Campaign raises £25k to bring giraffes back to Edinburgh Zoo

Animal lovers have donated more than £25,000 to help bring giraffes back to Edinburgh Zoo for the first time in 15 years.

The attraction has not hosted giraffes in recent years due to a lack of an enclosure that is the right size to care for them, but the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland has begun work to create a £2.8 million giraffe house and unique landscape for the animals on a hillside at the attraction.

A crowdfunding campaign, which was launched in the summer asking the public to help raise £100,000 towards the scheme, has now raised over a quarter of that total.

The population of giraffes is declining in the wild, and there are now thought to be fewer than 100,000 left.

The zoo say that by restoring giraffes to their collection, they will be able to educate the public about the animals’ plight and fund vital conservation work.

Edinburgh will house a herd of Rothschild’s giraffe of which there are believed to be only 1600 left in the wild.