The long-lasting giraffe, identified for his or her distinctive lengthy necks (which may measure as much as 6ft in size!), their prolonged legs, their body-covering patterned spots, and identified to be the tallest land animal, are in dire want of safety. Whilst you can simply spot giraffe in nature documentaries and at zoos around the globe, the unhappy actuality is that giraffe are in deep trouble with numbers plummeting by 30% during the last 30 years.
Their plight receives far much less consideration within the media than elephants and rhinos, and their rise in the specter of extinction has been termed ‘the silent extinction’. For each 4 elephants, there’s at present only one giraffe within the wild. In some areas of Africa that had been thought to be prime giraffe habitat, numbers have dropped by a staggering 95% in the identical interval.
The principle threats to giraffe are habitat loss, civil unrest, and poaching for meat and for the worldwide commerce in bone carvings, skins, and trophies. Habitat degradation and loss are attributable to rising human demand for agricultural land, farming livestock, and unsustainable timber and fuel-wood harvesting.