They are the tallest animals trotting on Earth, their long necks and iconic brown spots populating cartoons, children’s books and toy shelves.
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But in the savannas of Africa, giraffe populations have plummeted – so much so that the U.S. government is moving to add many of these long-necked mammals to its official list of imperiled species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a proposal Wednesday to protect a wide swath of giraffes under the Endangered Species Act, the first time the animal would receive protection under the law.
U.S. officials hope the move will help clamp down on the poaching of giraffes by restricting the import of their body parts and products such as rugs, jewelry and shoes made with them, which are contributing to their declines.
“Federal protections for giraffes will help protect a vulnerable species, foster biodiversity, support ecosystem health, combat wildlife trafficking, and promote sustainable economic practices,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a statement.
Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, praised the decision, saying it “pretty much closes the entire commercial gamut of products that enter the United States.”
“If you want a giraffe-skin pillow, you want a giraffe-bone knife handle, any number of other things that people use giraffe parts for, that commercial market is going to be significantly curtailed,” she said. “That’s really beneficial for giraffes because it means we have less demand coming from the U.S. market, which is a huge marketplace for wildlife globally.”
Capable of growing as tall as 19 feet, the giraffe has long fascinated and puzzled people. Ancient Africans depicted them on massive petroglyphs. Julius Caesar brought one to Rome to show off to his countrymen, who thought it was part camel, part leopard. The explorer Zheng He brought another back to China, fascinating his emperor.
Even now, the giraffe is still an enigma. Researchers are actively debating whether the giraffe constitutes just one species or several. Some scientists say evolution helped inch the neck (and tongue) of giraffes to extraordinary lengths to allow them to eat leaves, flowers and fruits out of reach of other herbivores. Others say the animals developed long necks so males can engage in sexual combat over females.
One thing they can agree on: The giraffe is in trouble.
Its numbers nosedived from over 150,000 individuals in 1985 to about 98,000 in 2015, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a network that tracks the status of plants and animals. The losses are the result of habitat loss due to rapid urbanization, climate-change-fueled drought, and poaching for local bushmeat and for foreign trade, according to U.S. officials. The IUCN recognized several subspecies of giraffe as critically endangered since 2018.
Now, U.S. officials are proposing to declare as endangered three subspecies of northern giraffe: the West African, Kordofan and Nubian giraffes, whose population together has plunged by 77 percent since 1985, from about 26,000 to just 6,000. These giraffes primarily live in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Uganda.
In addition, the agency is proposing to designate two subspecies in East Africa – the reticulated and Masai giraffes – as threatened, a step away from being at the verge of extinction.
The United States has proved to be a big market for giraffe parts and products in the past, importing nearly 40,000 over a decade-long period, according to environmental groups.
The potential listing means countries that allow Americans to hunt for giraffes will have to show those trophy killings are part of a broader conservation strategy for the mammals, according to Sanerib.
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“It creates a fair bit more checks and balances to ensure that those programs are actually sustainable, that the offtake isn’t actually harming the species,” she said.
But hunting advocates decried the decision as counterproductive, noting that their tourism dollars give nations economic incentive to maintain robust wildlife populations.
“This decision threatens to harm critical conservation efforts in the countries where giraffe populations are increasing by placing unnecessary legal and administrative burdens on the individuals, businesses, and governments that are responsible for conserving giraffes and other wildlife,” the pro-hunting group Safari Club International said in a statement.
In addition to trade restrictions, the federal proposal would also open new streams of funding to African countries for giraffe conservation. The agency will take feedback on the proposal until Feb. 19 and expects to finalize it within a year.
The decision was years in the making. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups petitioned the agency for giraffe protections in 2017. After Fish and Wildlife failed to act on the request, environmentalists sued in 2021. A settlement the following year required the agency to decide whether it would list some giraffes as endangered by this month.
“Seven years is too long to wait to list species,” said Elly Pepper, NRDC’s director of forest policy and nature.
Noting that a million species are at risk of extinction, she added, “We need to get into a pattern where we’re able to recognize the threats to species in a much quicker way, or we’re going to lose all of them.”