This week we are thrilled to announce sponsorship of the Kordofan Giraffe Project in Cameroon, fighting back against the silent extinction of these beautiful animals.

We announced the project on World Giraffe Day and this weekend our wonderful visitors helped raise a whopping £716.50 by getting involved in our giraffe feeds and asking us to donate a percentage of coffee sales to the fund.

While we are lucky to be home to seven Kordofan Giraffes here at Safari Zoo, as few as 1,400 Kordofan Giraffes remain in the wild.

In 2018 the Kordofan Giraffe was declared critically endangered meaning they face the very real and extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future.

The Giraffe Conservation Fund is initiating a new phase of collaborative partnership in Cameroon with a local environmental organisation based in the country.

The project will work with existing conservation and community stakeholders across the Benoue Complex region in the north of Cameroon to improve co-operation between owners of protected land and prevent illegal hunting of the giraffes.

Before you can physically go in and actively protect and conserve a species, you need to understand the environment, available food sources, potential to live alongside existing settlements and populations to identify potential options for long-term conservation.

This is an exciting, early-days project for us to be involved in, providing research and data to help assess the specific threats to the Benoue Complex Kordofans, their feeding habits, behaviour, any potential conflict with local herders and their livestock and any negative impact on the giraffe as a result of local herders’ trimming of food sources.

The results of which will identify potential areas where the Kordofans could flourish, and steps to be taken to help them to do so. Safari Zoo has pledged the initial £4,000 needed to get this project started.

This week we also wished a happy seventh birthday to our resident Snow Leopard lady Kadi.

Kadi was born in Helsinki Zoo in 2012, joining Safari Zoo in 2013.

Kadi and mate Wolfgang had their very own cubs Miska and Nastasja in 2016. They have both been moved as part of the breeding programme to Wroclaw and Melbourne Zoo to start families of their own.

Despite being downgraded from endangered to vulnerable in 2017, the population continues to decline as a result of habitat degradation, poaching, the illegal wildlife trade and persecution by farmers who view them as a threat to livestock.