Thomas Lovejoy

President, Amazon Biodiversity Center and Conservation Biologist / Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation

“As my old professor Evelyn Hutchinson once said: “giraffes are very improbable.” They can be very dramatic when the males are jousting between them, but they’re basically a gentle animal. They have unbelievably long eyelashes that make them sort of cute; big, but cute. They’re just lovely to watch in the wild.

They tend to get eclipsed by other species when it comes to conservation and awareness of the issues they face, and they don’t get as much attention as they might need.

It turns out there are more kinds of giraffe than we realised 30 years ago. There are roughly half a dozen different species, and they’re in trouble wherever they occur. Loss of habitat is the big issue. That’s just what’s happening to African savannahs. It’s less an issue about poaching for them than for the rhino or elephants. But from West Africa to the Cape, they’re in trouble.”

Photo by Graeme Green