How Many Giraffes Are Left in the World? (2025)

The short answer

As of the 2025 assessment, roughly 140,700 giraffes remain in the wild, all of them in Africa. That total is split across the four recognised species: about 68,837 southern, 43,926 Masai, 20,901 reticulated, and 7,037 northern giraffes. Encouragingly, three of the four species are increasing — a real recovery from the "silent extinction" that saw giraffe numbers fall roughly 40% between the 1980s and 2015.

So the honest headline is not just "how many are left," but "how many, of which species, and moving which way." All three matter.

Giraffe population by species (2025)

This is the single most useful table on the site — the current best estimate for each species, with its trend and main range. Figures come from the Giraffe Conservation Foundation's State of Giraffe 2025, which synthesises hundreds of government surveys, NGO reports, and peer-reviewed studies.

Species	~2025 population	Trend	Main range	Status note
Southern giraffe	68,837	Rising (~+50% in 5 yrs)	Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe	Strongest numbers
Masai giraffe	43,926	Stable / growing	Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Rwanda	Endangered (2019 assessment)
Reticulated giraffe	20,901	Rising	NE Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia	Previously Endangered
Northern giraffe	7,037	Rising (~+20%)	Sahel, South Sudan, DRC, Uganda	Most threatened
Total	~140,701	3 of 4 rising	Sub-Saharan Africa	Re-assessment underway

This dataset is free to reuse with attribution to The Last Giraffe and the underlying IUCN/GCF sources. See our survey methods explainer for how the counts are made.

The trajectory: from ~155,000 to ~97,500 to ~140,000

Giraffe numbers have not moved in a straight line. A widely used reconstruction runs roughly like this:

Mid-1980s: around 155,000 giraffes.
2015: around 97,500 — a fall of close to 40% in three decades, largely unnoticed by the public.
2025: back up to around 140,700, driven by conservation gains in three of the four species.

That U-shaped curve is the whole story in one line: giraffes suffered a serious, quiet decline, and a determined conservation response has begun to reverse it. It is why we describe the trend as fragile recovery, not victory — and why the threats that caused the decline still need funding to stay suppressed.

Why "how many giraffes" is a genuinely hard question

You cannot line giraffes up and count them. They range across huge, often remote landscapes in more than fifteen countries — through national parks, community conservancies, working rangelands, private farms, and areas made inaccessible by conflict. Estimates therefore differ, for good reasons:

Different survey years — a 2019 count and a 2024 count are not comparable as "current."
Different methods — aerial transects, road counts, and photographic mark-recapture each have their own biases.
Taxonomy changes — reshuffling nine subspecies into four species changes how numbers are grouped.
Access — insecure regions (parts of the Sahel, South Sudan, DRC, Somalia) are hard or dangerous to survey.
Real change — populations genuinely rise and fall between assessments through births, deaths, drought, and translocations.

This is why a credible source gives an estimate with a date and a method, not a single exact number presented as eternal truth. When a page claims "there are exactly X giraffes," treat it with caution.

Why more giraffes does not yet mean safe giraffes

Rising numbers are excellent news, but they come with three caveats:

The gains are uneven. The southern giraffe's boom sits alongside a northern giraffe population of just ~7,000 in insecure country. A healthy average hides a genuine emergency.
Recovery depends on continued protection. The increases are the product of ranger patrols, conservancies, and secured habitat. Withdraw the funding and the curve can bend back down.
Range has still shrunk. Even where numbers are up, giraffes occupy far less of their historical range than a century ago, and fragmented populations lose genetic connectivity over time.

A recovering species is not a saved species. It is a species whose rescue is working — and must keep working.

How the numbers are actually gathered

The 2025 figures rest on real fieldwork: aerial and road transect surveys, photographic individual identification (each giraffe's coat is unique, like a fingerprint), GPS-collar tracking, and increasingly citizen-science observations. Statisticians then combine these into population estimates with uncertainty ranges. If you want the full picture of how giraffes are counted — and why the answer is always a best estimate — see giraffe population survey methods and the annual State of Giraffe 2025 digest.

Frequently asked questions

How many giraffes are left in 2025?

About 140,700 across Africa, divided among four species: ~68,837 southern, ~43,926 Masai, ~20,901 reticulated, and ~7,037 northern giraffes.

How many giraffes were there historically?

Roughly 155,000 in the mid-1980s, falling to about 97,500 by 2015 — a decline of close to 40% — before recovering to around 140,700 by 2025.

Which giraffe species has the largest population?

The southern giraffe, at about 68,837 animals and rising roughly 50% over five years. It is the most numerous and the clearest conservation success.

Are giraffe numbers increasing or decreasing?

Overall increasing: three of the four species are trending upward thanks to conservation. The exception in terms of risk is the northern giraffe, which is rising but remains very small and vulnerable.

Where do most of the world's giraffes live?

In sub-Saharan Africa, with the largest, most stable populations in southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe) and major populations across East Africa.

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Sources

Reviewed against IUCN and Giraffe Conservation Foundation sources. Last updated July 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us — a reference earns trust by correcting fast.