Giraffes put on extinction watch list
Only mammal whose status changed this year
WASHINGTON // The giraffe has been put on the vulnerable species list as scientists warn the tallest land animal is at risk of extinction.
The giraffe population has shrunk by about 40 per cent in just 30 years. In 1985, there were between 151,000 and 163,000, but last year the number was down to 97,562, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
At a biodiversity meeting in Mexico on Wednesday, the IUCN increased the threat level for 35 species and lowered the threat level for seven species on its Red List.
The giraffe is the only mammal whose status changed on the list this year and scientists blamed habitat loss. While everyone worries about elephants, Earth has four times as many pachyderms as giraffes, said Julian Fennessy and Noelle Kumpel, co-chairs of the speciality group of biologists that put the giraffe on the IUCN Red List. They called what was happening to giraffes a “silent extinction”.
“Everyone assumes giraffes are everywhere,” said Dr Fennessy, co-director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.
“But they are not.”
Until recently, biologists assessing giraffe numbers and where they could be found put them in one broad species instead of nine subspecies.
“There’s a strong tendency to think some species are OK because they are familiar and we see them in zoos,” said Duke University conservation biologist Stuart Pimm. “This is dangerous.”
Dr Fennessy said shrinking liv- ing space was the main culprit in the declining giraffe population, worsened by poaching and disease.
People are moving into giraffe areas, especially in central and eastern Africa and giraffe numbers are plunging most there, while being offset by increases in southern Africa, he said. This fragmented giraffe populations, making them shrink in size with wild giraffes gone from seven countries – Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal, said Dr Kumpel of the Zoological Society of London. The IUCN said about 13,000 plant and animal species were endangered or critically endangered. The next level is vulnerable, where giraffes were placed.