AUGUST 2017AWW.COM.AU 89
PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED GIRAFFE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION AND USED WITH PERMISION.
ABOVE: Giraffes in
north-west Namibia.
RIGHT: Luca and
Molly in 2013, with
Allan Bagonza, a
Ugandan ranger who
is loved by the kids.never felt more alone, but, he says, “it
put a lot of things into perspective. It
shaped me. I think, with good support
all around, you can grow up pretty
quickly in a situation like that.”
Julian had always imagined he
would become a stockbroker, but in
retrospect, he says, “I hadn’t thought
very much about life. In South Africa,
I realised that I didn’t want to spend
my life behind a desk because who
knows how long you have to live?”
He also discovered the African
wilderness and so began a fascination
with nature that led to university
degrees in biology and wildlife
ecology, and finally took Julian
back to Africa and the giraffes.
Last year, the Fennessys collaborated
with the Uganda Wildlife Authority
to relocate large numbers of the
endangered Rothschild’s giraffe.
The giraffe’s traditional range in
Murchison Falls National Park is also
home to three-quarters of Uganda’s oil
deposits. Mining and poaching were
both threatening the giraffes there,
so the decision was made to move
some of their number to a more
remote location across the Nile. It
was a painstaking process – capturing
individual giraffes, wooing them
gently into a truck and then onto a
barge to be floated across the wide,
brown river – but all the animals
arrived safely and there are plans to
transfer another group later this year.
“Molly and Luca came with us,”
says Stephanie. “They missed two
weeks of school, but they gave a
presentation in their respective classes
when we came back. The day before
the presentation, I asked Molly
whether we should talk through
what had happened so she would be
prepared. She looked at me in utter
disbelief and said, ‘Mum, I know
how to translocate a giraffe’.”
Not all Julian’s expeditions are so
family-friendly. Not long ago, he was
travelling through Gambella National
Park, one of the remotest parks in
Africa, in westernEthiopia, near the
border with war-tornSouth Sudan. No
one had ever studied the giraffes there
and Julian wanted to collect DNA
samples and attach satellite trackers.He spent days
surveying
the area by
helicopter before
spotting a herd
on the very edge
of the park.
“As we came
close to them,”
he recalls, “we
saw a group of men turn, look up,
point their AK47s at us and start
shooting. We had no windows on
the helicopter, so bullets were flying
all around us.”
The pilot moved fast and flew the
team to safety, but it was a close call.
It has been estimated that, over the
past 10 years, 1000 park rangers
have been killed by poachers in Africa.
Stephanie remembers that figure
whenever Julian is tracking giraffes
through remote and dangerous
wilderness. She has also instituted
some rules about phoning home.
“I received a phone call at 11 o’clock
that night telling me that poachers had
tried to shoot down the helicopter,” shesays. “Then, the
next day, Julian
forgot to ring.
I was literally
making plans
for how I would
go about life
as a widow
with two kids.
So now we
have some
guidelines about
phone calls.”
Has it been
worth it?
“Absolutely,”
they both insist.
The battery of genetic and statistical
information Julian has collected has
increased our understanding of
giraffes a hundredfold and it was
largely as a result of the Fennessys’
scientific work and lobbying that, last
year, giraffes moved from the Least
Concern category to Vulnerable To
Extinctionon the International Union
for Conservation of Nature’s Red
List of Threatened Species..
“Giraffes have already disappeared
in seven countries in Africa,” says
Julian. “It’s not going to happen
again – not on my watch.”AW WIf you would like to support the GCF’s work to
save giraffes, visit giraffeconservation.org.“Giraffes have disappeared
in seven countries in Africa.”