Name: Why protecting animal migrations could help the planet - The Climate Question, BBC World Service
Uploaded: 2024-08-31T15:52:31.000Z
Duration: 26 min 28 s
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This is the Climate Question from the BBC World Service.

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I'm Sophie Estor and I'm speaking to someone with a very enviable job, a safari guide in Tanzania, Nima Amos.

What I'm seeing in front of me is the woodland area.

A lot of birds, the greenery of the woodland area.

I know at night there's going to be a lot of them because when everybody is sleeping, that's the time that these animals are going to roam around like, OK, this is our land, especially hyenas.

It's a pretty incredible place to call your office.

And what animals are you following at the moment?

Great migration is among the biggest thing that our guests love to see because it's very amazing to see the number of the wildebeest that we have, the number of the zebras.

This week we're tracking some of the largest animal migrations on earth.

The hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles that stomp through East Africa.

And the great white sharks that hunt the oceans.

So I want to know, how is climate change impacting these epic animal journeys?

Migration is the biggest migration that we have here in Tanzania.

We have these millions of wildebeests mixed with zebras that you have here in Serengeti, moving from one place to another for availability of food and water.

I mean, I've only seen it in videos, but it must be a pretty awesome sight with so many animals.

Yes, it's plenty of animals, a lot of wildebeest.

When you see thousands of them running together, I mean, it's, I don't know, it's something that you can't even be able to explain it well, if you see it, it's a magical thing.

And do you get the other animals running after them?

I mean, the predators, the lions and the cheetahs?

Wildebeests, they're the main source of the Serengeti ecosystem.

They help to increase the number of the predators.

So whenever the migration pass, the lions, the vultures, hyenas, everybody's happy because food is everywhere.

And what kind of noise does this great migration make?

I get this from a lot of my guests when the migration, they're around here, they're like, OK, you know what?

They're making the noise like, all the time.

Imagine with thousands and thousands of wildebeest around.

As the seasons change, the wildebeest move from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Tanzania.

For the last few months, the hungry herbivores have been busy giving birth to their calves.

I've been working for more than five years as a safari guide.

So it's always the great moment when I get to see the wildebeest giving birth.

I'm telling you, it's a wonderful moment seeing how they're giving birth and straight ahead after one minute, two minutes, the calf can be able to walk.

The mother can be able to lactate the calf.

It's a moment that whenever you see it, OK, these are incredible animals.

But recently, Nima's seen the patterns of this birthing change.

Because of the climate changes last year, we had unexpected rain, a lot of rain, which made even the wildebeest being a little bit confused.

I was at the eastern part of Serengeti this January and there were plenty of the wildebeest giving birth around that area where they were supposed to not be at this time.

But because it's raining everywhere, so they are like scattered, going up and down, going east to west.

Climate change is making rainfall in the Serengeti and the Masai Mara more unpredictable.

Last year, vast quantities of rain on the Tanzanian side meant the grass grew everywhere, so the wildebeest were giving birth in different areas than usual.

And it's not just Nima who's concerned about this.

I first got involved in this when I was an undergraduate student in Kenya in the early years.

During that time, we went to visit Masai Mara and I got really interested in the place ever since.

Joseph Ogutu moved to Germany, where he's a senior statistician at the University of in this very ecosystem.

He's been analysing data captured by the Kenyan government, which sends people in low-flying planes over this vast savannah to painstakingly count by the human eye and with photographs the number and timings of wildebeest.

And climate change is causing the great migration to change.

We are seeing that the migration used to visit Masai Mara in much larger numbers in the 70s and the 80s.

There used to be at least over one million wildebeest alone coming to Masai Mara from the Serengeti.

But over the years, that number has gone down.

And nowadays, it is hard to find more than just about 250,000 visiting the Mara.

That's a big change from over a million to 250,000.

The other change is that these few that do make it to the Mara each dry season, spend less time in the Mara than they used to do in the early years.

And they're spending about one and a half months less based on our estimates than they used to do in the early years when they were coming in larger numbers.

The wildebeest are spending less time in Kenya.

They prefer it on the Tanzanian side, where Nima says there's been more rain and therefore more grass.

Climate change is affecting the animals in lots of different ways.

So in recent years, the Mara River nearly completely dried out, which represented a serious challenge.

Secondly, when the rainfall reduces, then the amount of grass produced also reduces, forcing the migration to move over longer areas looking for water and food.

They go closer to villages or the homes of poachers.

So the number of the wildebeest that are killed as a result of this increases.

So when there's more drought that pushes wildebeest closer to humans, how much have the numbers gone up in terms of wildebeest being poached?

About 100,000 wildebeest are poached every year.

On top of that number, you would add more in years which have got less rainfall due to drought.

Joseph's seen drought get more intense and more frequent in recent years.

Since 2021, East Africa has been gripped by a horrific three-year drought, and scientists say it was made 100 times more likely by climate change.

We've made a whole programme about ways to tackle drought in this region.

Just search our back catalogue and type, how can we fight drought in the Horn of Africa, wherever you get your podcasts.

It's not just drought that's causing a problem.

The temperature is increasing in Masai Mara.

The average minimum temperature at night used to be about seven degrees Celsius in the 1960s, but that has now increased to 11 degrees, which is an increase of four degrees Celsius.

It means that the water that is in the ground and the river evaporates faster, so there's less for the animals to drink, and it's harder for grass to grow in Kenya.

So they stay longer in Tanzania, where they're more likely to come into contact with poachers as they roam the plains for food and water, and they're also more likely to overgraze the grass.

Joseph says there's been dramatic changes in land use since the 1970s.

There are far more livestock, which means competition for grazing, and there's been an increase in human settlements, which come with a lot of fencing, so it's harder for the wildebeest to roam freely through the territory.

Yeah, I think the animals are trying to do the best they can to adapt.

The habitats are getting lost or degraded in various ways.

So climate change just continues to pile more pressure on these animals and accelerate the loss of the animals and the loss of their habitats.

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Why protecting animal migrations could help the planet - The Climate Question, BBC World Service

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intense

incredible

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