Giraffes are now at risk of becoming extinct, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned on Tuesday. The population of the world’s tallest land mammal plummeted to well below 100,000 in 2015, and is feared to have shrunk even lower this year. Due to the fact the giraffe population has shrunk an incredible 40 percent in the last 30 years, scientists have put them on the official watch list of threatened and endangered species. Thehornnews.com reports: At a biodiversity meeting Wednesday in Mexico, the IUCN increased the threat level for 35 species and lowered the threat level for seven species on its “Red List” of threatened species, considered by scientists the official list of what animals and plants are in danger of disappearing. The giraffe is the only mammal whose status changed on the list this year. Scientists blame habitat loss. While everyone worries about elephants, Earth has four times as many pachyderms as giraffes, said Julian Fennessy and Noelle Kumpel, co-chairs of the specialty group of biologists that put the giraffe on the IUCN Red List. They both called what’s happening to giraffes a “silent extinction.” “Everyone assumes giraffes are everywhere,” said Fennessy, co-director of the Giraffe [...]
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