AUGUST 2017AWW.COM.AU 87
[ Conservation]
THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE GIRAFFE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION AND USED WITH PERMISSTION. OPPOSITE: GEORGE WOODCOCK/AGB FILMS AND GRIPPING FILMS.
D
ust clouds rise as a
giraffe’s hooves pound
the African savanna. A
tranquilliser gun is fired
and the giraffe comes
down, all 1000 kilos of him. Julian
Fennessy moves in. One good kick
from any of the giraffe’s hooves could
decapitate him, but that’s not going to
happen – not today. Julian dodges the
struggling legs, straddles the immense
neck, covers the giraffe’s eyes
with a towel to calm him and
whispers, “You’ll be right,
mate”. Julian is a giraffe
whisperer, an Aussie biologist
and a man on a mission to
save the world’s tallest land
animal from extinction.
Last December, the world
learnt that giraffes are in peril- numbers have plummeted
by 40 per cent in just 30
years. This came as a shock,
even to members of the
scientific and conservation
communities, because giraffes
are among the world’s least
studied creatures. If Julian
and his wife, Stephanie, had
not spent the past 15 years
stubbornly tracking, tackling
and observing them, giraffes
may have slipped unnoticed
towards extinction.
The pair’s commitment
to the cause has not been
withoutsacrifices and
dangers. For instance, when
they moved with son Luca
from Melbourne to Nairobi
in Kenya in 2007, they found
themselves bang in the middle
of an armed uprising.
“The election result was disputed
and there was constant rioting,” Julian
recalls. “We lived about 200 metres
from State House and people regularly
tried to break into our compound.
I remember one day, I was outside
switching on the electric fence while
Steph and Luca lay on the ground
with bullets flying over their heads.”
Right at that moment, Stephanie says,
she was tempted to hop on the first flight
home but the Fennessys persevered.
Three months and some of former UN
“It was a
life-changing
experience. I
was driving by
myself in this
wilderness for
days at a time.”
There are an
estimated
98,000 giraffes
in the wild,
down from
160,000 in 1985.Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s finest
diplomacy later, the violence subsided
and their work carried on.
These days, the family (plus daughter
Molly) lives in Windhoek, Namibia,
and, says Stephanie, “Life here is
probably not too different from life in
an Australian country town. Windhoek
is a small city. We have good friends,
the weather is good and our kids go to
a Catholic primary school. They can’tgo to school by bike – we have to drive
them – and school starts at seven.
They’re the major differences.”
Together, Julian and Stephanie steer
the Giraffe Conservation Foundation
(GCF). Saving giraffes became the
family business because, Stephanie
says, “I realised that I could either not
be involved with giraffes and never see
Julian or I could get involved, share
the burden and also spend more time
together. So now we’re both
working full-time with the
GCF and, if possible, we
travel together and take
the kids along, too.”
The pair met in 1999, while
on a work project in a remote
corner of north-western
Namibia. Stephanie was an
environmentalengineer who
had grown up in a tiny village
in Germany and was on her
first work assignment in
Africa. “It was a life-changing
experience,” she says. “I had
never camped in my life.
I had never driven a four-
wheel-drive and, suddenly,
I was driving by myself in
this remote wilderness for
days at a time. I was going
from village to village. I would
explain my proposed route to
Julian and my boss, and say,
‘Okay, we will meet again in
six days and if I’m not there
after seven, then you come
and look for me because
probably my old car has
broken down’.”
Julian had been travelling
back and forth between
Africa and Australia for decades. At
16, he’d been whisked away from the
“posh” Xavier College for boys in
Melbourne and sent on a Rotary
exchange to an interracial high school
in Johannesburg, South Africa – no
family, no friends, no backstops. It
altered his understanding of himself
and his place in the world completely.
Julian remained in South Africa for
a year and while he was away, his
father, who had been battling cancer,
became increasingly ill and died.
Julian was heartbroken and had»