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Welcome to All Creatures Podcast. This is Chris, and I'm so excited to welcome Dr. Julian Fennessy. Hey, Julian, how you doing? G'day, Chris. How's it going? It's great to be online with you. Oh, it's awesome. Thank you. And just... I've been chasing Julian down for a few months. He is the director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. And where are you located right now, Julian? Our base here is in Namibia, in Wintouk, the capital, so in southern Africa.
Yeah, so that's why it's been hard to chase you down. You're so busy. Yeah, I've mixed that with a little bit of COVID-19 issues and we're all good to go now. No kidding. No kidding. So real quick, first, I always like to ask, can you tell our listeners your background, where you grew up, and then your education that led you to Namibia? So obviously I have a bit of a different accent. So I'm an Aussie, an Australian by trade.
I grew up there, born and bred, and was lucky as a 16-year-old kid to spend a year in South Africa as a Rotary Exchange student. And that sort of changed what I wanted to do. I always wanted to be a stockbroker or something to make a bunch of money.
but realized that there was a lot more to do in life had a whole bunch of things happening unfortunately my old man died at the time and realized there's there's more to life so when i went back to oz i did a degree in natural resource management and was lucky enough to get a job for the Australian Development Agency in Namibia. And that was, let's say, a couple of years ago. I was 23 years old and moved out working in environmental education for the country, training people.
It was fantastic, a good inroad. And, you know, eventually I ended up doing a couple other jobs in the country here in Namibia and started a PhD. through the University of Sydney in Australia on the ecology of the desert dwelling giraffe in northwest Namibia so basically trying to figure out what was going on with giraffe you know how many were there in the desert uh were they genetically related or different to other giraffe
where they moved. We did the first ever GPS satellite tagging of giraffe. So many cool things. And so, yeah, but it was really important after working for a few years to get that PhD under the belt. as a stepping stone to continue the work we do today. Do you have any advice? Because we have a lot of students that ask us, how do you get involved in conservation?
Do you have any advice for them on how they can maybe follow your footsteps to get working in conservation? Yeah. So as I said before, I wanted to be a stockbroker. So go there. You'll make a hell of a lot more money. No, I think the reality is that it's not easy, there's no doubt, and there's more and more out there, but you really have to follow your own passion. You know, volunteering and people will say it.
over and over. It's a really important thing while you're young and undertaking your degree or before.
get out there, figure out what's going on, whether it's at a zoo or a captive facility close to where you are, whether there's working with the National Wildlife Authorities or similar, in whatever country you are. And it's a lot about... who you know as much as what you know so if you've got a really good personality you're really keen to get involved unfortunately it doesn't always pay but get out there do stuff and then
the only person who ever makes this happen is you. So that's really important I found in life is that, you know, always look for a mentor or something like that. But unfortunately, they're not a dime a dozen. So you get out there and if you want to achieve something, you have to... strive for it yourself and put yourself in the right place at the right time and it may not seem that way but
the sum of the parts, everything you do will lead up to show people that you're really keen and interested and hopefully there's, you know, things will fall in place. That's amazing advice. Yeah, absolutely agree with you on that. So how did you get involved with giraffes? You know, of all the species on earth, and I know you said you were doing work in Namibia. How did that all of a sudden translate into doing giraffes?
for your phd yeah so giraffe definitely were not my uh priority critter when i first wanted to you know go into wildlife conservation in australia there's all these tiny little beasts that run around in the middle of the night and i realized there was not an interest to get up in the middle of the night i don't like the It's freezing cold here in Namibia at the moment. It's blue sky, but it's below zero. But yeah, no, I realized when we were in Namibia, I worked on a water catchment study.
And we were looking at the impact of water on people, livestock and wildlife. And it was an amazing area, northwest Namibia, and included Atosha National Park. And Atosha is one of the most well-known national parks in Africa. and this catchment ran all the way.
through communal land and then through the Skeleton Coast National Park to the ocean. And so I was lucky enough to work on this project for many years. And during that time, realised, well, actually, I started a master's because I thought I'd better improve my... knowledge and my obviously letters at the end behind my name looking at elephant and giraffe and the interactions in the desert because it was just such a
a remoter you know unknown entity and the more and more i looked at it i realized that well you know there's a lot of people who do elephant work and there's a lot of egos around elephant conservation but so little about giraffe And so I thought, well, maybe I'm not the cleverest of scientists, but the more and more I can understand about giraffe and find out more and share it, we can sort of learn a bit more.
to be able to tell the world. And we're quite fortunate now that that's how I got into Giraffe and ever since have done a lot of things. giraffe related in my spare time and only 10 years ago we started the Giraffe Conservation Foundation but there was never a paid job in giraffe at all and no one I believe.
prior to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, ever worked full-time on giraffe. So it really is about, you know, making your passion your life. And, you know, in between you've got to pay the bills, but that's, you know, the reality. Yes. Yes. And working at animals, it just, it's obvious for anybody that's out there that works at animals or works for zoo understands you're not going to get rich doing this, but.
You're going to have a hell of a lot of fun. There's going to be ups and downs in any society or job or whatever, but it's what you make of it. And I think for us, for Giraffe... We've been really fortunate and we've been able to grow things and I'm stoked that we fell across this small critter. Oh, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty tiny, huh? Yeah. Just a really quick, a quick shout out to Lauren from Global Conservation Force and then also Mike Bona, LA Zoo, who put me in touch with you.
they told me I had to talk to you. So again, just very giddy about this. I could probably throw in there quickly if you get it in there. It's amazing you shout out to Mike because Mike will be the first to shout out about Mike. So that's brilliant that you got that in there. I love him. He's the best. He's cool. Yeah, I've become really good friends. So you said you started Giraffe Conservation Foundation 10 years ago. Were you part of founding that? Because I know you're the director.
Yeah, so 10 years ago, I'd been involved obviously in draft conservation efforts for a few years and realised I need to do more. So I was looking around and then found some with my wife and some others who would... work with us to start an ngo and at that stage i'd worked a lot for ngos done consultancy work work for governments um but you know starting something is a little bit of a different thing so yeah so we're lucky now 10 years on um yeah we're the
founders and directors. And, you know, it's built nicely. And since then, which is awesome. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I just want to throw this in here. Would you agree that giraffes is kind of suffering a silent extinction? Not a lot of people know about it.
Definitely. The term silent extinction was something that we coined a few years ago as we realised that giraffe numbers were essentially going missing before our eyes in some populations. And this was sort of one of the basis of starting. Conservation Foundation. Despite us living and working in southern Africa for many years, you know, the problem is not here. The problem is essentially across central, east and west Africa and where some of those numbers have declined.
significantly over the last 30 years, let alone the last 100 or more years. So, yeah, what we do see is that this silent extinction is something that's... you know sort of not known to everyone out there you know we hear a lot about elephant and they are in threat there's no doubt but you know if you think about giraffe there's four elephants for every giraffe there are in africa
So, you know, we've got probably 111,000 giraffe remaining in all of Africa, and that's all different types. And I'm sure we'll chat about that just now. But, you know, there's more than 400,000 African elephants. So why is there not the media and attention around? around giraffes, there is around elephant or rhino. But, you know, it's with guys like you and others that we're happy now we're starting to share the good news or not, as the case may be, and there is positive news.
And that's what we want to get involved with and can keep getting involved with. But conservation is also about a game of getting your voice heard and getting people involved. Yeah, you would think, especially giraffes are so beloved. I mean... At zoos, I'm sure they're in Africa. People just want to see them. I mean, they just absolutely want to see them. Definitely.
I was going to say, they're definitely the most iconic animal or African animal for sure. You know, if you've got elephant, you've got Asian elephant as well. You've got rhino, you've got rhinos in Sumatra, India. But if you want something quintessential Africa, it's definitely... giraffe and it's one of the most you know most important animals and priority animals people want to see on safari it's it's a tick it's a must see oh yeah absolutely absolutely
I guess we'll continue on this and then we'll jump back to some of the other questions I had for you. But talking about this silent extinction, what are some of the real pressures that they're facing out there? Yeah, I mean, there's a host of threats facing giraffe as there is with a lot of wildlife, not just in Africa, but across the globe. And the bottom line is there's too many people. You know, we've got to stop breeding.
Because the impact that people and the resources that we acquired are obviously putting biggest pressures on habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poaching or illegal hunting. And then obviously disease, which is linked to livestock. So all of these things combined that giraffe and other wildlife obviously...
don't have the same amount of habitat. They can't move between areas anymore. They're restricted because there's developments, whether it's roads or mines or, you know, other sort of forms of development, whether, you know, that are coming along.
so all of these factors are really having a big impact on giraffe as one would expect and you know if you just plonk them in a little area they'll do quite well but if they can't move outside of that then it leads to other genetic you know problems as well um so
Yeah, definitely we are facing some big issues with giraffe and as the human population growth in Africa is the fastest and it's the youngest population, it's only going to expand and we're lucky at the moment there's still large populations in communal areas. areas in some countries in Africa, but in some others like Uganda, they're basically only restricted to national parks.
And are you finding that, you know, obviously certain countries are more supportive of giraffe conservation, others can't really support you? Oh, there's definitely the good, the bad and the ugly with regards to support. And, you know, imagine working with one government and, you know, I'm not going to talk politics, but if you try to work with any government.
you know, it's really challenging because there's lots of policies and legislations you have to go through. And we work in more than 15 African governments at the moment. And so, you know, at times it feels like it's an uphill battle. But... when things do go well and they're going well we believe in many countries
It's the only way to do conservation. If you can get the buy-in from the government, the support of the government, everything else will flow from there. And that's critical for long-term conservation and especially for giraffe. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can only imagine. I can imagine how difficult that is to do that. So what are your duties as director? Because I imagine that is...
A busy job. Thank you for giving us time. I mean, I can only imagine how you get pulled in so many different directions. Yeah, I mean, I suppose, you know, the title of director is just that and what you do day to day. I mean, almost hour to hour varies a lot. I think a prime example is this morning, let's say. In the hour before we started chatting, I had a phone call with Uganda, with our veterinarian, Dr. Sarah Ferguson, who works up there de-snaring animals, and we were just talking.
programmatic things and then at the same time one of the light bulbs uh went out in the office so just went and changed that uh had to look for the air conditioning turner on or an offerer because it's freezing cold And then in between you have emails and we're doing a taxonomic review of giraffe at the moment. So we've got a whole scientific sort of academic... component of that and then next week we're
going out, translocating giraffes. So from my job, it's very broad. We do have a number of staff. I think we were doing the numbers yesterday and we're looking at diversity and we really feel we're... We're amazing. We have 16 different nationalities. working as the GCF team across Africa and the world. And that's quite remarkable. And we only have 20 in the whole team. So it's pretty cool that we're so diverse from all backgrounds across the African.
continent, Europe, America, Australia. So we're four continents worth of people. And as a director, we basically manage a lot of the operations. good team that we work with and everything from environmental education through to high-end scientific academic research to guide conservation decisions on the ground. And then so GCF... Oh gosh. So what is kind of the mission? What encompasses everything that you do? So GCF is the only NGO in the world that focuses on draft conservation and management.
across the continent of Africa. So we are involved in everything from... initially from counting giraffe and a lot of people just thought we were a research organization for many years but we had to figure out how many giraffe were they where are they what are the threats and then from there we started to implement specific programmatic works like
developing national strategies so you know before we started there was no national strategies for giraffe in any country and now i think we're six national strategies and these are the backbone of then implementing them to drive good conservation efforts in these respective countries. We have a host of students, master's, PhD students from across Africa and the world working in different countries. We've got staff in obviously Namibia where we are, but also in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya.
Niger so then GPS satellite tagging we have the largest GPS satellite tagging program of giraffe and many animals you know probably in the world we you know have have put out more than 180 GPS satellite units on giraffe and collecting data from across the continent. They're all solar powered, really cool things. And we work with Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute as a partnership.
is an example we partner with them to help us with the scientific questions we need answered which then feed back into conservation decision making. or we'll work with African Parks Network who are an amazing organisation working across the continent helping governments to manage land and we provide all giraffe conservation science and management decisions for them.
and yeah then i suppose the sexy things that people like to see are the translocation so picking up animals setting up new populations and we've been increasing our work and that's something that seems to be going well and southern africa have been doing it for years but the hard yards is doing it across East Central and West Africa. And that's where we've been putting a lot of effort lately. Right. So is that more for diversifying their genetics of the population?
So translocations are for a number of reasons. A, it could be augmenting individuals, so putting more back into a population that's been reduced over time because of... threats and those threats have abated, they're gone. We do an assessment before we move any giraffe around.
um so we want to give them a bit more genes a bit more of a boost so that the population can regrow and it's important not just for giraffe but also it's linked to local community-based conservation or also government tourism efforts that are going on and then we've moved giraffe back into areas that they went extinct anything up to 100 years earlier and now the conditions are right to
bring giraffe back to those areas and it's an amazing feeling and it's working with the community and with the governments to to bring them back and post monitor them and seeing how they're going and touch wood you know it's been so far successful essentially every population that we've moved. So it's slowly but surely, hopefully we're doing the right thing.
Yeah, amazing work. I mean, so you mentioned the taxonomic review. Is that having to do with how many species there are? Because that just seems like to be a big debate right now. It's an interesting discussion and obviously I sit on one side of it and I think a couple of years ago we worked with the zoo community actually because they wanted to figure out in the... in the late 90s and then early 2000s about what type of giraffe they had, especially in the North American zoos.
but they had to get some samples from the wild so that's when we started working together and they figured out you know there's different types of giraffe there but some of them obviously not as pure as they thought and we've continued this project so it's been going I don't know, day to day, it's been going for like 15 years and we've collected.
genetic or tissue samples from giraffe of every major population across African continent and I don't know any other species that has that detailed sort of data collection. So what we figured out is that there's four species and this is something that we published in 2016. It's based on genomic, nuclear and mitochondrial based research.
And we have a new paper just under review at the moment, which we hope will sort of finalise any debate people have in it. And it clearly shows that there is, you know, the status quo of four species. The debate, I suppose, itself, I don't know. How do I say this? I think it might be more of a personal issue that people don't like me. And I would prefer to argue against keeping one species because I haven't seen anyone actually do any primary research or taxonomic assessment.
You know, I find that a little bit challenging that scientists throw out a lot of ideas, but they actually don't do the work themselves. And I almost think that people shouldn't have a leg to stand on if they actually don't do the work and come back with a rebuttal rather than... asking questions so i think that's where we stand at the moment um i think we're We're pretty clear that it's four species. Taxonomy itself, as I'm sure you know, is probably half art, half science. And, you know...
Genomic and work these days is pretty clear in what we're seeing and things may change in the future, but we need a mechanism to show that these animals are different. and if they're different then we should be managing them and that's really important for conservation and it's not how we started.
but it obviously links in perfectly with what we want to do. If we've got one species of giraffe, they listed it as vulnerable in 2016. That's a great effort. It took us a long time to get all that data together with the team. What we figured out, if there's four species, one of those species is least concern. The population in southern Africa is going up and has been going up significantly in the last 30 years. The other three...
if you were to do an assessment today, would all be listed as endangered or critically endangered. And species conservation is done, well, conservation itself, sorry, is done at predominantly a species level. So... we're missing the boat here so at the moment you know they're vulnerable and that's you know obviously not great but you know a lot of the support then could go to southern africa where populations in general are doing well but we really need to focus you know on
critically endangered or endangered species and and this is where these arguments shouldn't even be arguments we should be all on the same page that we're trying to conserve giraffe and you know whether the science of it you don't you question just because of questioning for the sake of science I think that's as harmful as anything Yeah, I've ran into it. Just people like to argue, just argue, right? It keeps people busy. And I'm glad it does because, you know, what else would they get up to?
I know, it's science. You just got to get used to it. But it's interesting you talk about the three of the four. Can you talk about those three species, where they are in an estimate on populations? Yeah, so if we focus on... You know, as I said, East, Central and West Africa. So you've got the three species would be the Maasai giraffe. And that's predominantly in southern Kenya, throughout Tanzania and the former.
Thornycrofts or Luangwa giraffe in Zambia is actually also a Maasai giraffe. Whether it's a subspecies or not, that's still to be decided. But, you know, to me, that's just semantics. What is a subspecies? That's another discussion. So they have declined by a little bit more than 50% in just the last 30 years alone. So we're talking about an estimated 36,000, 37,000 Maasai Giraffe in the wild, which is not a great amount.
Then we go to reticulated giraffe, and reticulated giraffe are predominantly in northern Kenya, but their range expands into southern Ethiopia and into... uh also neighboring somalia so those populations have probably declined by oh bad a little bit more than 50 maybe up to 60 percent and their numbers and this is just the last 30 years and their numbers are estimated about 15 and a half thousand in the wild so that's getting a lot less
um and then the last one uh what we call northern giraffe which consists of the west african giraffe the cordofan giraffe and the nubian giraffe and the nubian giraffe we have in it the rothschilds giraffe because they're genetically 100 the same and they look the same as well so but the combined number of the northern giraffe is just 5,600 individuals. So that's about the same as black rhino. And in the last 30 years, there's been a decline of more than 90%.
of these giraffe in the wild and i mean that's massive And that's why we have to bring this attention, not talk about as much 111,000 of giraffe. We have to talk about 5,600. Look at the power of whether it's black rhino or gorilla or other conservation.
you know iconic species we need to get this out and we need to you know get everyone on board You can spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and get more time to actually play the games you love with the IGN Daily Update Podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies and television with news, previews and reviews. You'll hear everything from Comic-Con coverage to the huge Diablo 4 launch.
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It is complex and there's no doubt about it. We have to come up with some arbitrary things. Species in themselves are quite arbitrary. We've got good reason now with good genomic data to show that these giraffe are different. And so we should manage them different and help the governments and those local communities or local NGOs that are working with them.
to help manage and conserve them before it's too late. I would hate to knock back on someone's desk who argues with me and say in a few years' time, well, what if we'd done that? wouldn't have we saved them rather than arguing is it this flavor or is it that flavor giraffe and do you find the locals how do they what's their opinions of giraffes because i mean i understand elephants come in raid crops
That angers them. Predators may poach some of their animals every now and then. What do giraffes do that would anger locals or anything? Yeah, I know. Luckily, giraffe have a bit better street cred than predators and elephant and whatnot. So that's a good starting place to work with. But in countries like Niger or Niger in West Africa? Giraffe do come in and they crop raid. They love their mangoes and their beans.
So what we found out a few years ago, we had a PhD student and friend, Jean-Patrick Serot, who unfortunately has passed away now, but he found out using GPS satellite technology. you know field observation work that at night time the giraffe was sneaking into the village areas and eating this food and then running out again. so it was pretty sneaky sods so what we uh obviously with that we were able to advise you know village areas to let's
better protect your plants, of course, and your crops. Can't be done everywhere because it's a big open landscape where they live in Niger. So they can be a bit cheeky like that. But they do trample, obviously, in communal areas. They're walking through areas. So, you know, the fields of maize or mahongo, the staple food, they do sometimes trample food. But in general, they're not dangerous.
so people have a much better opinion of them. They like seeing giraffe. They like that they're part of their local environment and history. But of course, wildlife is wildlife. And, you know, they have to see that they're not a... an impact there's got to be some form of benefit for them to stay and that could be aesthetic just alone or it could be linked to tourism or other things and so you know tourism is a or
Conservation in general is a luxury. Day-to-day, local people living in a community area, food on the table, stay healthy. These are the most important things. working with local communities for conservation of giraffe and any animals is critical it can't be just go in and do a sexy sort of translocation and move on you have to be there for the long haul
Yeah, I mean, it's such a good point. How is ecotourism doing like in, I guess with giraffes overall, but pre-COVID and now during this pandemic? Yeah, no, tourism doesn't exist. It's a massive impact.
on wildlife conservation at so many different levels so governments who obviously rely on people are going to national parks and there's just no revenue coming in or it could be an NGO who are supported like ourselves in different places by the tourism industry who but that obviously doesn't exist at the moment so we're all having to reinvent
how we're working and who knows when we're going to come out of this and let alone when people are going to start to travel at the same sort of numbers that they did before so it really you know People don't understand how much tourism has impacted wildlife conservation efforts in Africa and I'm sure elsewhere in the world. And we're going to see increasing probably in poaching and other impacts.
because the monitoring is just not there. We're lucky we actually have teams on the ground still in many countries in Africa, and that makes the big difference when you're African-based for an African species versus an NGO who sits somewhere else in the world. flies in and out so these solutions have to be in africa with africans um and tourism has been a godsend but as we know it can be quite fickle so yeah we have to be clever but hopefully we
We're trying to change that and do the best we can at the moment. Yeah, I know. I know. I mean, the entire planet is going through this together and it's... Just hearing some horror stories out there and, you know, bless you for what you're doing. You're still fighting the good fight. What, I guess I had a question too, like what type of research projects?
I know you talked about the tagging, which is fascinating. So maybe you can expand on that a little bit, the satellite tags. But are there other research projects that you're currently conducting? The GPS satellite tagging, we call it Twigger Tracker because Twigger is giraffe in Swahili. And at the moment, in eight countries, we have...
GPS satellite units which are solar powered. They're connected to the ossicone, which is another word for the horn of the giraffe. It's not a horn, it's an ossicone because it's an ossification of the bone onto the skull of giraffe, not a... additional horn so there's one for people to look up when they've got nothing better to do but and then what we we get it's set at the moment to receive a signal every
One hour, which is a GPS location, weather, and it could be other sort of factors we're looking at, like movements. And they are collected every day, every hour and sent. fire satellite and you sit anywhere in the world and you can watch these GPS satellites. movements happening. And what we do this for is to figure out a whole host of things. A, it could be trying to figure out anti-poaching. So in northern Democratic Republic of Congo in Garumba National Park.
We're working with African Parks. There's a whole bunch of units on to help them figure out where are the giraffe moving so that they can ensure that they're increasing their monitoring in those areas. Northern Uganda, we've seen giraffe move across to South Sudan and back, which was never been reported before. And then for translocations, we put these units on them so we can monitor them and the herds where they're moving.
because some of these are very large landscapes. So we're finding some absolutely fascinating things. And during these COVID times, some of these giraffe moved much further and closer to villages or bigger cities than we'd seen before. We're still doing some analysis on that. with some partners at Zenkenberg, which is a museum in Frankfurt, which has got some big labs there that we do our genetics work, but they also have some very clever scientists who do movements, as long as with Smithsonian.
San Diego Zoo Global. So we're coming up with some really cool things. So that's an important project for us. But other projects, we constantly have ongoing students doing work and any master's or PhD student has to... not only look at the theoretical side, but it has to relate directly to any conservation management efforts and decisions we want to do. Let's say in Niger, we've got a student from the Czech Republic working closely with a Benin student as well as a Nigerian student.
And they're looking at what's happening in the big population in Niger of giraffe. It's in a place called the Giraffe Zone, adequately named, but it's in a community area where they're moving, what they're doing. How's the population growing? We've translocated some, so they're watching them and they're overseeing community eco-guards that we work with to monitor them. And all of that information obviously is from an academic side, but then it's fed back to day-to-day management.
um i don't know we've got projects uh northwest namibia with a namibian student who is looking at movements of giraffe and what they eat and human community sort of interaction because we're trying to look at whether it's to move giraffe back into southwestern angola which is a very similar type of environment so we're doing assessments at the moment through you know the use of science and academia to see if this is the best way forward and then we can come
with the practical solutions and essentially those types of things we're doing in 15 countries at the moment across africa Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh, I could just, I get some of my listeners like jumping up and down. I want to do that. I want to do that. I'm not going to complain. I reckon we have an amazing job and you know, the problem with these.
covid times is that you keep coming up with new ideas and everyone keeps telling me to pull my head in and just you know let's not start something new let's exactly it's like oh what about this what about that no i mean and it's interesting you said
that giraffes are ranging closer to cities. I mean, obviously, in the media, we're seeing that, like, especially early on in the lockdown, say, in the United States. Some of the images coming, coyotes wandering through major cities, just... wildlife kind of coming back to reclaim, but obviously it's going to be short lived.
sadly yeah no but i mean it's great to see and i mean it gives you hope i mean this is just a little bit of a change in uh the day-to-day operations of the world and and we're seeing you know the resilience of wildlife you know that for vegetation as well and all of this is interlinked and you know amazing if we could just be a little bit more nicer to our environment um you know we wouldn't have the problems we have
No, no, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. So translocation, I'm just curious the logistics of that. So do you, I guess, select the animals, then dart them? My question is, how do you move a giraffe? Especially with that long neck. Yeah, with a lot of help. So I think there's different ways we do translocation.
One of the ways in many countries that we've done it is by individual capture. So, you know, we've done work in... say a population let's call it murchison falls national park in uganda and we know where the numbers how many they are what different age classes and then we're looking at younger animals one to two years old because they're relatively easy to
transport they've started to obviously feed everything by themselves now and they're very healthy to set up a new population so we go around We have a group of people, a veterinarian with some very potent drugs, some opioids that... are about torphene which is also called m99 um you know it's about 10 000 times more powerful than morphine so you know it's very scary drugs and there's other drugs we use as well can be mixed with it but yep
dart a giraffe within two to five minutes it starts getting wobbly you have a capture team jump physically out of the back of a car you rope it safely to the ground so it's like you know john wayne style um around the legs bring it to the ground it can come down pretty hard but they're solid beasts you jump on the neck to hold it down because it's a lot like a horse it needs that momentum or a camel to get up and you hold it down put a blindfold on it
put earplugs in and give it a reversal drug immediately. And so for the rest of the time it's down, people are physically holding this giraffe down on the ground. And then we put ropes on it and guide it into what we call a chariot or a recovery trailer. And then often we take that to either a big vehicle where they're going to move or into a boma.
which is a sort of a fenced area so that they can calm down for a few days. And then we move them all by truck. And some of those movements can be, you know. 50, 100 kilometres and some of it can be 800 kilometres and take 48 hours. So it's a lot of work, and that's one way. And the other way is what's called mass capture, is that you build a big funnel of sheets.
uh in the middle of the bush where you know approximately where giraffe are and it connects to a truck at far away and you use a helicopter normally and light and you chase these giraffe into this boat big funnel area and you close, once they run in there you close behind the curtains and they just keep going further and further down the funnel until they get into the truck. So, yeah, it's a bit of madness. And actually, next week, we're heading out here in Namibia.
to do a host of translocations back into community conservancy areas, working with the government in the country. And this is one big way that we work is to try and increase the range of giraffe where the areas are now safe. and working with the governments as well as working with community areas and that's going to increase in future their tourism potential and it's awesome it really is an amazing experience and when all goes well
That's crazy. I got to ask these trucks, do the giraffes just stand straight up or do they have to bend their necks down? They're really tall trucks. Yeah. So we've got a mix of them actually. So we've got some open trucks where their heads stick out. And so like in Niger, there's some cool videos on our Vimeo channel or on our web.
site in countries like Niger or in Uganda where giraffe are going through villages and their heads are out and they're looking out and around. Funnily enough, they're really quite calm. doing that. Then there's other trucks where they go in and they're very tall ceilings. Sometimes they have to bend a little bit and you use them only for shorter trips. And then some people have really fancy trucks that you can actually sort of manually or electronically crank the roof up and down.
depending on the height of the giraffe, because they normally stand. Maybe the young ones on a long trip, they sometimes sit down, but for the rest of the time they stand, which is, you know, they're really hardy and resilient animals. That's amazing. That's amazing.
I can imagine just going down the highway. What the heck? Totally. The view as you go through these villagers who have never seen a giraffe before in their life. And we've interviewed a whole bunch of these people after they've gone. through and they're like, what was that? And they're like, I don't know. It looks like something I've seen, but I don't know what it is. And it's super cool. That's amazing. I know. I would just, I'd love to see that.
And I think I remember Mike, actually, who's laughs for giraffes last year in L.A., where he showed some of those photos. I think he was with you doing some captures. Yeah, Mike was out with us capturing some giraffe in northwest Namibia and got his heart racing a little, which was always fun. So it is crazy times and, you know, we've done it enough now. We know what we're doing and it's good to have guys like Mike.
who share giraffe conservation news with huge audiences back at their zoo in LA. And so for him to experience it and be able to share that with others, that's what we love. Yeah, we love telling the stories too about how these zookeepers, you know, go around the world doing stuff like that. You know, Mike's done that and a few others. It's just, it's amazing the work they're doing. So what would you say are some of your most successful conservation projects and kind of what those looked like?
So I think, you know, if we look at the last five years, through giraffe translocations, we've been able to increase giraffe range again in Africa by more than 5 million acres. So this is by physically translocating giraffe back into areas, providing conservation management support, working with governments and monitoring post-moving them. And this is the big thing.
As I said earlier, one of the biggest threats is loss of habitat. So if we can reclaim some of these areas which were lost due to civil unrest or some issues at the time, then we're kicking goals. So we're seeing numbers go up in some... places but being able to increase range by five million acres I mean that's pretty impressive
Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. So that's definitely the biggest part. But a lot of that is built on the foundation of our scientific research in the beginning to figure out what's going on, where it's going on. It's not that sexy. But I think, you know, understanding that there's four species of giraffe, now we can provide targeted conservation management support in those.
types of giraffe in those areas across east central and west africa so we can make a bigger difference right and have have you seen like getting the locals involved have you are you guys involved doing that or other NGOs as far as why giraffes are important and why they may want to help protect them.
Yeah, we have a whole host of different programs, you know, community-based conservation efforts. So in northern Kenya, we work with the San Diego Zoo Global on a program called Twigga Walensi. And Twigga Walensi, of course, Twigga, as I said earlier, means giraffe.
where Lindsay means guards. And so working in community conservation areas, we employ... giraffe guards across large areas and and their role is a combination of you know following giraffe figuring out who's who but more importantly is talking with communities amongst communities and their leaders is about the importance of giraffe conservation and the value that they bring. So the Twigga-Walindsay program is expanding actually across Africa in many of the places we work in.
You know, I think a good example of, you know, and it's essential community conservation effort is in Niger. We moved these eight giraffe a couple of years ago into an area they hadn't been for 50 years, a place called Gadabaji Biosphere Reserve, and we employed a... couple of tuareg community game guards and you know the tuareg people are known moving far distances seasonally seeking out areas for their livestock um but
Some of them had settled in this area, and after day one, one of the giraffe went on a walk, and it went on a far walk. We got a call two days later. where one giraffe had travelled 150 kilometres. And it was like, oh, my goodness. And it was going, like, further into the desert area. And so the value beforehand, we'd done a lot of community... sensitisation and sort of engagement work. And the Tuareg guy...
Not who we employed, but one of his friends had seen this giraffe far away and had travelled 30 kilometres on a motorbike to get cell phone reception, because everyone in Africa has a cell phone. to phone him to phone us to say, I've just seen a giraffe. And he knew it was a giraffe because he saw one 50 years earlier. Oh, wow.
So this cannot be underestimated. You can't just, you know, in a national park or similar, you can just, you know, do the old lockdown conservation effort. And some countries, that's really important because that's all that's remaining. It's really critical to do human dimension efforts outside of national parks where giraffe and other wildlife roam or if giraffe just live in community areas, northwest Namibia.
I mean, we started working up there in the mid-late 90s and we continue. It's the longest ongoing monitoring of giraffe. population ever and we have a constant feedback to the community we know you know loads of people when we go i mean i get whatsapp messages they saw this giraffe on that day and whatnot and and this is it's creating a network and that's what's
really important and, and, uh, you know, it's a passion. If people happy to see giraffe still there, then, uh, I think we're doing our job. Absolutely. Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing story too. Oh my God. I'm just smiling.
That's super cool. Yeah, yeah. All right, just a few more questions because I know you're busy and you've got a busy week coming up. So I guess you did talk about... human over population are there other threats that you see that are just like the biggest problem or i guess the greatest threats to biodiversity across the planet and then there in africa what are some of the other threats that you're seeing well obviously the
The real big one, which is the unspoken one, is climate change. And I think we're unsure what climate change is and how it will affect. But we know something is happening. There's no doubt about that. We see the weather changing, you know, on a small scale. We see, you know, a lot more drought periods and obviously for giraffe.
um it's not as severe because they're browsers versus grazers but long term you know you browse those trees out and they will literally die and not come back so climate change is a big concern there's no doubt about it and what we're doing um you know i i don't know how we can monitor it any better apart from provide information we've worked with other academics and ngos to provide this information to help us
model what's going on with giraffe in the future if there's changes but you know, sort of to counter that, you know, obviously make sure that those populations that are currently there or any new populations that we're establishing with partners are obviously not, are going to be more resilient. They're not going to be in areas that are going to suffer massively from climate change and impact giraffe. So I think that, in all honesty, is the big one. But all of this is sort of precated on...
policy and legislation. We're down to people making decisions around the world. um without understanding what's happening and you know a big one obviously discussion over the last year was CITES the convention for the international trade of endangered species and giraffe was added to CITES last year appendix 2. which essentially now facilitates the increased monitoring of the international trade of giraffe. So it's really important. However, it's more of a guideline.
the old CITES it's not a you know there's no legislation in place because it's an agreement sort of like a hand-holding session and you know for them to be put on CITES I'm I'm personally from a science side. I question the science, but I can see the value in their monitoring. And I think that should always be happening for the international trade. But a lot of it's political agendas.
You know, those political agendas may be driven in Washington or they may be driven in Brussels, but they're not actually helping on the ground to help with conservation action. I think it's all the power, but... you know none of the you know sort of support is coming with it and i think that's what happens and poor african sort of countries and and their wildlife seem to suffer as a result of it so
What we're trying to do with something like that is we're looking at illegal trade and we're doing a study at the moment, which we hope to be out very soon. And we've seen that the illegal trade is there. There's no doubt. But it's not linked to what people think it is. It's not trophy hunting that's causing the decline of giraffe. And that's a moral, ethical issue. And I've never been a hunter, and I'm not a hunter, but I do like eating meat.
But the trophy hunting is not driving the decline. It's community-based and illegal hunting. And CITES, unfortunately, doesn't capture that because that's international trade. This is all local, domestic and a little bit of town's boundary. But CITES is not involved in any of that. And that's the hard thing for people to understand. It looks sexy. to get these animals listed and whatnot. But it actually doesn't help unless there is something that follows with it. So there is...
Because you get a giraffe listed on CITES now, everyone thinks, oh, it's done, you know, tick the box. But there's no money that comes from it. There's no additional resources. And so that's what we're struggling with now is that people...
think that the job is done but unfortunately day-to-day things keep going on no it's just beginning i mean it's just beginning it's yeah you know especially with the organization bringing awareness to the silent extinction i mean that's been making the news the last few years thank goodness But we need to keep pushing and don't let it fall off the page or fall out of people's memory.
Slowly, I think we'll hopefully be pulling in the right direction, but it's not just as easy as signing a petition or getting something listed. There's a lot more work to be done, and luckily there's a lot of people around. the world who who are passionate so that's great yeah absolutely absolutely just a couple more questions i guess with that being said how can our listeners help you and the giraffe conservation foundation
You know, I mean, people don't like to hear it, but money talks. There's no doubt about it. We have great teams that we want to keep out in the field. We're lucky during these COVID times that we've built enough reserve that we haven't laid off any staff. We have no... plan to lay off any staff. And I think that's important. We need to have good teams that will work together. So being able to pay the salaries is the first step of maintaining a good team and doing good work.
you know we we have things like world giraffe day which is coming up the 21st of june so do you know why 21st of june uh no tell me let me know tell me why so summer solstice so it's the longest day for the tallest animal Ah, I got it. That's awesome. That's what happens when you have a few wines and sit on a couch at night. You and Mike, right? Come up with this stuff. So it's crazy. So that's coming up. And every year, and I think this is the sixth year.
We've been doing it. It's creating massive awareness for giraffe and giraffe conservation. And that's the first step. People can learn more. They can go online. They can read more. But by contributing and raising funding... through World Giraffe Day. This year, we're going to do a translocation in northern Uganda back to an area called Pianupi. We moved some giraffe last year there for the first time in 35 years. We're going to move some more giraffe later this year.
And this is securing a population that used to be the largest giraffe population of Nubian in the country in Uganda and was locally extinct 30 years ago. you know that type of support and you know people can adopt a giraffe online and you know follow what's happening to their giraffe and learn about other giraffe and this helps us you know get some core funding in to be able to do the work that we do. But, yeah, educate yourself.
Do a little fundraiser or donate online and get in touch with GCF. Also, there's a lot of social media out there that they can look at for Giraffe Conservation Foundation. You know, there's lots of videos. There's lots of what I call book face, but it's Facebook. Yeah. Twitter and Instagram. So, yeah, really learn more. That's the key. Awesome. We will definitely put all those links up there. Julie, it's amazing.
I know I'm going to meet you one day whenever you get out to LA or I'm going to get out to Namibia, you know, and see what you're doing. But thank you so much for what you're doing for giraffes and then spending the past hour with us. No, thanks a million, Chris. We really appreciate you guys being able to get the message out there and we look forward to having what we would say a tall one.
for giraffe and uh you know we all need to stick our heads out for giraffe so let's start with world giraffe day oh we will we will thank you so much cool thanks very much chris cheers mate bye