Wanderlust Travel Magazine (UK)
Dispatches
Uganda may be known for its gorillas, but as the country works on a translocation programme to protect its giraffes, it’s time the world’s tallest animal gets some much-needed attention...
The world’s tallest animal gets some essential TLC in Uganda
It’s being called a ‘silent extinction’. Not because of the quiet nature of giraffe, but because their decline across Africa is scarcely reported. I tried to imagine a safari without them. Their big eyes and diva eyelashes staring watchful, ready to launch into a slow-motion rocking gallop if I veered too close.
“Most people don’t realise how threatened they are,” said Dr Julian Fennessy, of Giraffe Conservation Foundation. Giraffe have declined by about 30% since the mid-1980s down to around 111,000. Threats include hunting, habitat loss, snares, and the trade of body parts.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference last August recognised this concern and upgraded the giraffe on its register to tighten up against illegal and unsustainable trade. Yet they remain in urgent need of our help.
This has become even more pressing, because giraffes are now taxonomically recognised as four genetically distinct species (Maasai, Southern, reticulated and Northern) of which the latter are estimated to number a perilous 5,600 individuals. If you subdivide the northern giraffe into its three recognised subspecies (west African, Kordofan and Nubian) then each of these populations are critically endangered.
It was the Nubian subspecies (population around 3,000) that I went to see in Uganda. A translocation programme is underway from their core population in Murchison Falls National Park. The aim is to create satellite populations around Uganda, including to the remote north-east where Pian Upe Reserve
There’s been a huge decline in the giraffes’ landscape, but most people don’t realise how threatened they are
is witnessing the return of giraffes for the first time since 1996.
Pian Upe is Uganda’s second largest protected area covering 2,043 sq km. It was one of Africa’s great game viewing reserves in the 1950s before several decades of violent ethnic conflict gripped the Karamoja region, decimating its wildlife for bushmeat. “No rangers could work here as it was so dangerous. The animals were left unprotected,” explained senior warden, Christopher Masaba.
A six-hour drive north from Kampala, the final 60km followed a mud road that was so potholed and flooded that the truck carrying the first batch of five giraffe in late October got stuck. “We needed to hire a tractor to pull us out,” said Dr Robert Aruho, a wildlife vet with Uganda Wildlife Authority.
When the truck arrived, it got stuck again and was unable to deposit them in a temporary holding pen, so they were allowed to gallop off the back of the truck and flee into the reserve.
In all, 15 giraffe (11 female and four male) have been translocated with the aim of re-establishing a breeding giraffe population and they are being monitored daily by an anti-poaching team.
It’s hoped they will flourish like the population at Murchison Falls, where numbers have risen from around 300 in the mid-90s to some 1,650 today – over 50% of the world’s Nubian subspecies. But why translocate them if they are doing so well at Murchison?
“We can’t have all our eggs in one basket. It’s a unique opportunity for us to act now and create viable satellite populations to potentially reverse extinction before it might happen,” said Aruho. He explained how a century ago at Lake Mburo an entire giraffe population was wiped out by the ungulate disease rinderpest and now there is uncertainty in Murchison as oil exploration is underway.
It’s hoped 25 more giraffe will be translocated in 2020 and Aruho believes Pian Upe will comfortably support 700 giraffes in the future.
For now, the 15 have settled well. Giraffe tend to form loose affiliations and satellite-tracking devices attached to the ossicones on their heads, show the second and third batch arrivals have mixed.
I tracked them for several days on foot with the anti-poaching rangers, but the tall grasses restricted me to just fleeting distant sightings. We ascended a windburnished inselberg called Hyena Hill scanning for them. But they have blended well into an extensive savannah, which is also home to impala, roan, oribi, as well as leopards and cheetah.
“This isn’t an experiment for the giraffes,” smiled Masaba. “President Museveni once asked if we [conservationists] could talk about something else in Uganda other than gorillas? So now we can talk about our giraffes,” he added. “They have returned home.”