Air Date: Week of December 6, 2024

Giraffe translocation to the Kitenden corridor in Kenya. (Photo: Courtesy of IFAW)

Facing habitat loss, poaching and climate disruption, giraffes have declined more than 40 percent in the last thirty years. The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed listing three giraffe subspecies as endangered and two others as threatened. Danielle Kessler, US Director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Host Jenni Doering talk about the threats to giraffes and how their proposed addition to the Endangered Species List could aid recovery.

Transcript

DOERING: Giraffes are the tallest land animals in the world. These gentle giants can grow up to 19 feet tall and are found across savannas and open woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa. But as the population of people in Africa has tripled from 500 million to more than 1.5 billion since 1980, at the same time, habitat loss, poaching and the climate crisis have led to a more than 40 percent decline of giraffes. And in some regions, giraffe populations are now down to just a few thousand individuals. After years of petitioning from conservation groups to protect giraffes under the Endangered Species Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed listing three subspecies as endangered, and two others as threatened. Here to tell us more about what this could mean for giraffe conservation is Danielle Kessler, the US Director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare or IFAW. Welcome to Living on Earth, Danielle!

KESSLER: Thank you. It's so nice to be here with you today.

DOERING: What are the top dangers that giraffes face?

KESSLER: Yeah, so really, it's largely an issue of space. So, giraffes are large land animals. They cover and they roam large areas. Their primary activity during the day is grazing. They spend a lot a lot of time eating, as most of us in the US are heading into a holiday, we can also relate to that. And so, these giraffes they're spending most of their day moving and looking for… For ways to sustain their rather large body mass. So, they're oftentimes coming into areas where we also have, you know, significant human population growth across the African continent. And so, there's only so much space and only so much land, and as we are also seeing increased impacts of climate change, such as drought or extreme precipitation events, communities, people are moving. They're having to move larger distances and to find new places to themselves survive and to graze their livestock and to have resources for communities. And so, this, again, is moving into areas where wildlife populations might be, and so there's land use changes and habitat fragmentation that happens as a result of that human population growth, and then the displacement of those communities and populations based on these natural sort of impacts, or these climate change induced impacts.

DOERING: So, tell me more about drought and how climate change is impacting giraffes.

KESSLER: Yeah, as I mentioned, the sort of primary driver of the decline in giraffe populations is habitat degradation, fragmentation, and a lot of that is driven by these extreme weather events, be that drought or extreme precipitation. I mean, right now across Africa, we're seeing a lot of drought conditions. So, the dry spell in southern Africa, early this year was the worst on record in the 40 years that they have been keeping those data records. According to the UN World Food Program, there has been about a 70% decrease in the harvest in Zambia and 80% in Zimbabwe. So, we are talking about crops just being wiped out in some of these areas of Africa, and anytime that the communities then are losing their crop yields or livestock aren't as productive, and it's causing those communities to also have to move and to find other places. So as those communities move, they may come into areas that have been more historically wildlife areas, and so that habitat encroachment then puts the animals, giraffes, others in sort of direct competition for the limited resources with those communities.

DOERING: I understand that giraffe decline has been called a silent extinction. Why is that?

KESSLER: Yeah, it's one of those extinction events that I think has not been grabbing headlines quite like others. So, about a decade or so ago, we really saw a lot of headlines about the elephant poaching crisis, and we saw elephants being poached across Africa, and there was ivory trade, and there was transnational organized crime that was tied to these things, and the rhino horn trade. And so there was sort of these attention-grabbing headlines of what was driving these extinctions, because it was linked to sort of large-scale events that were causing these things. And giraffes on the other hand, like I said, it's been about four decades that we've seen this 80% decrease. So, it's been sort of a slow burn, if you will, and maybe not these flash in the pot, sort of events that grab headlines and really make news. And so, it has been sort of happening in the background and just hasn't been picked up as a sort of the crisis that it is.

DOERING: Yeah, it sounds like the frog in a pot of boiling water, perennial problem.

KESSLER: Yeah, absolutely.

DOERING: And I could see how, compared to the rhino being hunted for its horn being used for so called medicinal purposes, that's a little bit more of an attention-grabbing headline than giraffes declining because of habitat loss?

KESSLER: Yeah, I think if you asked anybody to picture a safari in Africa, one of the first animals that's gonna come to mind is the giraffe, and we still see them so commonly in photos of that and the landscapes and so again, I think there's almost a sort of recency effect, or really, since it come to mind so quickly, you think that there's not a problem, because we still see them, and we still associate them so much with Africa. Which is another reason that we really wanna strive, I mean they are so important and so critical to the ecosystems that we really need to ensure that we are protecting them.

DOERING: How would enlisting giraffes under the US Endangered Species Act help protect them?

KESSLER: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question that it comes up a lot with regard to any time that the US is looking at listing foreign species, because the US obviously doesn't have jurisdiction to say what can be done with these species in other countries. But there are some benefits that these listings unlock, including increased funding that can go to range countries. So again, it sort of draws that spotlight. It draws international attention. It draws US attention to the fact that this is an extinction crisis, this is what's happening. And so, it can unlock some of those funding streams and ensure that conservation projects and… And things happening on the ground in Africa have the appropriate funding. And then it also puts a requirement on having permits for import of any giraffe specimens that might be coming into the US. So, we do know that there is fairly significant trade coming into the US. So, from a period of about 2006 to 2015 there were nearly 40,000 giraffe specimens imported into the US. So that includes things like bone carving, skin pieces, hunting trophies and so that 40,000 specimens, conservatively, is just under 4,000 individual giraffes. So, about a decade long period, about 4,000 giraffes coming into trade in the US. If that was all West Africa, it was not, but if it was all one of those species that would wipe out that entire species. So, ensuring that that trade is being done in a way that is not impacting these species, particularly the most endangered species, so we have a significant role in that, and making sure that we're not contributing to the declines is a really important aspect of this listing.

DOERING: So more broadly, what would a Giraffe Conservation Program look like?

KESSLER: Yeah well, I mean, as with any conservation program that we're looking at on the ground, you know, the approach that IFAW takes, and what really we find to be effective approach, is ensuring that you're working with the communities that live alongside these animals. And so, there's displacement of people in communities as well as the wildlife that they live alongside. And so, it's a matter of making sure that we understand the whole of what is happening and the context, and working with the communities and those that live alongside these animals to ensure that you're coming to find opportunities for both people and the wildlife.

DOERING: It seems important. Because sometimes we've seen conservation end up pushing people out of, you know, areas where they might need to live.

KESSLER: Yeah, absolutely and the knowledge that communities have, it's so valuable. They are sort of the front line of dealing with these animals. They have incredible knowledge, and these animals can also benefit them, depending on how they are reviewed in terms of bringing in tourism, and it's an area that we need to be looking at as well from a larger sort of global community. How can we be supporting these communities that live alongside wildlife? The wildlife and the ecosystems that are supported in these areas are critical for all of us, for our survival. These animals, they help mitigate climate change, right? So, they are carbon sinks. They take it and they capture carbon, and so they can mitigate some of the most extreme effects of climate change. And so, preserving and helping ensure that these ecosystems and these charismatic megafauna and all biodiversity is preserved really helped protect us all, and so we all have a role to play in figuring out how we how we can incentivize that and ensure that the people living alongside animals are benefiting from them too.

DOERING: So, what's next for this listing process?

KESSLER: So next is… It's open now to a 90-day public comment period, so that'll be closing in mid-February. So, the agency will be taking information from nonprofits, from academics, and from the American public, or even from those overseas, from foreign governments, from really anyone who wants to provide input to this. The things that they're going to pay the most attention to is information that is scientifically based, that is information about the management of these populations in the countries. Things that really help them to base this decision in, is this the best for conservation? And so they'll be taking that information in, and then they're going to sit back and they're going to evaluate all of it, and they'll take a look at everything they received, and then they'll issue a final decision, hopefully that would be within the year, but that will largely be dictated by the next incoming administration and when that can sort of get prioritized in moving through the agency. So, it's a great time for certainly those who work with giraffes or around giraffes or conservation project, for those individuals with specialized expertise to really be weighing in, but also for the American public to be saying how they feel about this listing and whether they think the US should be active in protecting giraffes.

DOERING: Danielle Kessler is the US director at the International Fund for animal welfare, or IFAW, thank you so much Danielle.

KESSLER: Thank you. It was great to be with you today.

 

Links

The Guardian | “US Moves to List Giraffes Under Endangered Species Act for First Time”

IFAW | “Are Giraffes Endangered?”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife | “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Proposes Endangered Species Act Protections for Giraffes”

Learn more about Danielle Kessler