The Great Giraffe Rescue: Saving the Nubian Giraffes
SOMETHING AMAZING Liza Dadone leapt from the truck as soon as it stopped She waded into the waist deep grass to get a closer look at a pair of giraffes in the distance A veterinarian at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs Colorado Dadone was here in the wooded grasslands of Uganda's Murchison Falls National Park to work on a conservation project She was part of a team helping endangered Nubian giraffes Easing close enough for a good look at the giraffes she had spotted Dadone smiled She recognized the male giraffe He was the one the team had named Melman A male front and female Nubian giraffe in Murchison Falls National Park Nubian giraffes live only in Ethiopia Kenya South Sudan and Uganda
Dadone didn't need to check this male's coat pattern against the cataloged photos of Nubian giraffes to be sure of his identity Although he was much taller and had matured from the two year old youngster she remembered his quirky jaw shape was unforgettable He was also part of the amazing story of how these giraffes came to be living here on the other side of a river from where they used to live That should have been impossible since giraffes can't swim the river was too deep to walk across and no bridge crossed the river So how did these giraffes come to be here Researchers identify each individual giraffe by its unique as human fingerprint spot pattern which they record with a photo
START AT THE BEGINNING The story starts in 2016 when Nubian giraffes living on the northern side of the Victoria Nile River in Uganda faced a crisis Their already small population was in danger of shrinking drastically So what was causing this crisis Giraffes are the world's tallest land animal Males which are taller than females may stand 20 feet 6 M Tall
Uganda's Nubian giraffe population didn't suddenly become in desperate need of help All the different species or kinds of giraffes were facing threats Giraffes roam wild only in Africa And according to population surveys conducted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN the total number of giraffes living there dropped from more than 150,000 in 1985 to only 97,500 in 2016 For years scientists and conservation experts had focused on helping Africa's shrinking elephant and rhino populations They had not realized that giraffes were also suffering from the same problems People were destroying giraffe habitats as they dug into the land for its natural resources or cleared it for farms roads and homes Military activity and poaching or illegal hunting in and around protected wildlife areas were also killing giraffes Finally after the 2016 population survey scientists and conservation experts realized the giraffe population was shrinking enough to be concerning Those remaining giraffes were scattered across twenty one African countries which made any attempt to help very difficult And the total count was divided among the different species of giraffes Although there were ongoing debates about how many species of giraffes existed the problem was that too often male and female giraffes of the same species were cut off from each other Those giraffes could not mate and produce calves so the population of some giraffe species had severely decreased
