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Climate Change Last Victims: Giraffes are dying of hunger and thirst In North Kenya

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Temperatures are rising, lands are drying, water is getting scarce, wild fires are ravaging the forests, unusual floods are hitting cities….disasters are becoming a day-to-day life event. This is the sad outcome of Climate Change. Our Planet cannot cope anymore.

 
Northeast Kenya is facing a severe drought, causing endangered giraffes in the area to suffer and die in masse of dehydration and starvation. The situation is beyond sad. 
 
International NGO’s Wild at Life e.V. and Save Giraffes, with their local teams, are trying to provide supplementary food and water to help save these giraffes, but the situation is dire!
 
Watch the sadness of these giraffes left out to die in the desertic wild areas. We are losing our wildlife to climate change!

Partners

Wild at Life e.V.
Save Giraffes
Somali Giraffe Project
Local Conservancies
 
Location 

Garissa County, NE Kenya


Species
The reticulated giraffe, which is officially listed as Endangered. IUCN Red List estimates there are about 15,000 reticulated giraffes left in Africa. Of course, all wildlife and livestock are suffering terribly from droughts.
 
Situation
We are right in the middle of what should be the small rain season in Kenya. The rains failed again. The next rainy season, or the big rains, should hopefully start in March 2022.
So, the amount of water available to livestock and wildlife has been massively reduced, and the few remaining water sources are being dominated by herders for their livestock, and they drive away giraffe from accessing the water.
The trees have stopped producing leaves, so there is less food for giraffes. This means giraffes, especially vulnerable are calves are dying of starvation and thirst.
Another sad aspect is that mothers who have had calves… Their milk has dried up because of drought and these calves are also unable to get milk and they sadly are becoming orphaned. They are left behind and can’t keep up with the others anymore.
 
What we are doing
Two International expert NGO’s, Wild at Life e.V. and Save the Giraffes has teamed up to bring rescue to these poor animals. Their local team estimated there are about 50 giraffes resident close to their HQ, but another up to 10,000 giraffes in the region – the teams are trying to get to and help as many of these giraffes as possible.

Working with local partners we are: 

– Providing supplemental food – people are gathering acacia seed pods to feed to giraffe, we are also purchasing food pellets

– Providing supplemental water

– Trying to care for and nurture orphaned calves

 
More information:

– We already went through a drought and the current crisis is second rainy season failure and far fling areas. Garissa and Wajir are among the biggest counties in Kenya by area size. Most of the giraffes have no access to the river which is just in Garissa. The pods have worked but the pellets have not reached field stations yet.

– The giraffes are responding well to Acacia pods and we want to scale up this effort and establish hundreds of temporary feeding stations across the range and try introducing pellets.

– Most of the animals that are dying are young, probably due to dehydration and malnutrition. Majority of the herds are young at this time of the year and are very vulnerable to drought.  We have seen cases of abandoned calves and we are trying rescue as many as possible.

– While providing water, we also employ locals to gather acacia pods and supply all the temporary stations.

– Nearly 200 people are collecting the pods and giraffes are eating them.
Wild at Life is urgently seeking to raise $20,000 to support on-the-ground teams working across the drought-stricken region to supply vital water, buy food, and gather seed pods for the hundreds of dehydrated and starving giraffes until the rains come.
 
For just $15 a day, $105 a week or $450 a month, you can help supply much needed relief to these beautiful creatures.
 
The link to the official fundraiser:
 
https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/31u459
 
 
We need your support TODAY!
THANK YOU
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Our work to bring relief to the drought hit area was covered by the prominent German media Focus:
You’ll be shocked, but the world’s tallest animal is in deadly danger. It’s a conservation emergency and giraffes are now one of the planet’s most threatened species. It’s hard to comprehend but just 117,000 remain in Africa – a terrible 40% decline in only 30 years. These graceful giants are in grave danger, yet their loss has gone under the radar. It’s almost a silent extinction. With only 16,000 remaining, reticulates giraffes are one of the most endangered sub species– their total population has more than halved in the last 30 years.
Wild at Life Chief Conservation Officer Asli Han Gedik said: “Climate change has huge repercussions on our lives and nature. We are losing many species to drought and many other to wildfires. The climate is not the same and our Biodiversity is at risk. In this speed, we will lose many more species and mass extinction will be inevitable”