When David O’Connor started researching the reticulated giraffe for his master’s thesis at SEAS in 2011, there was only one other person in the world studying this iconic animal full-time. He described giraffe research at that time, saying “unfortunately, we were just beginning to understand one thing about giraffes; that they were in trouble.” In fact, there was only thought to be one species of giraffe until 2016, when it was discovered that there were actually four.

That same year, the IUCN Red List moved the giraffe from a species of “Least Concern” to “Vulnerable to Extinction”. This is when more people started to pay attention to giraffe conservation and the year that O’Connor and his colleagues founded the Twiga Walinzi Initiative at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. The Twiga Walinzi Initiative is a conservation effort focused on researching and protecting the reticulated giraffe in Kenya. According to recent research conducted by O’Connor, 95% of the 15,000 reticulated giraffes left in the wild live outside of formal protected areas, largely on pastoral land. This is why the Twiga Walinzi Initiative focuses its work solely outside of protected areas where people live side by side with the animals.

According to O’Connor, “conservation isn’t about wildlife, it’s about people”. So Twiga Walinzi, which means giraffe guards, places people at the center of its efforts by creating community partnerships in Kenya and ensuring that these communities receive direct benefits from conservation. The Twiga Walinzi are a team of 17 individuals hired locally in Kenya that lead the work on the ground with pastoralists and communities to educate about giraffes and build support for its protection. This includes annual festivals celebrating the giraffe, in-school education programs, and scholarships that build connection to the giraffe.

The lack of previous research and widespread knowledge of the reticulated giraffe’s plight presents a massive challenge to O’Connor and the Twiga Walinzi Initiative. O’Connor remains optimistic, explaining that “while news about the giraffe may be bleak, there is still a massive opportunity to turn things around, and to secure a sustainable future for reticulated giraffe co-existing with people and livestock.”

Since the founding of the Twiga Walinzi Initiative 3 years ago, their research efforts have helped improve the scientific world’s understanding of giraffes. With over 800 conservation lessons taught to students in Kenya and 700 human dimension surveys conducted on the community’s relationship with giraffes, David O’Connor and his colleagues are also ensuring that this information is dispensed to the people that giraffe conservation relies on most.