Modern-day Noah's Ark aims to revive Angolan parks
Date: 10-Sep-02
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Darren Schuettler
The animals - including antelope, waterbuck and up to six cheetahs - will be taken from game parks in South Africa and Botswana and shipped to Angola on board a South African navy supply ship next June.
"We're calling it Operation Noah's Ark," said Professor Wouter van Hoven of South Africa's Kissama Foundation, which is organising the massive sea lift with the help of the South African navy and Angolan government.
"We need to rebuild Angola's national parks and that will bring the tourists and jobs," he added.
Angola's pillaged parks once teemed with herds of animals that roamed the dense bush and savannah before poachers and a nearly three-decade long civil war ravaged these areas.
Huge herds of elephants were shot for their meat and ivory by government troops and UNITA rebels alike.
"With the breakdown of law and order it was a free for all. The animals simply disappeared," said van Hoven, who led a recent expedition that found Angola's giant sable antelope which was feared to be extinct.
The Ark animals will be taken from Botswana's Tuli Game Reserve and South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve, and shipped in special steel containers by truck to Walvis Bay on Namibia's Atlantic coast.
The animals, their feed and trucks will be loaded onto the 21,000-tonne supply ship SAS Outeniqua for the three-day sea journey to Angola's port capital of Luanda.
"This is a first for us. We've never transported animals like this before," Lt. Commander Linda Hendricks told Reuters.
Once in Luanda, they will be driven the 70 kms (44 miles) to Quicama National Park. The relocation will take about 20 days.
Kissama began re-stocking Quicama two years ago and 80 animals, including 36 elephants, now live in a 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) area protected by armed guards and an electrified fence.
Despite warnings from animal rights groups that the animals would be slaughtered by poachers or killed by landmines, the only mishap has been two zebras shot by local villagers.
"All these animals are doing well. Several offspring have been born," van Hoven said.
Unlike the rest of Angola, landmines are not a problem in Quicama because the park did not see heavy fighting during the civil war. But Angolan government and Cuban troops based in the area were responsible for poaching during the war years.
With the end of the fighting in April, Angola is hoping to lure foreign tourists back to the southwest African country.
Thousands of foreign oil, aid and diamond workers visit the resource-rich country every year, but tourists with no business motives are a rare sight.
"This will help Angola to fast track the restoration of our national parks and to create new job opportunities," Angola's ambassador to South Africa, Izak dos Anjos, said in a statement.
