09/04/01 -- Elephants fly into Angola

Elephants fly into Angola

September 4, 2001
By Justin Pearce in Luanda

Fifty wild animals are being flown from South Africa to Angola this week, the latest stage in a plan to restock Angola's war-ravaged game parks.

In the next few days, four planeloads of elephants and antelope will land at an airport south of Luanda and the animals will be released into the wild.

The first planeload of elephants was due to take off in the early hours of Tuesday morning from Louis Trichardt airport in the northern part of South Africa.The plane's destination is a small airfield inside the Kissama national park on the Angolan coast, from where the elephants will be taken by truck to a place where they can be set free.

Another group of elephants and two flights with antelope are due to arrive later in the week - a total of about 50 animals.

The animals have been donated by reserves in South Africa and Botswana, which have a surplus of wildlife.

In addition to the immense human cost of 25 years of civil war, the Angolan conflict has also taken its toll on the country's wildlife stocks.

Animals were driven away by fighting or killed for food by rival armies.

Charity mission

The airlift is being carried out by the Kissama Foundation, a joint Angolan and South African charitable initiative dedicated to rehabilitating Angola's nature reserves.

The first such airlift took place a year ago when 30 elephants were flown in.

The projects are funded by private donations and not government money, though Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is the patron of the Kissama Foundation.

Angola's long-running conflict has taken its toll on wildlife

Members of the foundation include several Angolan cabinet ministers and senior military officers, as well as the South African politician, Roelf Meyer.Part of the idea is to put Angola on the map as a tourist destination.

But Angolan tourism faces challenges much bigger than getting elephants on to aircraft.

The cost of living there is high by African standards; flights in and out of Luanda are expensive; and the country is isolated from the major tourist areas of southern and eastern Africa.

Also, despite government assurances that it controls most of Angola's territory, the Unita rebels have staged a series of guerrilla attacks in recent months, including some not far from the borders of the Kissama National Park.