Extinction risks and mitigation for a megaherbivore, the giraffe, in a human‐influenced landscape under climate change

Protecting giraffes from poachers could also help them withstand a wetter climate. In a model of Tanzania's Tarangire giraffes, improved survival left populations better able to cope with more frequent unusually wet periods. The result connects a familiar conservation action with a different source of pressure on the animals.

Monica Bond, Derek Lee and Maria Paniw built an individual-based population model informed by eight years of field research on more than 3,100 giraffes. Simulated females belonged to social communities and moved through land with different protection levels. The team projected populations over 50 years while varying poaching protection, settlement expansion, predator conditions and the frequency of unusually heavy rainfall.

Weaker protection produced the greatest extinction risk. Raising survival by one percentage point in each four-month season could offset the modelled harm from more frequent wet periods. Adult female survival had particularly strong influence on population persistence. These are conditional projections, not a test of an actual enforcement programme: the rainfall scenarios also omitted other climate effects, including possible longer-term benefits to vegetation. The finding is that climate vulnerability need not be tackled only through climate-specific measures. Keeping adult giraffes alive can give their populations more capacity to absorb additional losses.