West African Giraffe - Decline

Decline

Before World War I, at the time of European colonial administrations, West African giraffe lived in pockets across the Sahel and savanna regions of West Africa. Population growth, involving more intensive farming and hunting, a series of dramatic droughts since the late 19th century, and environment destruction (both natural and human made) have all contributed to their dramatic decline. As late as the 1960s, prior to the Sahel drought that lasted to the early 1980s, populations identified as G. c. peralta existed in Senegal, Niger, eastern Mali, northern Benin, northern Nigeria, southwest Chad and northern Cameroon. However, recent genetic research has shown that the populations from northern Cameroon and southern Chad actually are the Kordofan giraffe (G. c. antiquorum). Therefore the giraffes that remain in Waza National Park (Cameroon) belong to the Kordofan giraffe, while the only remaining viable population of the West African giraffe is in Niger. In Niger, herds have been reported from the Agadez Region, and across the west and south of the country. Herds regularly traveled into the Gao Region of Mali as well and throughout the Niger River valley of Niger. Drought struck again in the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1991 there were less than 100 in the nation, with the largest herd in the western Dosso Region numbering less than 50, and scattered individuals along the Niger River valley moving from Benin to Mali, and clinging to the W National Park and nearby reserves.