A crisp African dawn is breaking overhead, and Zibo Mounkaila is on the back of a pickup truck bounding across a sparse landscape of rocky orange soil.
The tallest animals on Earth are here, the guide says, somewhere amid the scant green bush on one side and the thatched dome villages on the other.
They’re here, but by all accounts, they shouldn’t be.
A hundred years ago, West Africa’s last giraffes numbered in the thousands and their habitat stretched from Senegal’s Atlantic Ocean coast to Chad, in the heart of the continent. By the dawn of the 21st century, their world had shrunk to a tiny zone southeast of Niger’s capital, Niamey, stretching barely 240km long.
Their numbers dwindled so low that in 1996, they numbered a mere 50.
Instead of disappearing as many feared, though, the giraffes have bounced miraculously back from the brink of extinction, swelling to more than 200 today.
It’s an unlikely boon experts credit to a combination of concerned conservationists, a government keen for revenue and a rare harmony with villagers who have accepted their presence — for now.
SUBSPECIES
There are nine subspecies of giraffes in Africa, each distinguished by geographic location and the color, pattern and shape of their spotted coats.
The animals in Niger are known as Giraffa camelopardalis peralta, the most endangered subspecies in Africa. They have large orange-brown spots that fade into pale white legs.
Ten years ago, an estimated 140,000 giraffes inhabited Africa, according to Julian Fennessy, a Nairobi, Kenya-based conservation expert. Today, giraffes number less than 100,000, devastated by poaching, war, advancing deserts and exploding human populations that have destroyed and fragmented their habitats. Around half the giraffes live outside game parks in the wild, where they are more difficult to monitor and protect, Fennessy said.
Giraffe hunting is prohibited in many countries. And some, like Kenya, have taken giraffe meat off the menu of tourist restaurants that once served them up on huge skewers. Even so, Fennessy said the plight of giraffes has largely been overlooked in conservation circles.
“We’re trying to increase awareness, educate people, help governments put conservation practices in place,” said Fennessy, who founded the Giraffe Conservation Foundation to draw attention to the animals’ plight. “If we don’t, giraffe numbers are going to continue to drop.”
FIRST TIME
The first time the trucks came for them in Koure was more than a decade ago, during the reign of an army colonel who seized power in a 1996 coup.
Colonel Ibrahim Bare Mainassara was adamant they would make a good gift for the president of neighboring Burkina Faso and he ordered several captured, said Omer Kodjo Dovi of the Niamey-based Association to Safeguard the Giraffes of Niger.
But “the giraffes went into a panic,” Dovi said. “They couldn’t outrun the trucks.”
The animals weigh up to 1,000kg and can run at speeds up to 55kph. But if they fall, they can have difficulty getting up and die.
Dovi said five were captured. Three died on the spot; two were believed shipped to Burkina Faso. Nobody knows if they ever made it.
By 1998, Niger’s government — pressed by conservation groups — began to realize the herds were about to disappear forever.
Authorities drafted new laws banning hunting and poaching. Killing a giraffe became punishable by five-year jail terms and fines amounting to hundreds of times the yearly income of farmers.
The changes had a startling effect. By 2004, the herds had nearly doubled in size.
The government “realized they had an invaluable biological and tourism resource: the last population left in West Africa,” said Jean-Patrick Suraud, a French scientist with the Association to Safeguard the Giraffes of Niger.
In 2004, though, the trucks came again — this time on a mission for President Mamadou Tandja, who ordered a pair captured for the dictator of neighboring Togo.
Four vehicles barreled down the two-lane highway toward the giraffe zone. Inside them were Togolese soldiers, government forestry rangers and three local guides, according to the independent local newspaper Le Republicain, which reported on the incident and published photographs.
“They did it like cowboys,” said Suraud, who began working in Niger in 2005. “These are big animals, fragile. They can easily die of stress.”
The giraffes were tied up, blindfolded, tranquilized and hauled onto the back of open-back trucks bound for the Togo border.
They died en route.
GIRAFFE PARTS
In Africa, giraffe skin is used for drums, watertight bowls, even shoes. Their bones are employed as grinders and some believe they can help bring rain. Mounkaila, the guide, said some villagers believe the hair on giraffe coats can induce fertility.
The villagers living around Koure, though, think giraffes are mostly useless, Suraud said. They aren’t domesticated, and they can’t be hunted for food. So the Association to Safeguard the Giraffes of Niger tries to teach people that it’s in their interests to keep them around.
“We tell them, ‘if you are pro-giraffe, we can support you, give you loans,’” Suraud said. “But there is a quid pro quo. ‘We also want you to stop chopping down their bushes and plant trees.’”
With 10 staff and help from private European zoos and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Giraffe Association has built wells, planted trees and educated guides like Mounkaila, who make a living escorting visitors through “the giraffe zone” — the fenceless region the animals trek through.
Niger’s herds bring in a modest amount of tourist money for the government, too, paid in small sums through US$10 fees distributed partly to the local district.
The Giraffe Association has focused especially on loans.
One of the beneficiaries, 55-year-old Adiza Yamba, bought a small lamb for US$50. The mother of eight fed it, then sold it for twice the price after it grew, paying back the money and pocketing the profit — a huge amount in one of the world’s poorest countries.
“We don’t mind them,” Yamba said, echoing the stated view of most farmers. “Sometimes they try to eat the beans or mangoes from our fields, but they never bother us.”
Truer sentiments, perhaps, were evident last year when a pair of giraffes was killed by a truck as they crossed the highway: Villagers swiftly moved in and divvied up huge chunks of red meat from the roadkill.
POPULATION GROWTH
Since 1996, Niger’s giraffe population has expanded by 12 percent per year — three times their average growth rate on the rest of the continent, Suraud said.
One reason: They face no natural predators. Poachers around Koure long ago wiped out the region’s lions and leopards — which can claim 50 percent to 70 percent of young giraffes before they reach their first year.
The giraffes had also stumbled upon a peaceful region with enough food to sustain them, and a population that mostly left them alone.
Today, they criss-cross the land in harmony with turbaned nomads in worn flip-flops shepherding camels and sheep.
Drawn to freshly growing vegetation that sprouts during the rainy season, the giraffes can be seen in herds of 10 or 15, wrapping 45cm black tongues around thorny acacia trees and combretum bush.
They graze within eyesight of farmers living in thatched dome huts, sometimes crossing through their bean and millet fields.
They are so used to humans, tourists can walk virtually right up to them.
“It’s quite special in Niger how habituated they’ve become,” Fennessy said. “You don’t normally find giraffes living so close to villagers.”
LAND
As the herds grow, some question how much the land can support.
The animals have been exploring new zones close to the border with Mali. In 2007, two crossed into Nigeria, and never returned.
“When they go away from this zone, it’s a big risk, they can be hunted easily,” Suraud said. “The population may be growing, but they’re still very threatened.”
The biggest hazard: habitat loss.
On a recent day, Salifou Mamoudou, an Environment Ministry official, spotted a turbaned man raking away vegetation from a dirt field. He told the man he was breaking the law; the man said he was only plowing a family plot — legally.
Mamoudou shrugged and moved on.
Villagers relentlessly cut down dead wood to sell, he said. And in an effort to make way for crops, they cut down vegetation that the giraffes eat. That’s technically illegal, but there is almost no authority around to stop them.
“If we let them, they’ll cut trees all the way up to the road,” Mamadou said, waving a hand toward the highway, several kilometers away. “If there is no habitat, there will be no giraffes.”
NOT GOOD FOR THEM
In the early morning dusk, a family of five giraffes is feeding on bubbles of vegetation freshened by recent rain.
It is a peaceful, primordial scene.
Mounkaila, the guide, takes a drag off a cigarette and walks casually toward them. He is just a few meters away, dwarfed by animals nearly three times his height.
Mounkaila rattles off some facts, not bothering to keep his voice down. The gentle creatures eye him, but don’t seem to mind. A step closer, and they will slowly walk away.
They can grow up to 6m tall, he says. They can eat 30kg to 40kg per day, live an average of 25 years, and are able to go without water for weeks, needing less than camels.
Amid a clutch of treetops in the opposite direction, the heads of another pair poke out.
Mounkaila sweeps his shriveled hand across the landscape, toward a red and white cellphone tower rising not far away above the greenery.
“It wasn’t always like this,” the 50-year-old says, digging his flip-flops into the orange soil. “When I was a boy, the giraffes were far more numerous, but they were harder to see.”
There used to be enough vegetation to conceal them, he said, but the bush and forests are disappearing. And with nowhere to hide, the animals are forced to come out in search of food.
“They’re easier to spot,” Mounkaila said. “But that’s good for us, not them.”
The return of US president-elect Donald Trump to the White House has injected a new wave of anxiety across the Taiwan Strait. For Taiwan, an island whose very survival depends on the delicate and strategic support from the US, Trump’s election victory raises a cascade of questions and fears about what lies ahead. His approach to international relations — grounded in transactional and unpredictable policies — poses unique risks to Taiwan’s stability, economic prosperity and geopolitical standing. Trump’s first term left a complicated legacy in the region. On the one hand, his administration ramped up arms sales to Taiwan and sanctioned
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House in January, but his second term would surely be different from the first. His Cabinet would not include former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US national security adviser John Bolton, both outspoken supporters of Taiwan. Trump is expected to implement a transactionalist approach to Taiwan, including measures such as demanding that Taiwan pay a high “protection fee” or requiring that Taiwan’s military spending amount to at least 10 percent of its GDP. However, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invades Taiwan, it is doubtful that Trump would dispatch
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has been dubbed Taiwan’s “sacred mountain.” In the past few years, it has invested in the construction of fabs in the US, Japan and Europe, and has long been a world-leading super enterprise — a source of pride for Taiwanese. However, many erroneous news reports, some part of cognitive warfare campaigns, have appeared online, intentionally spreading the false idea that TSMC is not really a Taiwanese company. It is true that TSMC depositary receipts can be purchased on the US securities market, and the proportion of foreign investment in the company is high. However, this reflects the
RSS