Habitat
The Nigerian giraffe population relies upon seasonal migration between the relatively drought-resistant lowlands of the Niger River valley and the drier highlands near Kouré. In this area, Tiger bush habitat allows for bands of trees to thrive in climates which might otherwise become more typical desert. These giraffe survive primarily on a diet of leaves from Acacia albida and Hyphaene thebaica as well as Annona senegalensis, Parinari macrophylla, Piliostigma reticulatum, and Balanites aegyptiaca. In the late 1990s, an anti-desertification project for the area around Niamey encouraged the development of woodcutting businesses. An unintended effect of this was the destruction of much Tiger bush and giraffe habitat within the region. The Nigerien government has since moved to limit woodcutting in the area.
Read more about this topic: West African Giraffe
Famous quotes containing the word habitat:
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)