World Giraffe Day - 21 June 2021

21 June is World Giraffe Day (WGD) an exciting annual event initiated by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) to celebrate the tallest animal on the longest day or night (depending in which hemisphere you live!) of the year - 21 June – every year! WGD 2021 is dedicated to saving the last West African giraffe! There are only about 600 West African giraffe left in the world. All of them live in Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries. However, West African giraffe are a giraffe conservation success story. While these giraffe were widely distributed in West Africa, from Nigeria to Senegal, only 100 years ago, by the mid-1990s only 49 individuals remained in the wild. Then the Niger government decided to turn the tide and together with GCF and many other conservation partners they managed to protect their own giraffe. The population has now increased to about 600 and after a successful translocation in 2018 (Operation Sahel Giraffe) there are now two populations of West African giraffe in Niger – and th