While we were all rejoicing about giant pandas finally making their way off of the endangered list, another species has taken their place – and I’ve hardly seen anything about it on the news. In fact, the most I saw on this issue was a simple tweet on Twitter.
Though the number of giraffes has been declining for the past few decades, the species has finally slipped onto the ‘endangered’ list after being listed as ‘vulnerable’ since 2016, with a 40% drop in population over the past 30 years. And, as is everything, it’s because of us. The two main reasons for the giraffe’s population decline are intrusion upon their territory (such as urbanization of their habitat) and poaching.
Though some giraffe populations are doing better than others, two subspecies of giraffes have been marked as critically endangered – one step from extinction – while another five subspecies have been listed as threatened or endangered. Currently, there is only one safe subspecies of giraffe – the Angolan giraffe.
It is easy to forget how some animals are struggling in the wild when the only time we get to see them is in zoos, or maybe the odd nature documentary. Many other beautiful animals such as zebras, peacocks, lions, hummingbirds, dolphins and more are getting closer to extinction every day. These are some of the animals I had no idea were being threatened until I did the research myself – and that’s just the thing. We cannot simply shrug this off and assume that the problem will fix itself; we need to draw attention to the issue. We as humans are the only ones that can make a difference because we are the ones that are causing the problems. I’m not saying you have to go to Africa and save the giraffes, but even something small could go a long way – such as spreading awareness or even a small donation to an organization such as the WWF. It is not too late to save these species.