The Great Giraffe Rescue: Saving the Nubian Giraffes
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
As far back as the 2016 giraffe survey it was clear that Nubian giraffes in Uganda were facing a population crisis The problem for Uganda's Nubian giraffes was that almost the entire population lived in Murchison Falls National Park on the northern side of the Victoria Nile River And in 2006 that was exactly the area where oil had been discovered Preparing the land for oil well drilling would make the area unlivable for the giraffes But years of political struggle over drilling rights in the park had prevented anything from happening until 2010 The giraffe's coat pattern helps it to blend in where it feeds and avoid being spotted by prowling lions
Then through 2013 the Ugandan government allowed only exploratory well drilling Those explorations determined the parkland held vast extremely rich oil reserves For a few more years plunging global oil prices stalled the possibility of starting well drilling But in 2016 the Ugandan government granted licenses for drilling and oil production to multiple international companies Those companies began drafting plans for building the roads and pipelines that would support oil well drilling in 2017 with the goal of having oil production begin in 2020 The plan included drilling more than four hundred wells across the home range occupied by Uganda's Nubian giraffes Robert Aruho senior veterinarian for the Uganda Wildlife Authority UWA which manages the national parks and wildlife reserves in Uganda said It was a wake up call for realizing that having nearly all our Nubian giraffes living in that one place was like having all our eggs in one basket We knew we needed to move some of those giraffes from the northern region of Murchison Falls National Park to start new satellite populations Satellite populations are small groups of animals that live in a separate habitat from the larger main group These populations can increase the number of animals in a species and decrease the species danger of extinction As early as 2015 UWA had realized they needed to start creating satellite populations of Uganda's Nubian giraffes In 2016 with destruction of the giraffe's habitat about to begin it was time to make that idea a reality
