Original Story Published by: Tom Hale, www.iflscience.com
Photo Source: Casey Crafford / African Parks
(Above) Welcome home: Angolan giraffes step hoof in Iona national park after 20 years of absence.
A group of giraffes has been successfully relocated to Iona National Park in Angola after the species was driven out of their historical homeland in the 1990s by civil war.
On July 3, 14 Angolan giraffes were loaded onto a specially-designed truck and set off on a 1,300-kilometer (over 800-mile) journey along the southwest coast of Africa from a private game farm in central Namibia to the Iona National Park, Angola. The trek took over 36 hours, but the gang arrived safely at the park on July 5.
In an announcement of the relocation, Africa Parks said this is just “the first of multiple giraffe translocations” that looks to eventually build up a thriving population in the park.
The Angolan giraffe, also known as the Namibian giraffe or smokey giraffe, is a subspecies of the southern giraffe that can be found in isolated pockets in southern Africa, most notably in northern Namibia. According to the IUCN Red List, it was assumed the subspecies were extinct in Angola by the late 1990s at a time when decades of civil war had ravaged the country.
When Angola was freed from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, the power vacuum was fiercely contested between former anti-colonial guerrilla movements.
The Angolan Civil War officially ended in 2002 and, despite ongoing troubles, the Angolan government returned to its commitment to preserving the rich biodiversity within the country.
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