Giraffe numbers have declined by as much as 40 percent since the 1980s in a "silent extinction" driven by illegal hunting and an expansion of farmland in Africa, the Red List of endangered species reported on Thursday.
Populations of the world's tallest land creature fell to about 98,000 from an estimated 152,000 to 163,000 in 1985, according to the List compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The Red List rated the giraffe "vulnerable" to extinction on current trends for the first time, against a previous rating of "least concern." It said the plunge in numbers in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa had gone largely unnoticed.