Michael Brown

Giraffe Conservation Foundation

Giraffe (Giraffa spp.) are among the most unique extant mammals in terms of anatomy, phylogeny, and ecology. However, aspects of their evolution, ontogeny, and taxonomy are unresolved, retaining lingering questions that are pivotal for their conservation. We assembled the largest known dataset of Giraffa skulls (n = 515) to investigate patterns of...

Animal populations are under mounting stress from the dual threats of climate change and rapid global human population growth, raising significant concerns about declining wildlife and the rising risk of zoonotic diseases. In many species, social interactions can be a highly plastic suite of behaviours that are responsive to these disturbances and...

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of...

The conservation of threatened and rare species in remote areas often presents two challenges: there may be unknown populations that have not yet been documented and there is a need to identify suitable habitat to translocate individuals and help populations recover. This is the case of the reticulated giraffe (Giraffa reticulata), a species of hig...

Understanding animals' habitat selection and movement behaviours relative to human activities is important for evaluating resource requirements and ensuring effective conservation management. The world's largest remaining population of Kordofan giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis antiquorum) reside in Zakouma National Park, Chad. However, it is unclear...

Animal movement behaviours are shaped by diverse factors, including resource availability and human impacts on the landscape. We generated home range estimates and daily movement rate estimates for 149 giraffe (Giraffa spp.) from all four species across Africa to evaluate the effects of environmental productivity and anthropogenic disturbance on sp...

COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable with no c...

Congenital deformities and neoplasia are poorly documented in wildlife, owing to the difficulty of detection in wild populations. Congenital deformities may lead to premature mortality, thus reducing the chances of thorough documentation. Importantly, neoplasia diagnoses depend on either sampling suspicious lesions from living individuals or access...

Giraffe skin disease (GSD), a condition that results in superficial lesions in certain giraffe (Giraffa spp.) populations, has emerged as a potential conservation threat. Preliminary findings suggested that individuals with GSD lesions move with greater difficulty which may in turn reduce their foraging efficiency or make them more vulnerable to pr...

Animals moving through landscapes need to strike a balance between finding sufficient resources to grow and reproduce while minimizing encounters with predators. Because encounter rates are determined by the average distance over which directed motion persists, this trade-off should be apparent in individuals’ movement. Using GPS data from 1,396 in...

Aim: Macroecological studies that require habitat suitability data for many species often derive this information from expert opinion. However, expert-based information is inherently subjective and thus prone to errors. The increasing availability of GPS tracking data offers opportunities to evaluate and supplement expert-based information with de...

Giraffe skin disease (GSD) is an emerging disease of free-ranging giraffe recognized in the last 25 years in several species, including the critically endangered Nubian giraffe ( Giraffa camelopardalis camelopardalis) of Uganda. Identifying the cause of GSD and understanding its impact on health were deemed paramount to supporting these vulnerable...

ContextReduced connectivity across grassland ecosystems can impair their functional heterogeneity and negatively impact large herbivore populations. Maintaining landscape connectivity across human-dominated rangelands is therefore a key conservation priority.Objective Integrate data on large herbivore occurrence and species richness with analyses o...

Giraffe are iconic figures across a range of African landscapes but they are currently under considerable conservation threat. Although they are widely distributed throughout 21 different countries, continent-wide populations have declined considerably over the past several decades, highlighted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nat...

Objective Skeletal dysplasias, cartilaginous or skeletal disorders that sometimes result in abnormal bone development, are seldom reported in free-ranging wild animals. Here, we use photogrammetry and comparative morphometric analyses to describe cases of abnormal appendicular skeletal proportions of free-ranging giraffe in two geographically disti...

Objective Skeletal dysplasias, cartilaginous or skeletal disorders that sometimes result in abnormal bone development, are seldom reported in free-ranging wild animals. Here, we use photogrammetry and comparative morphometric analyses to describe cases of abnormal appendicular skeletal proportions of free-ranging giraffe in two geographically disti...

Advances in the technology of biotelemetry are transforming the ways in which we remotely acquire environmental, physiological and behavioural data. Large and heavy batteries, however, continue to reduce the availability of GPS tracking devices for small taxa and for species with morphologies that limit attachment options. Device miniaturisation is...

Partial migration is a common movement phenomenon in ungulates, wherein part of the population remains resident while another portion of the population transitions to spatially or ecologically distinct seasonal ranges. Although widely documented, the causes of variation in movement strategies and their potential demographic consequences are not wel...

Giraffe populations have declined in abundance by almost 40% over the last three decades, and the geographic ranges of the species (previously believed to be one, now defined as four species) have been significantly reduced or altered. With substantial changes in land uses, loss of habitat, declining abundance, translocations, and data gaps, the ex...

To design effective conservation and management strategies at the national scale, it is important to consider population trends across space and time. Here we assessed the near threatened Rothschild's giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) in Uganda. We applied individual-based photographic surveys to generate abundance estimates for all exta...

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/9194/0 Giraffe (Giraffa cameloprdalis) is assessed as Vulnerable under criterion A2 due to an observed, past (and ongoing) population decline of 36-40% over three generations (30 years, 1985-2015). The factors causing this decline (levels of exploitation and decline in area of occupancy and habitat quality) h...

Recent reports suggest that dietary ethanol, or alcohol, is a supplemental source of calories for some primates. For example, slow lorises (Nycticebus coucang) consume fermented nectars with a mean alcohol concentration of 0.6% (range: 0.0–3.8%). A similar behaviour is hypothesized for aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) based on a single point...

Conservation translocation is a management technique employed to introduce, re-introduce or reinforce wild animal and plant populations. Giraffe translocations are being conducted throughout Africa, but the lack of effective post-translocation monitoring limits our ability to assess translocation outcomes. One potential indicator of translocation s...