The Great Kenyan Giraffe Rescue - It took a custom-built barge and a whole lot of patience to get these rare animals off a shrinking island.
Giraffe Lbarnoti rescue on Lake Baringo.jpg
On a sunny day at Kenya’s Lake Baringo, a barge floated gently by. Its main passenger calmly munched on his favorite snack of acacia seed pods. At about 16 feet tall, he could easily peer around to take in his watery surroundings. But this was not some idyllic pleasure cruise. This trip, on January 27, 2021, was a rescue mission, to save Lbarnoti, a Rothschild’s giraffe, from floodwaters gradually rising around Longicharo Island, where he and some fellow ruminants had lived for a decade.
giraffe.jpg
Lbarnoti was not the only one to get this treatment. In December 2020, two females, Asiwa and Pasaka, made the same trip, one at a time. They had all been carefully transferred by American-based nonprofit Save Giraffes Now in collaboration with Kenya Wildlife Service, the Northern Rangelands Trust, and local members of the Ruko community. Another six animals remain on the island.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...giraffe-rescue
giraffe3.webp
In 2011, eight Rothschild’s giraffes were reintroduced on Longicharo Island, originally an isolated, rocky peninsula lush with acacia trees, to try to increase their population away from poachers. But this past season’s intense rainfall saw water levels rise as much as six inches per day, cutting the area off from the mainland completely. The need to get the giraffes off the island is urgent. What was once 100 acres of habitat had shrunk to one or two acres, and food sources had grown scarce. O’Connor says, ”They’re a little bit skinnier than a normal giraffe…. With the dry season, there’s absolutely no food, so they’re depending 100 percent on supplemental feeding by the team.” With one percent of the Kenyan population on the island, each rescue is important. “Giraffes are undergoing a silent extinction, and each one matters greatly to the survival of these animals,” O’Connor adds.
giraffe2.jpg
success.jpg