Angola Field Group

One of the nine female sables translocated.

The majestic Giant Sable, you see it everywhere – it’s the symbol of the national airline, the name of Angola’s national football team, oil companies love to logo it, hotels and restaurants splash it on their walls, but up until recently Angola’s most famous animal was thought to be headed for extinction as all evidence showed the remaining few females breeding with another subspecies in the absence of male Giant Sable.

Giant Sable or Palanca Negra Gigante, which boasts the longest horns of any antelope in the world, exists nowhere else in the world except in the province of Malange. Did only females of the species survive Angola’s long civil war?

Now finally, the report we’ve been waiting for….. hot off the press,  the latest update with photos of the exciting three-week Palanca Negra Capture Operation recently completed in Angola’s Cangandala National Park in the province of Malange. The good news is that males of the species have been located and one has been transported to the park to breed with the pure females that have now been placed in a protected enclosure so as to ensure survival of the animal that is the flagship of this country. Click here to read all about the Capture Operation in English or Portuguese in the July & September section of our Palanca Negra page ….

Biologist Pedro vaz Pinto with a sable bull.