The South African Giraffe Giraffa Camelopardalis Giraffa: a Conservation Success Story

The South African giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa: a conservation success story

F RANCOIS D EACON and A NDY T UTCHINGS

Abstract Across Africa the majority of giraffe species and South Africa/Botswana border along the Limpopo River subspecies are in decline, whereas the South African giraffe (Deacon & Parker, ). We consider the giraffes residing Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa remains numerous and wide- in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park to be an extralimital spread throughout southern Africa. By  the number of species, given the lack of data on whether there has been in- giraffes in South Africa’s Kruger National Park had in- terbreeding between the subspecies G. camelopardalis ango- creased by c. % compared to  estimates. An even lensis and G. camelopardalis giraffa (Kruger, ; Nico van greater increase occurred on many of the estimated , der Walt, pers. comm.), and therefore this population was privately owned game ranches, indicating that private omitted from our estimates. ownership can help to conserve this subspecies. The esti- In  the Sabi Game Reserve, which later developed mated total population size in South Africa is ,– into Kruger National Park, was estimated to have a popula- ,. The challenge now is to implement monitoring tion of ,  giraffes (Koedoe, ). By  the Park’s gir- and surveillance of G. camelopardalis giraffa as a conserva- affe population had increased to  individuals, reaching tion priority and to introduce sustainable practices among , by the late s, and in  the Park’s population private owners to increase numbers and genetic variation was estimated to comprise c. , individuals, with an within in-country subspecies. estimated , within the whole country by the beginning of the st century (Fennessy, ). Keywords Conservation, ecotourism, Giraffa cameloparda- A drastic decline in wildlife across South Africa as a result lis giraffa, giraffe, management, South Africa, sustainable of European colonization and intensive hunting (Selous, ownership, translocation ) prompted the establishment of National Parks and – he discussion around the classification of giraffe species Reserves during (National Agricultural Marketing   Tand the separation of subspecies is ongoing (Fennessy Council, ;Carruthers, ). As the idea that wildlife et al., ; Bercovitch et al., ). The South African should be researched began to take hold in the middle of   giraffe has been classified as G. camelopardalis giraffa, the th century (Kingdon, ), as did the idea that wildlife G. camelopardalis capensis and G. camelopardalis wardi. ranching could provide as productive a livelihood as domestic  Here we refer to the subspecies as G. camelopardalis giraffa, animal ranching (Dasmann & Mossman, ;Carruthers,    adopting the widely accepted nomenclature and taxonomy ; Tutchings & Deacon, ). Since the s wildlife that recognizes nine subspecies (Brown et al., ; Dagg, numbers on commercial farms have continued to rise, as   ). We examine the status of the South African giraffe has their economic value (Smit, ; Carruthers, ). In   in private and public reserves, and National Parks and the early stherewerec. privately owned giraffes in Provincial Nature Reserves, and the factors that have con- South Africa, but following their introduction into numerous tributed to an increase in the population of this subspecies. private and provincial game reserves (reserves managed by The current range of the South African giraffe is shown governmental nature conservation authorities; Theron,  in Fig. . Within South Africa the subspecies’ preferred nat- ) it is now estimated there are giraffes on most of ’   ural habitat is predominantly the savannah/woodland areas South Africa s estimated , game farms and ranches  – of Limpopo Province, the lowveld areas of Mpumalanga (WRSA, ). Populations comprise individuals,  Province, northern sections of North West Province, and with a mean of per property stocking giraffes (M. the north-east of Northern Cape Province. The natural dis- Child, unpubl. data). tribution of the subspecies also includes sections along both To assess the number of G. camelopardalis giraffa occur- – sides of the Mozambique/South Africa border north of ring in South Africa, we collected data during by Swaziland, the South Africa/Zimbabwe border and the liaising with the managers/owners of the various private reserves, official Provincial Nature Reserves and National Parks. A modified method based on the IUCN Red List

FRANCOIS DEACON (Corresponding author) Wildlife and Grassland Sciences, Categories and Criteria version . (IUCN, ) was used University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa to calculate the Extent of Occurrence (EOO), defined as E-mail [email protected] ‘the area contained within the shortest continuous imagin- ANDY TUTCHINGS IUCN Species Survival Commission, Giraffe and Okapi Specialist Group, London, UK ary boundary which can be drawn to encompass all the     known, inferred or projected sites of present occurrence of Received May . Revision requested July . ’  Accepted  October . First published online  April . a taxon, excluding cases of vagrancy (IUCN, ). Using

Oryx, 2019, 53(1), 45–48 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605317001612 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 03 Oct 2021 at 08:22:46, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605317001612 46 F. Deacon and A. Tutchings

FIG. 1 Current and historical records of the South African giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa. Current numbers include private game farms, private nature reserves, Provincial Nature Reserves and National Parks, totalling ,–, individuals.

TABLE 1 Numbers of South African giraffes Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa as of  on private farms and/or ranches in South Africa (modified from Deacon & Parker, ), by province, with number of farms registered with Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA), number of responses (% response rate) and mean number of giraffes per farm provided by owners, estimated total number of giraffes (extrapolated from the number of registered farms), Extent of Occurrence (EOO, see text for details of calculation), total number of giraffes on private farms based on the EOO within each province, and number of giraffes in governmental Provincial Nature Reserves.

Estimated total No. of giraffes No. of farms No. of responses Mean no. of number of No. of giraffes in Provincial registered (% response giraffes per giraffes (based EOO (% of (based on Nature Province with WRSA rate) farm on responses) Province) EOO) Reserves Gauteng 90 19 (21) 5 450 50 225 15 Limpopo 870 173 (20) 10 8,700 100 8,700 815 Mpumalanga 80 13 (16) 6 480 35 168 339 KwaZulu-Natal 1,593 Free State 61 Eastern Cape 458 Northern Cape 105 10 (10) 5 525 50 263 Northwest 238 26 (11) 8 1904 15 286 500 Total 1,383 241 12,059 9,642 3,781

the range map (Fig. ) as a baseline, the EOO for each district , South African giraffes occurring on privately owned was considered to be the proportion of land within the dis- game farms or ranches that are registered with the national trict boundaries that encompassed the natural habitat of G. wildlife ranching organization (Wildlife Ranching South camelopardalis giraffa. We used the counts provided by Africa), and an additional , in Provincial Nature ranch owners/managers to estimate the number of giraffes Reserves. on each farm within a district. Ranch and reserve owners We made an alternative estimate of the number of pri- who provided census numbers conduct annual game counts vately owned giraffes by multiplying the number of regis- via helicopter, fixed-wing aircraft or repeatable drive counts tered farms by the mean number of giraffes per farm, as as part of their sustainable game ranching practice, to stock provided in the farmers’ responses (Table ). The result the farm appropriately according to its carrying capacity (,) is higher than that estimated from the EOO. (Deacon et al., , unpubl. data). We used the EOO to cal- Combining these two alternatrive estimates with the num- culate the approximate number of giraffes on game ranches bers in South Africa’s National Parks (Table ) yields a cur- and farms in each district and within the natural habitat of rent population estimate of ,–, (based on the the subspecies. Based on the EOO we estimated there are EOO) or ,–, (based on farmers’ responses)

TABLE 2 Numbers of G. camelopardalis giraffa in South African various offices of the Departments of Environmental National Parks as of  (Ferreira et al., ). Affairs and Tourism. We thank the National Research Province National Park No. of giraffes Foundation, the Eastern Free State Highlands Nature Club and the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch in Texas, USA, for Northern Cape Augrabies Fall 36 Mokala 57 their continued support, and Matthew Child at the Mpumalanga Kruger 7,427–10,876 Endangered Wildlife Trust for liaison with various Limpopo Mapungubwe 60 stakeholders. Marakele 50 Total 7,630–11,079 Author contributions

G. camelopardalis giraffa in South Africa, with approxi- FD collected the study data and liaised with all managers/ mately half the estimated population on privately owned owners of private ranches and National Parks. FD and AT land. jointly wrote the article. Both the genetic purity and the genetic diversity of the South African giraffe are of concern. The unrestricted ex- change of giraffes by non-state entities could result in the References hybridization of the subspecies where extralimital G. camelopardalis angolensis are, or have been, exposed to popula- BERCOVITCH, F.B., BERRY, P.S.M., DAGG, A., DEACON, F., DOHERTY,  tions of the endemic G. camelopardalis giraffa, such as in J.B., LEE, D.E et al. ( ) How many species of giraffe are there? Current Biology, , –. Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Therefore the monitoring of BROWN, D.M., BRENNEMAN, R.A., KOEPFLI, K.-P., POLLINGER, J.P., giraffe subpopulations and regulation of associated translo- MILÁ, B., GEORGIADIS, N.J. et al. () Extensive population cations is imperative to maintain the purity and genetic di- genetic structure in the giraffe. BMC Biology, , . versity of the giraffe subspecies. CARRUTHERS,J.() Wilding the farm or farming the wild? The evolution of scientific game ranching in South Africa from the s Globally Giraffa camelopardalis is categorized as   to the present. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, , Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (Muller et al., ); how- –. ever, with no immediate threats severe enough to cause a DAGG, A.I. () Giraffe: Biology, Behaviour and Conservation. population decline in the foreseeable future, it has been re- Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. commended that the G. camelopardalis giraffa subspecies in DASMANN, R.F. & MOSSMAN, A.S. () The economic value of Rhodesia game. Rhodesian Farmer,  April, p. . South Africa remains categorized as Least Concern (Deacon    DEACON,F.&PARKER,D.( ) A conservation assessment of Giraffa &Parker, ; Deacon et al., , unpubl. data). This rec- camelopardalis giraffa.InThe Red List of Mammals of South Africa, ommendation was made in a detailed report by the IUCN Swaziland and Lesotho (eds M.F. Child, L. Roxburgh, E. Do Linh Species Survival Commission Giraffe and Okapi Specialist San, D. Raimondo & H.T. Davies Mostert), pp. –. South African Group (Muller et al., ). The threats, or lack thereof, National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria, South Africa, and were discussed in detail by the Endangered Wildlife Trust Endangered Wildlife Trust, Lethabong, South Africa. DEACON, F., TUTCHINGS,A.&BERCOVITCH,F.() South African and are compiled in their status report (Deacon & Parker,   Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa von Schreber ) ). The increase in private ownership of giraffes across Conservation Status Report. Unpublished data, IUCN Species South Africa and the economic interest in conserving a thriv- Survival Commission Giraffe and Okapi Specialist Group ing, healthy and viable population, and by default a suitable subcommittee. environment for giraffes, have stimulated an increase in gir- FENNESSY,J.() Home range and seasonal movements of Giraffa affe numbers. However, continued monitoring and surveil- camelopardalis angolensis in the northern Namib Desert. African Journal of Ecology, , –. lance of protocols and adherence to best practice are FENNESSY, J., BIDON, T., REUSS, F., KUMAR, V., ELKAN, P., NILSSON, essential to retain a healthy subspecies population, especially M.A. et al. () Multi-locus analyses reveal four giraffe species as habitat loss and fragmentation, along with landscape instead of one. Current Biology, , –. changes, continue to reduce the number of suitable environ- FERREIRA, S., GAYLARD, A., GREAVER, C., HAYES, J., COWELL,C.&    ments across the rest of the continent (Reid et al., ). ELLIS,G.( ) Animal abundances in parks / . Scientific Services, SANParks, Skukuza, South Africa. IUCN ()  Categories & Criteria (version .). IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. Http://www.iucnredlist.org/static/categories_criteria_     Acknowledgements _ [accessed May ]. IUCN ()  Categories & Criteria (version .). IUCN, Gland, We thank South African National Parks, Wildlife Ranching Switzerland. Http://www.iucnredlist.org/static/categories_criteria_ _ [accessed  May ]. South Africa and all participating ranch owners for provid- KINGDON,J.() East African Mammals: An Atlas of Evolution in ing giraffe population data for this nationwide census, and Africa. Volume , Part D: Bovids, Part . University of Chicago Press, similarly the Provincial Nature Reserve officials and the Chicago, USA.

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