From an aerial view, golden-brown specks cover the grass like ants. Zoom in and you’ll see antelopes, hundreds of thousands of them, crossing the savannas of South Sudan.

The central African country has been ravaged by war over the last few decades, making it unsafe for scientific research, and data on the movement of wildlife there has been limited. But a report published estimates that the nation is home to the largest known migration of land mammals on Earth.

Five million white-eared kob, 300,000 tiang, 350,000 Mongalla gazelle and 160,000 Bohor reedbuck are thought to traverse the landscape each year, moving from the savannas in the south of the country towards the wetlands in the north and east.

The estimates come from a 2023 aerial survey of the land around the Boma and Badingilo national parks and Jonglei region, referred to as “the Great Nile Migration Landscape.”

The latest results have astounded scientists: while wildlife has decreased in many areas of the world due to human development and climate change, this data shows that migration has not only survived years of war but expanded.

“If the numbers are right with these species, it looks like they’ve increased since 2007. It looks like they’ve increased since the 1980s even,” says Mike Fay, lead researcher and conservation director for African Parks in South Sudan.

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📸: Marcus Westberg