Higher than expected growth rate of the Endangered West African giraffeGiraffa camelopardalis peralta: a successful human–wildlife cohabitation

Niger's giraffes recovered rapidly while living among people and livestock. The last West African giraffe population shared its range with farmers and herders, outside a national park. After severe losses, its recovery offered a chance to measure how quickly giraffes could increase when many adults and calves survived.

Jean-Patrick Suraud and colleagues combined photographic censuses from 1996–1999 and 2005–2008 with records of individually recognised females. Researchers searched repeatedly during the wet season, when giraffes concentrated in a smaller area, until they stopped finding new individuals. They used the counts to measure population growth and the females' histories to estimate survival, then calculated whether those survival and reproduction rates could account for the increase.

Counts grew by about 13% annually during 2005–2008, close to the team's estimates of what favourable giraffe reproduction and survival could sustain. Adult female survival was around 94% a year. The authors linked the recovery to reduced poaching and the absence of large predators, although the observational study could not isolate their contributions. Living alongside people had not prevented rapid recovery here. Its continuation depended on keeping that coexistence workable as cultivation and wood cutting reduced habitat and encounters with crops created opportunities for conflict.