One of nature’s most lovable creatures, giraffes split their time between tottering around – head (neck) and shoulders above the rest of the animal kingdom – and eating. Dubbed “gentle giants” by David Attenborough , these gangly beasts have long exerted a fascination over humankind. Ancient Egyptians were so enamoured with giraffes they gave them their own hieroglyph , and in modern times, our interest in the world’s tallest land animals continues – from the use of giraffe skin to help in the development of astronaut and pilot suits, to their starring roles in children’s films. Unfortunately, Melman (the hypochondriac giraffe from Dreamworks’ film Madagascar ) is right to feel worried. Giraffes are no longer as prolific as they once were – in fact, in 2017 they could face extinction.
On the African continent, to which giraffes are endemic, the rapid growth of the human population has been accompanied by a rise in agricultural development, poaching, deforestation, and civil wars – all of which have caused a loss of both habitats and lives for giraffes. Wild giraffes are already extinct in seven countries in Africa – Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal. As a result, the most recent list of threatened species compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature revealed a potential tragedy – the black-tongued sweethearts of the animal kingdom, have officially been moved from the category of “least concern” to that marked “vulnerable”, only three categories away from being totally “extinct in the wild”. The giraffe is the only mammal whose status changed on the list.
At a biological diversity conference which took place in December in Cancun, Mexico, the IUCN explained that over the last three decades giraffe numbers have dwindled from around 157,000 to just 97,500 – a fall of 36-40%. The situation is bleak, but giraffes are not yet classified as “endangered” and could still make a comeback, with a little support.
Raising awareness of the plight of endangered animals is the most effective means by which we can change the human behaviour that impacts negatively on diminishing species. The problem is not just that giraffes are deliberately being killed by poachers, but also (and arguably on a larger scale) that they are dying as a consequence of other actions – such as deforestation, which removes their food source.
The first step in altering these leggy creatures’ fate is education, and little details can make a big difference. One such detail is that, contrary to previous assumptions, giraffes are not one group comprised of multiple subspecies. Rather, as geneticists recently discovered, there are four distinct species of giraffe that do not interbreed in the wild. This has ramifications for conservation techniques, which will have to be focused on the needs of each species – not just the reticulated (or Somali) giraffe, which is the species most commonly seen in zoos.
If you type into Google “how to save the giraffe”, you will find a mass of petitions and links to giraffe conservation societies. The short answer, as the conservation expert Julian Fennessy put it, is that we must “stick our neck out for the giraffe before it is too late”. On a local level, petitioning politicians will prove it is a popular problem that deserves attention, and that in turn should encourage governments to act.
To this end, in September the IUCN put forward a resolution entitled “Giraffids: reversing the decline of Africa’s iconic megafauna”, which encourages its members to raise awareness and funds, as well as pledging to increase conservation efforts for giraffid species (giraffes and okapis). Their most wide-ranging proposal is that the international community help restore and preserve sites of particular significance to giraffe populations. This would involve upholding states’ commitments to the World Heritage Convention, including ensuring the security of World Heritage Sites such as the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ultimately, the resolution concludes, the most useful tool would be the development of a unified Africa-wide Giraffe Conservation Strategy and Action Plan.
As a call to action, everything the resolution recommends seems intuitive. However, behind the proposal to fortify national parks lies a grim truth – many of them are threatened by the instability that comes with continuous conflict. Some of the world’s most critically endangered species reside within biodiversity hotspots such as Murchison Falls National Park in Africa which holds one of the few surviving populations of the Rothschild giraffe.
Unfortunately, these hotspots, of which there are 34 worldwide, are under threat from conflict. Between 1960 and 2010, over 80% of the world’s major armed conflicts took place within recognised biodiversity hotspots. War has certainly impacted the giraffe population – “In these war-torn areas, in northern Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the border area with South Sudan, essentially the giraffes are war fodder, a large animal, extremely curious, that can feed a lot of people”, Fennessy told the BBC.
Political experts the world over are torn over how to respond to crises such as the decline of the giraffe population. Governments and NGOs who have the resources to help to protect and maintain conservation efforts must recognise the need for long term involvement and investment. Hopefully, our on-going love affair with giraffes will help spark a united action to preserve them on this planet so that they may continue to bewitch and baffle future generations in the flesh, rather than ending up as the next long-necked staple of London’s Natural History Museum.
Hospital , a six-part series filmed at St Mary’s in London (11 January, 9pm), is without doubt the best and most revealing documentary I have seen about the NHS. Like any such series, it is about doctors, nurses and patients, and it comes with the requisite stories of courage and sadness, kindness and expertise. I challenge anyone not to have the occasional lump in their throat as they watch it.
But what its makers are interested in are the logistical decisions that its hard-pressed staff must take every day, every hour. St Mary’s, put simply, does not have enough beds, and the logjams that this causes leads to the wasting of other precious resources: surgeons stand around waiting (and waiting) to be told, yes, they can go ahead and operate (or not); patients sit, frightened but abidingly grateful, wondering if, this time, the life-saving procedure they require will happen.
Perhaps the guilt is worse than the frustration. How must it feel to know that your surgery will take place only if a woman who is en route to the hospital in an ambulance dies before she arrives? What a thing to be worrying about at a time when you already feel frail, adrift in the unknown. “It is a privilege to operate on a fellow human,” said Professor George Hanna, as he finally set about trying to save the life of a man with oesophageal cancer after a 24-hour wait for a bed in intensive care (this was where his patient would recover). But the real privilege here was ours: such forbearance on his part, and that of his patient. Contrary to what politicians on both sides would have us believe, it is possible simultaneously to feel intense pride in the NHS and to have heretical thoughts in the matter of how its structural problems might be alleviated, if not entirely solved, and this series understands this. It’s brilliant and brave.
There were, and perhaps still are, good reasons to be suspicious of the BBC’s new Saturday night drama Taboo (7 January, 9.15pm). First, its title: I would have gone for something that doesn’t sound quite so Eighties-nightclub-in-a-small-northern-town. Second, its genesis. Tom Hardy, its star, cooked the whole thing up with his writer father, Chips, the idea being that père would help fils to fulfil his great dream of playing a character who is Bill Sykes, Sherlock Holmes, Hannibal Lecter, Heathcliff, Dr Faustus and Donald Duck all rolled into one. OK, not Donald Duck. But you get the picture.
There is a feeling, then, that the Hardys, their co-conspirator Steven Peaky Blinders Knight, who wrote most of the scripts, and the director Kristoffer Nyholm have thrown everything at this epic tale of a young man, James Delaney (Hardy), who returns to London from Africa, where he was presumed dead, to claim his inheritance. Setting out their stall, in the first scene Delaney pulled the coins from his dead father’s eyes and whispered in a weird accent that comes from who knows where (Wales? Congo?) the cheesy line: “Forgive me, father, for I have indeed sinned.”
The weird thing is that it works. It’s nasty and clever and, besides a slightly Etch a Sketch St Paul’s Cathedral, it all looks madly and filthily pre-Victorian (it is 1814 and Britain is at war with its colony America). The scenes in which Hardy tells the representatives of the East India Company that he will certainly not be selling them a vital strip of land he now owns in Canada were masterful: slow-paced and tense, the lace tablecloth of the gathered gentlemen’s gentility covering, but not entirely obscuring, their greed and hypocrisy.
It’s also chilling. Delaney arrives trailing rumours of his depravity: he is not, we’re given to understand, as other men. Did he and his half-sister, Zilpha – played with trembling brilliance by Oona Chaplin – once have an incestuous relationship? Hardy, the Ollie Reed of his generation, is completely convincing. He reminds me of certain boys I was at school with, massively good-looking but so likely to blow a fuse they could only be contemplated for a nanosecond out of the corner of one’s eye. Watching him feels dangerous, illicit, for which reason I will be there next time, smelling salts in hand.
© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2017/01/world-s-tallest-creature-heading-fall
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Der polnische Präsident Duda hat das umstrittene Haushaltsgesetz unterzeichnet. Und das nur einen Tag, nachdem die Oppositionellen ihre Sitzblockade im Parlament aufgelöst hatten. Die Verabschiedung des Gesetzes betrachtet die Opposition als illegal.
Wie das US-Justizministerium am Freitag bekanntgab, soll Takata unter anderem eine Milliarde Dollar zahlen und sich drei Jahre lang unter die Aufsicht eines unabhängigen Prüfers stellen. Mit der Einigung ist ein Schuldgeständnis verbunden. Takata-Chef Shigehisa Takada erklärte, er „bedauere zutiefst die Umstände, die zu dieser Situation geführt haben“. Die US-Staatsanwältin Barbara McQuade sagte, Autozulieferer müssten beim Schutz des Verbrauchers Sicherheit vor Profit stellen. 
Das teilten Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft am Freitag in Dortmund mit. Das Trio verlangte nach Informationen der « Bild »-Zeitung umgerechnet fünf Millionen Euro in der bargeldlosen Internetwährung Bitcoins. 
Was Shanara Mobley und Craig Aiken seit 1998 durchmachten, ist mit der schlimmste Eltern-Alptraum. 
Rouen (dpa) – Uwe Gensheimer wollte nach seinem überragenden Auftritt nicht reden. Nach dem Tod seines Vaters hatte der Kapitän der deutschen Handball-Nationalmannschaft zuvor seine Leistung sprechen lassen. 
Der US-Kongress hat einen weiteren Schritt zur Rücknahme der Gesundheitsreform von US-Präsident Obama gemacht. Eine entsprechende Haushaltsmaßnahme wurde verabschiedet. Die obligatorische Krankenversicherung stand wegen gestiegener Beiträge in der Kritik.
By AMY CALDER 
(CNN) With missiles at their borders and neighbors aligning with an adversary, China and Russia could feel boxed in. 
Paul Traynor / AP
