Giraffe Populations Down 40% In Past Fifteen Years [View all]

[hatrack]

Giraffe numbers are dwindling across Africa because of poaching and habitat loss caused by human population growth, according to wildlife experts, and it's happening largely unnoticed.

“It’s a silent extinction,” Dr. Julian Fennessy, Executive Director of the Namibian-based Giraffe Conservation Research group and a leading wildlife scientist with 16 years of experience, told ABC News.

Now conducting the first comprehensive assessment on giraffes to be published next year, Fennessy said there’s been a drop of more than 40 percent in the mammal population in the last 15 years. “The numbers have gone down from 140,000 to fewer than 80,000 today,” added Fennessy.

The world’s tallest animal is dispersed over 21 countries, in state-owned national parks, private and communal lands. Out of nine subspecies -- their differentiations are based on geographical distribution, coat patterns, morphology and genetic data -- two have recently been categorized as “endangered” on the IUCN Red List, a British research group part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/giraffes-danger-extinction-numbers-dropped/story?id=27334959