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Close ✕Drought kills roughly a quarter of the wildebeest population
1993–1994 · Recorded · climate
The source states this happened, and its date is not in the future. The word the source used for it is historical.
A prolonged drought in 1993 caused severe starvation; roughly 250,000 of about 1.5 million wildebeest died, and dry-season calf survival fell to around 73% against 98.5% in the wet season. Mduma, Sinclair and Hilborn used this episode as the clearest demonstration that dry-season food, not predation and not the river, regulates the population.
- Source
- Journal of Animal Ecology (British Ecological Society) · Mduma S.A.R., Sinclair A.R.E. & Hilborn R. (1999) 'Food regulates the Serengeti wildebeest: a 40-year record', Journal of Animal Ecology 68(6): 1101–1122, doi:10.1046/j.1365-2656.1999.00352.x
- Standing
- This record: verified · publisher: verified
- How it arrived
- Editorial — A dated record from the Richseen Atlas editorial corpus, written and cited by a curator. Not captured from anywhere, and not live.
- Where
- At a canonical Atlas object, placed and checked by a curator.
- Subject
- SPECIES_WILDEBEEST · Serengeti National Park · PHENOMENON_RAINFALL_GRADIENT
Sources polled — usgs: newest 2026-09-10 · nws: newest 2026-09-10 · jpl-cneos: states no publication time, last reached 2026-09-10 · Official source connected · Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain) — marks are drawn only from sourced coordinates