Preliminary Report on Forage Availability and Resource Use by Reticulated Giraffe at Mugie Conservancy, Laikipia, Kenya
Main Findings To compare resource availability and animal diets, we conducted vegetation surveys and collected giraffe dung samples for diet analyses on the east and west sides of primary road C77 at Mugie Conservancy. The availability of tree resources differed on the east versus west sides of C77, where the more abundant species that we […]
The last African white giraffes live in farmers’ fields
The giraffe population (Giraffa camelopardalis) in Niger is the last representative of the peralta sub-species which lived throughout West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Protected since the 1970s, giraffes cohabit with humans in cultivated landscapes. This may not have appeared to pose many problems in the past, but the relationship between farmers […]
Population Status and Trend of the Maasai Giraffe in the Mid Kenya-Tanzania Borderland
Among the nine sub-species of giraffes, the Maasai giraffe is the most widespread and common in Northern and Southern Kenya. Although it’s considered by the IUCN to be a species of no conservation concern, they have been reported to have declined in some of their range areas mostly due to bush meat activities, habitat fragmentation […]
Food supply and poaching limit giraffe abundance in the Serengeti
The iconic giraffe, an ecologically important browser, has shown a substantial decline in numbers across Africa since the 1990s. In Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, giraffes reached densities of 1.5–2.6 individuals km-2 in the 1970s coincident with a pulse of Acacia tree recruitment. However, despite continued increases in woody cover between the 1980s and the 2000s, […]
Herbivore Dynamics and Range Contraction in Kajiado County Kenya: Climate and Land Use Changes, Population Pressures, Governance, Policy and Human-wildlife Conflicts
Wildlife populations are declining severely in many protected areas and unprotected pastoral areas of Africa. Rapid large-scale land use changes, poaching, climate change, rising population pressures, governance, policy, economic and socio-cultural transformations and competition with livestock all contribute to the declines in abundance. Here we analyze the population dynamics of 15 wildlife and four livestock […]
Impacts of Bush thinning to livestock and Biodiversity in Soysambu Conservancy
The continuing bush thinning in Soysambu Conservancy (Delamere estates) to increase the grazing fields lead to establishment of the study. The main objective of this study was therefore to determine the effectiveness of bush thinning as management tool in rangeland management and determine the utilization of the thinned areas by both livestock and wild animals […]
African lion (Panthera leo) behavior, monitoring, and survival in human-dominated landscapes
Chapter 1, “Demography of a persecuted African lion population,” investigates the basic demographic characteristics of a lion population on human and livestock dominated lands where unregulated, retaliatory hunting of both sexes and all ages had occurred for centuries. I also examine the individual characteristics of stock-raiding lions. Chapter 2, “Participatory monitoring of an elusive carnivore […]
Looking Up
An overview of giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis peralta, in Niger’s unprotected regions.
Identifying conservation constraints for the last West African giraffe: population dynamics determining factors and spatial distribution pattern
One of the main challenges for endangered species protection in Africa is to find a sustainable way of integrating objectives of nature conservation with the economic development needs of the local human population. Last West African giraffe population, Giraffa camelopardalis peralta, lives in Niger. These giraffe are unique for several reasons: (i) they represent the […]