The real story behind giraffe conservation and the role of sustainable hunting.
Rebuttal to Don Pinnock’s Article: “Giraffes under siege”
Don Pinnock’s emotive article, “Giraffes under siege: The silent crisis of trophy hunting and its threat to survival” (Daily Maverick, 8 July 2025), presents a deeply sentimental portrayal of giraffes and condemns trophy hunting as a major threat to their survival. However, the article leans heavily on ideological rhetoric, flawed assumptions, and selective data, while disregarding the evidence-based conclusions of giraffe experts, African conservationists, and scientific institutions.
Pinnock claims giraffes are being “quietly driven towards extinction,” citing outdated or exaggerated figures. In reality, the “Giraffe Conservation Foundation’s (GCF) State of the Giraffe 2025 ” report offers a far more accurate and balanced picture:
The overall giraffe population is estimated at over 140 000 individuals, up from fewer than 98 000 in 2015 – more than a 40% increase in a decade as per the latest GCF study of 2025.
Giraffe populations are not in freefall. These numbers directly contradict the alarmist tone of the article. While it is true that some subspecies remain vulnerable, others are thriving, thanks in part to conservation strategies that include regulated hunting on private and communal lands. The Southern Giraffe, not only the most numerous subspecies but also the most hunted, has been increasing steadily, particularly in countries like Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. All of these countries use sustainable hunting as a conservation tool.
The IUCN Red List and the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, the world’s leading authorities on giraffe conservation, do not list trophy hunting as a major threat to giraffes. The IUCN cites habitat loss, civil unrest, human population growth, and ecological degradation as the main drivers of giraffe decline. In fact, the IUCN’s African Antelope Specialist Group and CITES both recognize that:
“Well-managed hunting contributes directly to conservation by creating economic incentives to conserve wildlife and habitats.”
Pinnock’s article completely ignores this consensus and instead promotes the unsubstantiated claim that hunting drives giraffe decline.
While Pinnock dismisses the economic and conservation value of trophy hunting, peer-reviewed studies and African-led data show the opposite:
Trophy hunting funds conservation, land protection, and local livelihoods. Regulated hunting in Southern Africa:
- Generates millions of dollars annually for conservation.
- Provides employment and incentives to keep land wild rather than converting it to agriculture or industry.
- Helps control population densities of species in fenced reserves, reducing intraspecific competition and overbrowsing, which harms ecosystems.
- Funds anti-poaching patrols, veterinary care, and community development.
Pinnock cites a widely repeated but misleading claim that only 3% of trophy hunting revenue reaches local communities. This figure is drawn from a 2009 study based on only a few sites in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. It has been repeated out of context and does not reflect broader, more recent data.
For example, Namibia’s Communal Conservancy Programme, which incorporates regulated trophy hunting, channels more than 50% of revenues directly to communities in the form of cash dividends, employment, meat distribution, and social services. A 2016 peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications by Naidoo et al. found that:
“Conservancies with trophy hunting yielded significantly higher returns to local communities than photographic-only areas.”
In short, the 3% claim is not representative of modern community-based conservation in Southern Africa.
The suggestion that wildlife tourism can replace hunting everywhere is a false dichotomy. Many hunting concessions are in remote, dry, or rugged terrain unsuitable for photo-tourism. As the IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group explains:
“Without hunting, vast tracts of wilderness in Africa would be lost to livestock, agriculture, or settlement. Trophy hunting allows land to remain wild where other models of conservation are unfeasible.”
Indeed, hunting occurs on tens of millions of hectares of land not under formal protection, areas where giraffes and other species would otherwise have no reason to be conserved.
Pinnock’s insinuation that giraffes are widely bred in captivity “just to be shot” is misleading. Unlike lions, giraffes are not part of any recognized captive breeding-for-hunting industry. The vast majority of giraffe hunting takes place on large, free-range properties where animals live natural lives and contribute to viable populations.
Moreover, giraffes are not easy animals to hunt, nor are they the primary target of international hunting tourism. They are hunted in very low numbers, often mature bulls past their breeding prime, under strict quota systems, with government oversight and CITES permits. The 1,800 “trophies” referenced by Pinnock likely include processed items (e.g., bone curios or skin pieces) rather than 1,800 individual giraffes killed.
Pinnock references “laundering” of illegal giraffe parts through the legal hunting trade, without offering concrete evidence. The idea that regulated hunting “provides an avenue” for illegal activity misrepresents how CITES tagging, permits, and enforcement systems work. Conflating legal and illegal activities undermines law enforcement and muddies the waters between poachers and conservationists. It is dangerous and dishonest.
In contrast, legal hunting gives value to wildlife, deterring poaching. Where giraffes are hunted sustainably, their populations are stable or increasing, a point his article fails to acknowledge.
Pinnock ends with a grave warning, comparing the fate of giraffes to the dodo, quagga, and Steller’s sea cow, and implying that trophy hunting is following the same path to extinction.
This is a deeply flawed comparison and has nothing to do with trophy hunting.
The dodo (Mauritius) was wiped out in the 1600s due to invasive species, habitat destruction, and indiscriminate overharvesting by settlers and sailors, long before the concept of regulated trophy hunting even existed.
The quagga (South Africa), a zebra subspecies, was exterminated by uncontrolled commercial hunting for meat and hides in the 19th century, not by sport or trophy hunters, and certainly not under modern conservation regimes.
Steller’s sea cow was driven extinct in the 1700s by unregulated harvesting by Russian fur traders and sailors within 27 years of its discovery.
None of these extinctions occurred in a regulated setting, nor involved modern conservation hunting practices. In contrast, sustainable trophy hunting has helped prevent extinction by creating economic incentives to conserve species and habitats, including giraffes.
To use these historical tragedies as a rhetorical device against contemporary giraffe management is disingenuous and unscientific.
Pinnock’s analogy to foie gras is absurd. The difference is that African nations are sovereign and have the right to manage their wildlife. When Western governments impose import bans that threaten African economies, wildlife management strategies, and community rights, that is neocolonialism. The neocolonial argument is not made by the hunting industry, it’s made by Africans.
As the former Namibian Minister of Environment Pohamba Shifeta said:
“The ban on trophy imports by foreign governments is an insult to African sovereignty and undermines decades of conservation success.”
These bans often result from pressure by Western animal rights groups, not African communities or conservation professionals. They remove the very incentives that keep animals like giraffes alive and on the land.
Giraffes are not “under siege” by trophy hunting. They are being sustainably conserved in countries where they are valued through a range of tools, including hunting, eco-tourism, and habitat protection. Pinnock’s article, though well-written, relies on emotional appeal and ideological activism, not science or the lived experience of Africans managing their wildlife. He would be well advised to first understand who the Wildlife & Conservation Foundation really is before so gleefully citing them, and their naïve, unscientific bias, as a credible authority.
Sustainable hunting is not the enemy of giraffe survival, it’s part of the solution. If we care about giraffes, we must listen to the science, respect African-led conservation, and avoid letting sentimental narratives dismantle the very systems that have kept wildlife thriving outside national parks.
Sources:
- Giraffe Conservation Foundation, State of the Giraffe 2025
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
- IUCN SSC African Antelope Specialist Group
- TRAFFIC/CITES trade data
- Naidoo et al. (2016), Nature Communications – “Complementary benefits of tourism and hunting to communal conservancies in Namibia”
- Lindsey et al. (2007), Biological Conservation – Economic value of trophy hunting in Africa
- IUCN SULi (Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group)
