Giraffes under siege: The silent crisis of trophy hunting and its threat to survival

They don’t sneak up on you. They don’t bolt or slink or startle. In fact, when you turn a corner and find one blocking the road, a giraffe tends to just stand there, regarding you with the mild detachment of a royal being. 

With legs like stilts and lashes that belong in a makeup tutorial, the giraffe seems to come from another era entirely – some whimsical prehistoric pageant of elegance and oddity.

Despite their bulk, they tread almost noiselessly, their feet cushioned and their steps deliberate, floating through the bushveld like a silent observer. According to surveys, giraffes are the most photographed animals in the Kruger Park, outdoing even the lion in visitor snapshots. Other animals seem to sense their unthreatening nature: zebras and wildebeest often graze in their company. 

Hunting such a creature seems bizarre. What could be gained from bagging one of Africa’s friendliest wild animals? For some it’s apparently irresistible.

Last month the Wildlife & Conservation Foundation published new figures that lay bare the stark reality: in 2023 alone nearly 1,800 giraffe trophies were shipped around the world, feeding a global market that has become a little-known but significant threat to the species’ survival.

Professor Fred Bercovitch, a leading giraffe expert and former executive director of Save the Giraffes, issued a stark warning: “We’ve seen a 40% decline in giraffe numbers over the past three decades. If the current rate of decline continues, giraffes will be extinct before long.”

Today, fewer than 100,000 giraffes remain across Africa – a fraction of the estimated 450,000 elephants that share the same landscapes. But while elephants draw global outcry when they’re hunted for ivory, giraffes slip under the radar and they’re being picked off, sometimes bred in captivity solely to be shot and shipped as trophies.

In the early 1900s, giraffes were relentlessly hunted in the Lowveld. They were prized not for meat or ivory, but for their tails – used to swat flies and craft ceremonial regalia – and their hides, which were fashioned into whips and sjamboks. Bones were crushed for manure. 

Giraffe numbers are increasing only in national parks and protected reserves – places where trophy hunting is banned.

The present hunt numbers are sobering. According to CITES trade data, the US alone imported more than 1,000 giraffe trophies in 2023, accounting for 60% of the global total. European countries are also deeply in the trade, with imports recorded in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, among others. Even as far afield as China, the UAE and Canada, giraffe parts – skins, skulls, bones, even feet and tails  – find their way into homes as status symbols.

“People might be shocked to learn that there was even a confiscation of giraffe genitalia listed as a trophy,” the report notes.

For Bercovitch, who spent two decades studying giraffes in the wild, the issue is not simply about the legal hunts – it’s the laundering of illegal kills through the legitimate trade in trophies. Officially, the trophy hunting industry claims that about 300 giraffes are legally shot each year. 

But US government data suggests that closer to 400 trophies enter the country annually. “If those figures are correct, that means at least 25% are from illegally killed giraffes,” Bercovitch explains. “Trophy hunting is providing an avenue for the illegal trade.”

The hunting lobby insists that trophy fees fund conservation, protect habitats and support local communities. But Bercovitch dismantles this argument. “If trophy hunting truly helps conservation, you could ban the import of trophies while still allowing controlled hunting that benefits the ecosystem,” he argues. “But where’s the evidence that it does? The data show giraffe numbers are increasing only in national parks and protected reserves – places where trophy hunting is banned.”

Examples abound. In Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park, giraffe numbers rose from about 200 to 1,200 in the past two decades. In Etosha National Park in Namibia and in the Kruger Park, populations have stabilised and grown. “There’s no trophy hunting in these places,” Bercovitch says. “It’s the absence of hunting that helps.”

Banning the import of giraffe trophies would signal that the life of a giraffe is worth more alive than as a footstool, a flywhisk or a trophy on the wall.

The claim that trophy hunting fuels local economies and uplifts rural communities also withers under scrutiny. While trophy hunting does generate income, where it ends up is murky at best. “If a million dollars comes in, up to 99% might go to government officials and landowners, with scraps left for the local community,” Bercovitch says. Independent studies suggest as little as 3% of trophy hunting revenue reaches households living near hunting concessions.

As the Wildlife & Conservation Foundation report highlights, the real beneficiaries are not struggling villagers but well-heeled foreign hunters – overwhelmingly white, older men from the US and Europe – and the operators who guide them to a giraffe’s final stand under the African sun. Photos show these hunters grinning beside the sprawled corpses of towering bulls, some bred in fenced enclosures just to be shot at close range.

In an interview, Bercovitch drew a sharp analogy: “When a destitute local person kills an animal for bushmeat to feed their family, they can be thrown in jail. But a wealthy hunter can pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot the same animal – and take its head home. That’s real colonialism.”

When California banned foie gras imports, the French didn’t say, ‘You’re dictating to us’... Giraffes are no different.

The trophy lobby’s favourite fallback argument – that without hunting, wildernesses will be lost because they are not profitable – has also been discredited. Conservationists point to the vast potential of ecotourism. Unlike trophy hunting, wildlife tourism generates far greater income, creates more jobs and gives communities a reason to protect living animals. Yet the notion persists that some remote areas are “accessible only to hunters”.

“It makes no sense,” Bercovitch says. “If you’re willing to pay to shoot a giraffe in a remote place, why wouldn’t you pay to photograph it alive?”

Countries like the UK have proposed legal bans on importing hunting trophies, drawing predictable outrage from pro-hunting lobbyists who claim such bans to be ‘neocolonialism’. 

Bercovitch’s response is blunt: “When California banned foie gras imports, the French didn’t say, ‘You’re dictating to us’. When the world tells Brazil to stop deforestation, it’s not colonialism – it’s protecting a global heritage. Giraffes are no different.”

Historical precedent also offers a grim reminder of what happens when humans hunt species into oblivion. “The dodo, the quagga, Steller’s sea cow – all driven to extinction by humans,” Bercovitch says. “We can’t replace species once they’re gone.”

The Wildlife & Conservation Foundation’s answer is clear: banning the import of giraffe trophies would close a critical loophole for illegal kills. It would also signal that the life of a giraffe – an animal that has roamed Africa for millions of years – is worth more alive than as a footstool, a flywhisk or a trophy on the wall. DM