Louis Nel

Tourism Tattler October 2016 Louis Nel

Our October edition front cover features a tower of South African giraffes recently released at Lalibela Private Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape as part of their extensive game repopulation project (read Vernon Wait's report on page 10). As of 2016, a maximum of 31,500 southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa) remain in the wild, with around 45 kept in captivity (zoos), while the total giraffe population worldwide is approximately 90,000 in the wild, with around 1,144 in zoos. Despite these rather low numbers, the IUCN has assessed the giraffe species as a whole to be of "Least Concern" from a conservation perspective, even though giraffes have disappeared from their historic range including Eritrea, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. They may also have disappeared from Angola, Mali, and Nigeria. Thankfully, private game reserves like Lalibela are contributing to the preservation of giraffe populations in southern Africa.