Giraffe Conservation Foundation
Protecting Africa’s Giraffes
Founded in 2009, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) is the only non-governmental organisation in the world that concentrates solely on the conservation and management of giraffe in the wild throughout Africa.
GCF supports giraffe conservation activities in 19 African countries and in over 100 million acres of giraffe habitat. Their involvement includes providing technical support to partners, population monitoring, and conservation action.
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Status in the wild
Giraffe are threatened mostly by loss of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, habitat degradation, and subsistence poaching. GCF estimates that there are only 117,000 giraffe left across Africa. In comparison, there are more than 400,000 elephants in Africa.
Once thought of as a single species, the work of the GCF now suggests that there are actually 4 different species of giraffe, and 7 subspecies, including the Nubian Giraffe which now numbers less than 3,000 in the wild.
Updates from the field
In several countries GCF partners with local organisations to provide anti-poaching and/or de-snaring support. This work has been incredibly successful, and to date GCF has saved almost 300 Nubian giraffe with snare wounds (10% of the whole population)!
In addition to population monitoring and conservation action, GCF also operates a field-based environmental education programme in Namibia, which brought more than 3,000 primary school students into the field in 2022.
Who is the GCF?
Conservation Translocations: Operation Sahel Giraffe
Protecting Africa's Giraffes
GCF on support
“Giraffes can only be saved in Africa by African people, so donating to organisations like the GCF helps, as we work directly with African governments and people to provide education and research on the plight of giraffe and the actions needed to save them.”
– Stephanie Fennessy, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (July 2023)
