Professor Contributes to Research to Prevent Giraffe population ExtincIn an effort to prevent the extinction of the tallest terrestrial mammal, Derek Lee and Monica Bond embarked on a research project eight years ago to study the giraffe population, with their most recent findings published in the journal “Animal Behavior.”
“The way they approach the research questions are probably, at the moment, at the top tier of all biology research,” Fred Bercovitch, founder of Save the Giraffes, said. “They are pioneers and really smart in terms of identifying what to look at.”
Lee, a Penn State associate research professor of biology and co-founder of the Wild Nature Institute, began the Masai giraffe project in 2011 for his Ph. D project, Giraffe Facing Fragmentation Effects, after noticing a significant decline in the giraffe population.
The giraffe population has seen a 40 percent decline over the past 30 years, putting them in danger of extinction, with less than 100,000 giraffes left in the wild.
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Image via Pennsylvania State University.