On a small piece of land in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, three adult giraffes (one who lost her calf) live in a totally unsuitable and unsustainable desperate situation. They are riddled with ticks and facing the prospect of starving to death.

The giraffes need to be moved to a more suitable area – and FAST!

The trio have devoured most of the vegetation and because of a prolonged drought, regrowth is critically slow, making their living conditions increasingly dire. Another problem is that blood-sucking ticks have plagued the land, leeching the life from these already-weakened giraffes and causing wounds and disease. Already two newborn giraffes have died because of these conditions. The second was just one day old when he breathed his last. His mother is still so traumatized that she constantly returns to the site of his death.

Usually in situations like this, people simply shoot the giraffes because it is a cheap ‘solution’ to the problem, but we must not let this happen. We need your help to move them to safety.

There is no other option – we must move them fast, or the giraffes will most certainly die either from starvation or tick-borne disease.

No one knows how the animals came to be in such an unsuitable place, but it is suspected that criminality was involved. The land was bought by a good-hearted young couple who has been giving the giraffes supplementary food, but the reality is that these towering creatures do not belong there. After exhausting all options, they reached out to us for help. As animal lovers, we acted immediately and found a solution. Giraffes are the world’s tallest land mammals and can grow to 17 feet (5.3 meters) so a tower of giraffes needs a lot of space to be comfortable and with your help, we will relocate the giraffes to a bigger area.

The nearby Royalston Wildlife Reserve is perfect for giraffes and they will thrive there. So that’s where we plan to move them. The relocation is a tricky operation requiring expert skills to reduce stress on the giraffes and must be carefully planned. It will not be easy, but with your help, we CAN do it.

We have successfully relocated giraffes before – in 2021, with your help, we relocated three giraffes in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, who faced slaughter because their home was going to be used for commercial farming.

If we can raise $15,000 (£12,200), we will construct an enclosure, entice the giraffes into it with food, humanely capture them, and transport them to their new home. This thousand-hectare, free-roaming sanctuary is just 8 kilometers (5 miles) from where the giraffes are now. There, they will receive immediate medical care, will have better access to food and, above all, more land to roam freely.

With your support, the three giraffes will live and thrive among their own in open grasslands stretching over rolling hills.

Our worry for the individual animals is a prime concern, but saving these giraffes is even more critical. Giraffe numbers have dropped by 40% in the last 30 years and are becoming increasingly threatened. There are now only some 117,000 giraffes in the wild.

The surviving herds are fragmented and face many threats, from poaching to habitat loss, the latter of which is one of the gravest threats to their continued existence. Giraffes used to range through much of the African savanna, but they now live in a handful of communities scattered in clumps across the continent. In some countries, like Mali, giraffes have disappeared completely.

What we have here is a tragedy, but we cannot turn a blind eye when giraffe calves drop dead before they have even had a chance to live. There is a solution and with your help, we will be able to give these giraffes a chance at a long, happy and safe life.

The giraffes are only 10 MINUTES away from a potential haven that can meet all three of their most urgent needs – food, space and medical treatment. Will you help us make this happen and allow them to roam free and live as giraffes are intended to live? Please, donate as generously as you possibly can today so that we can put our emergency giraffe relocation project into action.