the image that shocked the world

There are only 100,000 of them in all of Africa, five times less than elephants. “The number of giraffes continues to decline around the world, and Kenya is no exception. We could one day see a world without giraffes“, dreads Ali Abdullahi. “Special envoy” followed this biologist nicknamed “Daktari” (“the doctor”, in Swahili) in his fight for the protection of this now threatened species.

The giraffe is the emblem of Kenya. In the bush, it has no predators, yet the species was silently dying out, until the whole world was shocked by a photo: a snap that shows a tangle of long necks and coats spotted – the distressing image of six giraffes dead of dehydration on the desert sand. It was a British photographer based here who fixed it on film.

“It’s the whole region that is dying”

Ed Ram was commissioned by the BBC to report on the terrible drought that has plagued the region for two years. He remembers his arrival in Garissa in December 2021. The locality is 400 kilometers northeast of Nairobi, far from the tourist circuits. “You get out of the car, and there’s this mind-blowing heat. And then, suddenly, this unbearable smell. I saw this scene, and I was shocked. I knew it had to be shown.On the British channel’s Instagram account, the photo has had half a million views – it’s one of the ten most viewed of 2021.

“We had never seen giraffes die because of the drought“, emphasizes “Doctor Ali”. It took this climate crisis for the danger of extinction that threatens these animals to be taken seriously, but “the whole region is dying, he warns. This is without doubt the worst drought we have ever experienced here. She killed hundreds and hundreds of cattle“Another image of desolation in this excerpt, the ground of the surrounding villages littered with desiccated corpses of cows,”a disaster for local farmers“.

Excerpt from “The guardian angel of giraffes”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” May 5, 2002.

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