The Serengeti migration is the one everybody knows: a million and a half wildebeest, a river crossing, a documentary crew. The largest terrestrial mammal migration on Earth is somewhere else, and it is four times bigger.
In IUCN's words, at the Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape in South Sudan: "Each year, in the world's largest terrestrial mammal migration, an estimated six million White-Eared Kob, Tiang and Mongalla Gazelle move through this landscape." [1] Six million animals, moving across a country that has spent most of its fifteen years of independence at war, surveyed and confirmed only in recent years because for a long time nobody could safely count them.
This week, at the World Heritage Committee's 48th session in Busan, South Korea, that landscape became South Sudan's first World Heritage site. [2]
The committee did two things at once, and the second is as important as the first. It used the emergency procedure to inscribe the site, and it placed Boma-Badingilo on the List of World Heritage in Danger the same day. [2] That is not a contradiction; it is the system working exactly as designed. The listing says this is irreplaceable. The danger listing says it could be lost, and unlocks the international attention and assistance that go with the designation. Recognition and alarm, filed together.
South Sudan was not alone in a first. Comoros and Sao Tome and Principe also received their first-ever World Heritage inscriptions at the same session, three African countries entering the list in one sitting, among 25 new sites overall: 19 cultural, 5 natural and 1 mixed. [2] The natural and mixed cohort also included Jordan's Aqaba Marine Reserve, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park, Korea's Getbol tidal flats extension, Wadi Wurayah in the UAE and the wider area of Mount Olympus in Greece. [1]
We covered the American entry on this list earlier this month, when the Okefenokee became Georgia's first World Heritage site [callback]. The Okefenokee's inscription was the end of a long fight over what a swamp is worth. Boma-Badingilo's is the beginning of one: six million animals, a young country, and a designation that says the world is watching now.
