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The image went around the world: a photo of the lifeless bodies of six giraffes, lying on the sand in the Kenyan desert. But today, a man is fighting against the drought and poaching that is decimating the giraffes.
In Garissa, a remote corner in the east of Kenya, near the Somali border, he is called “Daktari”, “the doctor” in Swahili. Ali Abdullahi, biologist, fights for the preservation of species and faces enemies: one of the most formidable is drought, which kills wild animals and livestock as drastically as the armed groups and poachers who criss-cross the region. A hundred giraffes, one of the species most affected by the drought, have already died.
Giraffes now threatened with extinction
The giraffe is an emblem of Kenya, but its population continues to decline, in near indifference. Until a photo went around the world: that of the lifeless bodies of six giraffes, lying on the sand, which caused a real awareness of the climate crisis and its consequences.
There are now less than 100,000 giraffes in Africa, five times fewer than elephants, and in Kenya they are half as many as thirty years ago. In 2016, they were placed on the red list of endangered species.
A report by Hélène Eckmann, Thomas Parnet for Kraken Films, broadcast in “Correspondent” May 5, 2002.
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