Greenwire : Once on the brink of extinction, the number of giraffes in West Africa has crept to more than 200. New education efforts and laws banning hunting and poaching have caused the herd size of the western subspecies to quadruple from an estimated 50 in 1996. The government “realized they had an invaluable biological and tourism resource: the last population left in West Africa,” said Jean-Patrick Suraud, a French scientist with the Association to Safeguard the Giraffes of Niger. Giraffe meat has long been served to tourists, and the animals’ skins used to make drums, bowls and shoes. Some villagers also believed the hair on their coats can induce fertility, and they have also cut down the bushes giraffes depend on for food. Now, some countries like Kenya have removed the meat from the menu, and environmental groups have stepped in to educate villagers. In 1998, Niger’s government submitted to pressure from conservation groups and drafted laws to ban hunting and poaching of the 2,200-pound animals. The country made killing a giraffe an offense punishable by a five-year jail sentence and instituted fines amounting to hundreds of times the yearly income of farmers. By 2004, the country’s herds had nearly doubled in size. Still, protecting the half of the giraffe population that live outside game parks can be difficult. Africa’s total giraffe population has dwindled from an estimated 140,000 a decade ago to fewer than 100,000 today (Todd Pitman, AP/MSNBC.com , Nov. 7). – DFM Share This
Follow this link:
West African giraffe numbers on the rise
