Endangered Wild African Hippos (how to help)
We all know and love hippos. Yet despite being vegetarians, they are one of the world’s most dangerous animals, mostly because they like to be left alone, and will fight to defend their young. They are one of Africa’s most territorial animals.
These semi-aquatic giants can’t actually swim, so they walk along the riverbeds, holding their breath for up to five minutes. And in the African heat, spend around 16 hours each day in the water, secreting an oily red liquid ‘sunscreen’.
Hippos can even sleep underwater (their proper name of ‘hippopotamus’ is from the Greek for ‘river horse’. Yet despite their huge size, hippos can run like the wind (up to 22mph per hour – just less than the fastest man on earth) and can also can open their mouths a full 180 degrees – so you can see how scary they can be).
Calves are born underwater, and swim almost immediately. Yet despite their reputation, hippos are herbivores, eating up to 80 pounds of grass a night.
Hippos are important for ecosystems. They maintain river channels, and help to move soil and modify underwater landscapes, creating complex habitats for other species, and the trails and paths they make, serve as drainage channels during floods.
So not only is keeping hippos in zoos boring for these magnificent animals, but if conservation moves to the UK, other species suffer. Hippos even create ‘grazing lawns’ in Africa, that offers habitats for other herbivores.
Are hippos endangered?
Yes. Due to lack of habitat mostly, there are now only around 150,000 wild hippos on earth. They mostly live in sub-Saharan African swamps, where other threats are poaching (illegal hunting) and human-wildlife conflict. Most live in large herds, apart from solitary pygmy hippos.
Hippos mark their territory with dung, and if humans venture nearby, it can cause conflict (around 500 people are killed each year by hippos in Africa).
How to help wild African hippos
Protect their habitats. Modern farming methods are destroying their natural freshwater habitats, which they need to survive. Water is in high demand in Africa, which is why anything that protects the world’s fresh water helps. Read The Last Drop, a book packed with easy ideas.
Don’t visit zoos. Hippos live in large herds normally, and England is the wrong temperature for them too. There are plenty of hippo conservation charities in Africa, who are helping them to survive, in their own environment, where they can be healthy and happy.
Support stricter regulations on poaching (illegal hunting for meat and ivory from canine teeth). Like bush meat, this happens more when there is civil unrest, so people kill them for money, in order to eat.
Support ideas to reduce human-hippo conflict.
In Zimbabwe, a Whatsapp chatbot uses AI to prevent conflict by offering immediate advice to villagers and farmers, on how to deal with hippos, lions, elephants or crocodiles, a great example of when AI does work. It also helps to report wildlife crime or injured wild animals, and offers tips on how to reduce conflict, crop damage (and livestock predation in the case of lions).
Take climate change seriously. Freak weather means hippos trample over or eat crops, made worse in drought, when freshwater and food resources are restricted.
This is why it’s so important to look at the bigger picture. Reform UK and the Conservatives want to roll back ideas to prevent climate change. But this is just the kind of action that will result in more climate refugees (‘people on boats’) and more wildlife conflict abroad with humans, as both compete with crops in extreme weather conditions. Everything has a knock-on effect.
Stop mining new metals (gold)
The world has enough already-mined gold to last forever. So choose recycled jewellery and more sustainable smartphones, to stop gold mining, something that is negatively affecting hippos on the Ivory Coast, now in danger of extinction.
Gold panning removes gold from river sediments, which needs water and ends up affecting local rivers and sediment. Hippos need this clean water to keep cool and also use the habitats to breed and raise young.
