GIRAFFE

SOYSAMBU · SOLIO · AMBOSELI · BORANA

There was a stillness I could not describe. Only feel.

Northern Kenya

Rothschild giraffe male, close-up portrait, black and white, Soysambu Conservancy Kenya — Deanna DeShea

I have photographed giraffes across Kenya — from the open plains of Amboseli to the rocky conservancy land at Borana, the wide herds at Solio, and the storm-lit ridges of Soysambu in the Great Rift Valley.

Each place gives you a different giraffe.

They are the only animal on the continent that occupies a layer of the landscape nothing else reaches. Above the dust, above the eye line, moving with that long unhurried drift that makes them look like they belong to a different version of time than everything around them.

I never tire of finding them.

Not because they are rare to see — but because every encounter asks something of you.
You have to look up. You have to adjust your frame. The giraffe does not come to meet you at your level.

You come to theirs.

Edd, Rothschild giraffe, circular portrait, Giraffe Manor Nairobi Kenya — Deanna DeShea

WHAT THE GIRAFFE CARRIES

The giraffe is the only animal on the continent that lives entirely above the conflict.

While lions hold territory and elephants grieve their dead, the giraffe moves through the landscape at a height nothing else reaches — watching, unhurried, in possession of a view no other animal has.

People project stillness onto them. Elegance. A kind of effortless grace.

What I have observed is something closer to patience. A complete absence of urgency in an environment that runs on urgency.

The giraffe does not compete for what others want. It simply reaches higher.

There is something in that worth sitting with.

GRACE ABOVE CHAOS

Of the nine giraffe subspecies, two carry the most urgent conservation story in East Africa.

THE ROTHSCHILD’S GIRAFFE
Soysambu Conservancy · Giraffe Manor

Fewer than 1,600 survive in the wild — one of the most endangered large mammals on the continent.

You recognise them by their legs. Pale, unpatched, almost white where other subspecies carry markings all the way to the hoof. As if they pulled on white socks before stepping out onto the plain.

Giraffe Manor in Nairobi has bred and relocated Rothschild’s giraffes to protected areas across Kenya for decades — one of the most effective subspecies recovery programmes in the country.

THE RETICULATED GIRAFFE
Solio Conservancy · Northern Kenya

Approximately 15,000 remain.

The Reticulated is the most visually distinct — large geometric patches separated by clean white lines running neck to hoof, like stained glass held up to the light.

At Solio I have found them in larger herds than anywhere else. More collective than the Rothschild’s lone sentinels of Soysambu. The sound of hooves on dry ground and the quiet of a herd that has decided you are not a threat.

Both subspecies face the same pressures. Both are running out of time without enough people
noticing.

Their greatest protection is one another. The tower watches in every direction. What one sees, all know.

HADIZA

Soysambu Conservancy · Great Rift Valley, Kenya

I was heading back to the lodge when I saw them on the skyline. A tower of Rothschild’s, silhouetted against a storm that hadn’t broken — moving slowly across the ridge as if time ran differently for them.

The conservancy was empty. No other vehicles. The air smelled of rain coming. There was a stillness I could not describe. Only feel. I stepped out of the vehicle with both cameras and waited.

Then one of them stopped.

He stood facing me — curious, cautious, neither of us moving. I noticed his legs first. Pale, unpatched, almost white against the dark grass.
As if he had pulled on white socks before stepping out onto the plain.

I don’t know how long we stood there. Long enough that I stopped thinking about the camera. Long enough that the heaviness I had been carrying seemed to melt into the golden soil.

I named him Hadiza — one with no desire. That is exactly how I felt. I only needed this moment to feel whole.

EDD
GIRAFFE MANOR

Deanna DeShea with a Rothschild giraffe, Giraffe Manor Nairobi Kenya — Deanna DeShea

Giraffe Manor is unlike anywhere else I have stayed in Africa.

Old world in every detail — the rooms full of giraffe in every form, from the tea ware to large-scale artwork on the walls. The kind of place that takes conservation seriously enough to make it beautiful.

The African Fund for Endangered Wildlife has run the Manor’s Rothschild’s breeding and relocation programme for decades. The giraffes that live here are part of one of the most effective subspecies recovery efforts in Kenya.

In the mornings you feed them pellets.

I stood beneath Edd and understood, for the first time, what five and a half metres actually means.

1,600

ROTHSCHILD’S GIRAFFES REMAIN IN THE WILD.
ONE OF AFRICA’S MOST ENDANGERED LARGE MAMMALS.
MOST PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW THIS.

Rothschild giraffe portrait, black and white fine art print, Giraffe Manor Nairobi Kenya — Deanna DeShea

GIRAFFES IN PERIL

The giraffe is absent from most conversations about wildlife trafficking. That absence is part of the problem.

Giraffe hides sell for up to $8,000 on the black market. Tails are traded as status symbols and good luck charms. Bones are increasingly sought as substitutes in traditional medicine markets as other species become harder to source.

Poaching is not the only pressure. Habitat conversion for agriculture continues to fragment the land giraffes need to move through. A species that walks up to 50 miles a day cannot survive in parcels.

The giraffe has lost nearly 40% of its population in thirty years without a single global campaign in its name.

It is disappearing quietly, in the background of a continent people still assume is full of them.

These images exist because I stood in that field at Soysambu and understood, simply, what was at stake.

Every print argues for what is still here.

field notes

The Giraffe

Unique coat patterns
Speak in infrasound
Calves drop 6 ft at birth
Mighty heart powers tall neck
Newborns taller than humans
Sleep under 2 hours daily
18-inch tongues
Purple tongues resist sunburn
Thorn-blocking lashes
Four-chambered stomach
See in color, sharp vision

Reticulated giraffes, fine art print, Solio Conservancy Kenya — Deanna DeShea