It's now recognised as one of the world's greatest animal migration miracles. Yet the more than six million antelope and other wildlife species that form part of the Great Nile Migration remain under serious threat - despite the weekend listing of this threatened landscape as South Sudan's first World Heritage Site.

A vast 11 million-hectare landscape in South Sudan, hosting the largest remaining land mammal migration on Earth, has just been added to the Unesco list of World Heritage Sites.

Listed on Sunday, 26 July at a Unesco meeting in the Republic of Korea, the Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape supports an annual migration of more than six million antelope, including white-eared kob, tiang, Mongalla gazelle and Bohor reedbuck.

As South Sudan's first Unesco World Heritage Site, the inscription acknowledges the landscape's "outstanding universal value" and secures international recognition for one of the planet's most remarkable migratory systems.

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Sadly, however, the new site has simultaneously been added to the List of World Heritage in Danger due to several serious threats to this landscape. This includes continued armed conflict in the region, as well as commercial poaching, infrastructure development, "potential extractive industries" and incomplete protection and management arrangements.

The new heritage site stretches northward from the capital in Juba towards the famous Sudd wetland and the Ethiopian border, incorporating the Boma National Park and Badingilo National Park and a network of wildlife corridors that include savannas, floodplains, wetlands and woodlands.

Regarded as one of the largest intact and ecologically functional landscapes in...