Giraffes on a Boat | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

It's kind of a bit Jurassic Parkish, like you can hear her rustling through the bushes but you can't see her. And that the brush was just so thick, and you know with inch-long acacia thorns or, you know, the other kind of hooked-shaped thorn, so it was a bit unpleasant on the skin walking through it. We're on a rescue mission on an island in Lake Baringo, a massive freshwater lake in Kenya's Rift Valley. A stranded castaway needs help because the waters of the lake, they're rising fast.

So, I bet you wonder what they're looking for. So, it's not a person they're searching for; one of the tallest animals on earth, a giraffe. Her name's Asiwa. You can hear the rustling of Asiwa going in the bushes, the occasional warthog mad dash across that frightens the life out of everyone. That's David O'Connor, a conservationist who works for National Geographic. He's also president of Save Giraffes Now; it's a non-profit, and you can probably guess what they do—giraffe conservation.

We know there's a 19-foot, one-and-a-half-ton animal out there, but we can't see her. And we know she's on the sliver of an island, but we cannot see her. It's hard to imagine not being able to spot an animal that's nearly 20 feet tall on a small island, but there's this thick brush that's growing all over, and so it makes it almost impossible to see her. And then there's the fact that Asiwa does not want to be found. You'd see her come into frame, as it were, out of the bushes, you know, this big. You see her head first, and then, you know, you try to—she'd stop and look at you, and you, you know, you wouldn't do anything; you'd keep still, and then she would then get freaked out and run the other way.

The poor giraffe had really been through a lot lately. Giraffes aren't supposed to be living alone on islands, so if you can imagine, she had been at a high stress level for a number of months. Um, and that's not good, you know, for anybody, you know. So, um, and so I think she was very—I would say confused, as you know, she didn't know we were trying to help her. She isn't the only nervous one; like my heart's racing. I'm really, at this time, I'm just really worried that something bad is going to happen.

Dave has worked with a lot of giraffes in his time, but this mission was really unusual. You know, we're talking about the world's tallest animal; you know, they can stand 18, 19 feet tall, they're about two tons in weight, and you know, how do you move the world's largest—the giant of the savannah—off an island across a mile of lake? I'm Amy Briggs, executive editor of National Geographic History Magazine, and this is Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at NatGeo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.

So, this week, we're on a rescue mission. We're going to learn how a giraffe got stranded on an island and see a team of conservationists try to figure out how to rescue her. More after the break.

So, if you're curious about how a giraffe gets trapped on an island, you have to know a little bit about what life is like for giraffes today. It's something David only realized when he started researching them in the wild, 10 years ago. I walked around a bush, and I walked into this wire that went around my neck, and I kept walking! It was like, I was like, "What is this?" So I stood back, and basically what that was was this giant noose that looked like a hangman's noose of like thin finish wire, but you know, strong wire that, you know, had was sort of hanging waiting, and it turns out that it was a neck snare for a giraffe.

In the last 30 years, giraffe populations have declined by 40% due to poaching and habitat destruction. You know, a lot of conservation effort is rightfully so focused on elephant, rhino, lion; there was nobody focused on giraffes, and we know nothing about them. And, you know, there are these iconic species that are, you know, the watchtowers of the savannah in a way, and they were just blinking out, and nobody knew why or nobody was paying attention. Giraffes, I think, are so famous and so, dare I say, beloved by people, even who have never been to Africa. You know, you see them on kids' pajamas; you see them in kids' books; you see them in cartoons; you see them used in advertising, and they're one of the last giants we have left on this earth. You know, and if we lose them, we're losing just a huge part of who we are as people and what we are as a, you know, sort of a biome of these incredible creatures.

So, there are different subspecies of giraffes, and Asiwa is what's called the Rothschild's or Nubian giraffe, and it's one of the most endangered. So, 70 years ago, they were wiped out from an ancestral home—the Western Rift Valley in Kenya. Today, there are only about 800 of them left in Kenya. So the community living in the valley decides it wants its giraffes back. So, in 2011, this team of conservationists, they bring eight giraffes onto a peninsula in Lake Baringo, thinking that it's surrounded by water on three sides; it'll be easy to protect from poachers. The plan was that this herd would grow and have little giraffe babies, and then they repopulate the area. Yeah, it was a good plan, but unfortunately, the lake had other ideas.

Over the next few years, Lake Baringo floods, and it turns the peninsula into an island. So, in 2020, the water levels are rising even more, and the eight giraffes plus a newborn calf, they're trapped on this shrinking island. And this island was so small that crocodiles could just easily walk across it! Worse yet, the giraffes were running out of food. Even though the community brought extra food to them, the giraffes became underweight. So, the waters keep rising, and this herd, which is, you know, the great hope for this kind of giraffe, they're in serious danger. You know, I thought they were done for, to be honest. I just thought that these giraffes would just slowly blink out one by one.

So just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. Asiwa, the giraffe we met earlier, became separated from the herd when the lake started rising. Floodwaters surrounded the strip of land that she was on, turning it into its own little island and trapping her on it. So, if they wanted to save Asiwa and the other giraffes, they'd have to act fast, and Asiwa was in the most danger, so they were going to start with her.

We couldn't have waited, I think, another week even. But how are they gonna do it? So, giraffes don't swim, so a dip into the lake wouldn't work. But what about a boat? I didn't really think it was all that possible until I saw the draft, and then I was like, "Okay, I think I think actually this may work." So, that's WAIT, G-I-R-A-F-T—giraffe? Yes! Yeah, that's our go-to nickname.

The team secured some funding to help the giraffes, and that paid for the creation of the giraft. So, it's this barge, and to make it, they had to come up with this sort of MacGyver-esque plan. They welded together metal oil barrels, and on top of them, they put a flat platform, and on top of that, they put a layer of compacted earth. The local community designed it specifically for the giraffes so it would be as stable as possible, with as little wobbling as possible. And then, when I stepped on it, it was absolutely solid; it didn't move.

So, the giraft is ready. How do you get the giraffe on it? First, they try to lure Asiwa with food—these acacia seed pods that are kind of like crack for giraffes; they go bananas for them. But Asiwa didn't go for it; she was too skittish—no way, José! That meant they had to move on to plan B: sedation. We really don't want to dart giraffe; yeah, we only do it when it's absolutely necessary or the benefits outweigh the potential risks. When the acacia pods are out of season, exactly; when you've got no crack to deal with, you gotta persuade them in other ways.

With most animals, sedation is simple, but David says giraffes are complicated. If you think of, say, an elephant, a rhino, or a lion, you know, when you see the wildlife vets, they put the tranquilizer in their dart gun, and poop! And they go— they fall over asleep, and they'll stay asleep, and you can move them asleep, and they're perfectly fine and happy and safe to sleep. Giraffes are not like that. They're so precisely engineered, you know, kind of like a Swiss clock or something.

So, giraffes are designed to be vertical. A giraffe's heart is designed to pump blood up that neck, so if they go unconscious and horizontal, their blood pressure spikes, and that's really dangerous for them when they are on the ground. They're very much in danger of either having a massive hemorrhage or basically their brain exploding because they've lost all that blood pressure. That meant a vet with the Kenya Wildlife Service needed to dart her and give her the antidote immediately. Then, David and his team had to quickly attach ropes to her so that they could guide the woozy giraffe onto the barge.

And once the drug actually takes effect, you see some of them start to look up, and they start to—like, they are prancing around. You can see that they are light-headed. That's Arthur Muneza; he's a National Geographic explorer. He's from Kenya and has studied giraffes in East Africa for seven years. So if you think that brain explosion and low blood pressure problems, he and David told us about how much more can go wrong. And so if the animal is not brought down immediately, there can be so many different scenarios that can happen. There's a long list there.

So, depending on where you are, if they're running into the river—that has happened—and they fall over in a bad area with rocks, and they bang their head or something, or they can run and, you know, fall; their legs somehow can fall in right, as I say, when you're guiding them with the ropes. They somehow go off the side of the barge or, you know, go into the water, which we really don't want!

It sounded absolutely ridiculous and a lot of effort and money and time just to rescue eight giraffes. But at the same time, these eight giraffes represent one percent of the entire Kenyan population of Rothschild giraffes, so they're important. So how did the sedation go with the first female giraffe? Well, as so many things in wildlife, it didn't necessarily go to plan. You know, sometimes with conservation, you can have the best plans and try to do everything, but then sometimes it turns out like the Keystone Cops.

So, back to our rescue mission. The team is creeping into the brush to look for Asiwa. So, when you were preparing to transport Asiwa, how did you feel? Were you nervous? Were you excited? Yeah, I was—I was scared to death. I was really nervous because in case something went wrong. Because I think I knew that the community was behind us, and we, you know, just did not want to let them down. And there were some local press that had gotten wind of the move, you know, from Nairobi, and so they were there.

So none of the humans could keep up with the giraffe on their own, so they split up. And everyone's, at this stage, really quiet because you want the—you know, you're trying to get a vet to shoot a dart through really thick brush. And then they spot her and then the vet shoots the dart. You can sometimes hear like a, you know, when the dart's shot, you know. Once the dart went in, you know, everyone was sort of quiet, and it was that sort of period. Um, sometimes you see it in war movies, like the period before the attack where everyone's kind of quiet and ready and waiting.

When some giraffes are sedated, they act a little dazed; they maybe stand around for a few minutes, kind of wobbly and confused, and then they just sort of pass out. But some others—some of them run. They kind of put their head back and look at the sky and just run. So it turns out Asiwa is a runner, and then suddenly there was like this loud crash of bushes, and you could tell that there was something big running, but you couldn't see anything. And you couldn't even see—I couldn't see my colleagues because the bush was so dense, and occasionally, you hear people shouting, you know, in Swahili or English.

David's running after her, and the adrenaline's pumping. You're just trying to run and breathe and stay balanced and keep an eye on the giraffe and understand where everyone else is. It's rocky, it's muddy; there's thorns, and you can't really see where you're going, but you're trying to go as fast as you can. But it's hot. At the time, I had longer hair because it was covered, I hadn't gotten a cut in ages, and so the hair is being ripped out of my head by the thorns.

So Asiwa is full of sedatives. If she passes out and they can't find her, they won't be able to give her the antidote in time. I didn't want to lose sight of her because that's the most dangerous thing. If she goes down, you don't know where she is. You know there is a chance that if you lose that giraffe—if your eyes lose it, then, you know, she could die, basically. So David gets lucky, and he glimpses Asiwa through the brush, and she went to the entire very most furthest point possible on the island from the barge. And yeah, as if she was kind of giving us, like, thumbing her nose at us; she's like, "I'm not going to make this easy for you!" And she's dangerously close to the water.

So as David's approaching her, she gets kind of wobbly, and then she falls over. And she literally went down about a foot from the water. So David cautiously approaches her; a scared, confused giraffe can be really dangerous. You know, giraffes can kill you when they kick you. He's had his ribs cracked that way before. So David sits down on her neck, so her neck is underneath me, like I'm sitting on a log, and then the vet comes in behind him, and he actually—I remember—pushed me like this. He didn't—he was just like that so he could get the vein and put the reversal drug in.

So once they get the drug in, Asiwa is safe for now. That was the first moment of calm because, at that point, you're kind of like, okay, we have a long way to go, but at least we're now sort of more in control of what will happen. They've got the drugs in, they've got the antidote in, but now they got to get Asiwa ready to walk, and that's more involved than you think.

So they only have a few minutes to get Asiwa ready before she gets up. I don't know if you watch Formula One or NASCAR, you know the pit crew that goes in and does everything on the car quickly—it’s kind of like that. They have to tie ropes around her, they have to cover her eyes with a blindfold, and they have to cover her ears with earmuffs. What we use for earmuffs—I'm trying to make them sound fancy—but they're basically socks that we stuff in the giraffe's ear to try to, you know, keep them calm, you know, muffle out sounds. And then the blindfold is sort of like, um, maybe a potato sack type texture, so they can kind of see through it, you know, but it's still helping keep them calm.

Asiwa wakes up, and the group starts to grab the ropes and pull her to her feet, sort of like a game of tug-of-war. She stands! So then the team starts walking with her, guiding her through the thick brush. How do you practice that maneuver? Because obviously, you don't do it for your first time on a giraffe. Yeah, you—you don't practice! You know, we—well, you know, I take that back. The actual—what we do do is we do practice walking the draft, so we did actually practice the day before with the team. I was a giraffe one of the times; another guy was a giraffe the other time. We all had ropes on us, and we were pretending to be the giraffe, and you know, there's ropes coming off us, there's five guys on each rope trying to guide you, you know, and you're trying to pretend to fight like a giraffe—like not cooperating—what's up!

They walk around to the giraft, tow it across the lake with a motorboat, and finally reach the mainland. Asiwa walks off the raft, and mission accomplished! But, you know, the incredible thing for me was not only that that was the first time that those giraffes—any giraffe—had set foot in the Western Rift Valley for over 70 years, but the reaction of the community to that first giraffe, because they were there kind of waiting where we were offloading her, was something I will never forget. What did they do? It was an immediate eruption of cheers and clapping, and just this mixed sense of relief because they were all so worried that something would happen to Asiwa, you know, and they didn't know if this was going to work, really. You know, and there's so many things could have gone sideways.

So during 2020 and 2021, the giraffe made several return trips to rescue the rest of Asiwa’s herd from the larger island. As of now, all of them are on the mainland and thriving. You would see nearly overnight they looked basically their body condition improved; they're fatter, they're happier, their coat's healthier, their tick load is lower. In case you're worried, the baby giraffe is doing fine. I have to say, and of course, I'm biased; they're extremely cute! But what's incredible is even from the first moment they're born, they're looking you right in the eye because they come out at six feet tall.

Um, so, you know, they're so curious! They're extremely curious, and they've these big massive eyes and these big eyelashes and this tongue that comes out, and they're sniffing and licking things. And David thinks it's the first calf of many! And then slowly, over time—over, you know, the next two, three, four decades, working with the communities—the giraffe will slowly repopulate naturally the entire Western Rift Valley and connect to their cousins in Uganda. I mean, that’s—that's the dream. But to have this first step be successful, it's just— we're over the moon.

So how, if the dream is achieved, how long do you think that'll take? Uh, overall, I would say, yeah, it's gonna be—not less than 20 years! Unless someone gives us millions and millions of dollars, then we can do it in a week! So if anybody listening out there has millions and millions of dollars, we'd like the giraffes from Uganda to meet the Rothschild giraffes. Yes, look in our show notes; you can find out who to give your money to, exactly!

But ultimately, it will take more than just David to save Africa's giraffes. The community gave up land to have these animals brought in, so for people who grew up in Africa around giraffes, these animals are a really important part of their identity. You know, I had seen them in the wild; I really loved them when I was, you know, as a kid. Also in the Western Rift Valley, the local Pokot and Gems and Maasai communities spearheaded this mission. But we are actually close partners with the Trigawa Lindsay. So the Trigawa Lindsay—it's basically Swahili for giraffe gods—and these are people that—so they are training other community members in Ruco to basically collect data on giraffes and protect them.

And we are losing these populations, actually, at a fast rate! We just—we really need to come together and, you know, stick our necks out for giraffes. I saw what you did there; that’s nice! [Laughter] Thank you. The local community has plans for the giraffes too, and they were even telling me about the idea they had for the giraffe. They were saying, "Dave, you know what we're going to do? I think what we're going to do is convert this now into a floating bar restaurant!" And, you know, when the tourists come, we can take them for an evening sundowner, you know—bar-dried around the lake and then they'll come back to the lodge.

So hopefully, they need to paint the outside with a giraffe print pattern! Yes, yes, that would be fabulous. Yeah, so hopefully in 20 years, when we do reconnect the giraffe, we can all celebrate on the barge. So do you have a spare million dollars and want to stage a giraffe family reunion, or perhaps just want to see what David's up to these days? Check out David O'Connor's organization Save Giraffes Now.

If you're curious what the giraffe looked like, subscribers can see it in the May 2021 issue of the magazine. To learn more about these giants, we've got an article for you about the fight against giraffe silent extinction—that's all in the show notes right there in your podcast app. And while you're there, be sure to rate and review us; it really helps other listeners find us. Overheard at National Geographic is produced by Ilana Strauss, Brian Gutierrez, Laura Sim, Jacob Pinter, and Carla Wells. Our senior editor is Eli Chen; our executive producer of audio is Davar Ardulon. Our fact checkers are Julie Beer and Robin Palmer. Hansdale Sue sound-designed this episode and composed our theme music.

Special thanks to Tyler Shiffman, who recorded this adventure. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society is committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world. Funds the work of National Geographic Explorer Arthur Muneza. Whitney Johnson is the director of visuals and immersive experiences. Susan Goldberg is National Geographic's editorial director, and I'm your host, Amy Briggs. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!