World Giraffe Day – 21 June 2020 – has come and gone. It was certainly different this year with many zoos closed and restrictions placed on events in most countries around the world. However, we managed to generate quite a lot of attention and interest for giraffe on social media and your online generosity was also amazing. Thank you for joining us to #StandTallForGiraffe and sticking your necks out to help translocate giraffe in Uganda later in 2020!

Operation Twiga V

Speaking of…we are very excited to assure you that Operation Twiga V will go ahead as planned: together with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) we will translocate another group of Critically Endangered Nubian giraffe from Murchison Falls National Park to Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve later this year. We have worked closely with the UWA team for several years now and we are confident that they can make this translocation another giraffe conservation success! The UWA team will be assisted by our GCF veterinarians in Uganda Drs Sara Ferguson and Patrick Okello who continue to work diligently de-snaring and monitoring animals and will lend a helping hand when Operation Twiga V kicks off. Stay tuned for updates on Operation Twiga V later this year! If you would still like to contribute to Operation Twiga V, click below.

All our teams throughout Africa continue to keep busy with their ongoing giraffe conservation and research activities. However, Namibia has become somewhat of a giraffe conservation hotspot in the first half of 2020 as with no international travel our team at the Windhoek headquarters have had ‘itchy feet’. Not only have we embarked on an in-depth country-wide genetic sampling programme to determine giraffe taxonomy in the country (together with partners we have started similar programmes in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe in 2020!), we also recently translocated 30 giraffe to two communal conservancies and a national park in Namibia together with the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism in a quest to boost existing giraffe populations and increase genetic diversity. You can find out more about this unique initiative by watching GCF’s episodes of the Namibian Covid Chronicles documentary series, a joint production by Travel Channel Namibia and Ultimate Safaris Namibia to draw attention to amazing conservation efforts during times of Covid-19.

Online-learning with KEEP

As schools are still closed in Namibia – and many countries in the world – our Khomas Environmental Education Programme (KEEP) team have come up with new ideas to engage local (and international) primary school students and share our EE message. Our team is doing an amazing job in producing their own short and fun educational videos that are widely shared on social media. If you have not watched them yet, please have a look at our website and feel free to share these videos as kids around the world might like to see them too.