark. Sonangol, the state-owned oil company, has helped with park infrastructure while a liquefied natural gas venture of Chevron Texaco supported the first expedition in 2003 to find the giant sable in Cangandala.

However, Angola's conservation efforts are not yet self-sustaining on a commercial basis.

"The future of real conservation in Angola is going to be with the private sector rather than the state sector," says Wouter van Hoven, the South African professor of wildlife management who serves as the Kissama Foundation's president.

Mr van Hoven has high hopes for a park in the southern Cuando Cubango province, close to parks in Namibia and Botswana.

As for the giant sable, scientists say quick action is needed to ensure its survival.

In addition to poaching and encroachment on the animal's habitat, Mr Pinto fears that unscrupulous foreigners may seek to capture sable for breeding in captivity. "I think things look positive, but this has happened very fast," he says.

I can't figure out why some enterprising person(s) hasn't done with the giant sable what has been done with the black rhino.

Giant sable would be a hot ticket if they could be successfully bred and multiplied on ranches.

I'd love to see them return to huntable numbers someday.

Thanks Kathi!

quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:
Survival of giant sable forces Angolans to confront war's impact on wildlife
By John Reed
Published: August 30 2005 03:00 | Last updated: August 30 2005 03:00

As for the giant sable, scientists say quick action is needed to ensure its survival.

In addition to poaching and encroachment on the animal's habitat, Mr Pinto fears that unscrupulous foreigners may seek to capture sable for breeding in captivity. "I think things look positive, but this has happened very fast," he says.

If they wanted my opinion ( which of cource they dont ) I would suggest they consider legally relocating at least some of the Giant Sable to secure established private ranches as that way I believe they will be much safer and easier to monitor than in a larger game park bordering where people are impovirished and more likely to poach them or other

Regards, Peter