(The Post News)- The United States Endangered Species Act, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials proposed that giraffes need new protection. Under the proposal, the West African, Kordofan, and Nubian giraffes would be listed as endangered, while the Reticulated, Masai, Angolan, and South African giraffes would be listed as threatened with a 4(d) rule, which would enable the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to establish necessary conservation regulations.
Although the Reticulated and Masai giraffes would be considered threatened, while the Angolan and South African giraffes are not endangered like other animals, these species would still be treated as if they are endangered because of their similar appearance, which would limit law enforcement’s ability to differentiate them.
The regulations entail reducing illegal hunting and trade of giraffes by requiring permits for import into the U.S., which will provide limited financial assistance for conservation, an increase in funding for species conservation, an increase in research efforts in conservation, and increasing funding for the U.S. and raising global awareness about the population decline in giraffes.
Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Martha Williams, said in a statement that this action supports giraffe conservation while ensuring the United States does not contribute further to their decline.
According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, there are approximately 117,000 wild giraffes globally, but their numbers have decreased by nearly 30% since the 1980s. The population of the northern giraffes has decreased from 25,653 to 5,919, which is a 77% decline, and some are completely gone from West African countries.
International legal director with the Center for Biological Diversity, Tanya Sanerib, says they actually realized that there are fewer giraffes in Africa than elephants, which means they had been undergoing a silent extinction.
The reasons behind the species’ population decline are poaching, climate change, drought, and people seizing land for urbanization and agriculture. In 2022, thousands of giraffe parts, such as trophies, skins, feet, bone carvings, and leather pieces, were discovered entering the U.S.
In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List had deemed giraffes as threatened, which resulted in advocacy groups beginning to petition for federal protections in 2017. The FWS noted that the Federal Register will be open for public comment for 90 days after the proposed rule is published, and there is a possibility that it could be finalized within a year.
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