Perhaps the most intimidating creature at Safari West might be the ostrich (Struthio camelus). While birds in general aren’t generally considered particularly frightening, there are exceptions. Surely some of you have had a regrettable pond-side encounter with a swan, or run afoul of a flock of geese. I myself was once ambushed by turkeys while walking home from the grocery store. I lost a half-gallon of milk and twelve perfectly good eggs that day.

Imagine that same tenacity and fierceness in a bird even bigger, stronger, and more confident. Your average ostrich ranges between 6 and 9 feet tall when fully grown, and weighs in excess of 200 pounds. These enormous birds boast incredibly strong legs that can propel that heavy body across the ground at 40 miles per hour. If fleeing doesn’t work, those same legs provide a terrifying defensive tool. One that’s been known to deter or even kill lions.

Luckily for us, though they should certainly be treated with respect, ostriches aren’t all that aggressive. Here at Safari West, our three ostrich ladies are best known for their inquisitive natures, inspecting and pecking at nearly every truck to come through. Enormous and curious in equal measure, these birds are always highlights of a classic safari tour.

Life on the Fringe

Ostriches have long thrived in the more arid expanses of subsaharan Africa. Their ability to survive almost exclusively on the water found in their food makes them well adapted for such an environment. On top of this, the birds will eat just about anything that catches their interest. Though their primary diet consists of grasses and other plants, they will happily munch on bugs, rodents, lizards, and even the occasional small tortoise.

This informal attitude when it comes to food reflects in their mating behavior as well. Males typically try to accumulate a small harem of 5 or so hens, but within this grouping, they only pair-bond with one. This major hen and her male will incubate a nest, but that nest might be made up of some 15 to 60 eggs. Welcome to the amazing world of “dump nesting”. This mixed collection of eggs come from the major hen, the minor hens, and possibly even from other females just passing through the area.

Why so many eggs? Dump nesting behavior seems to follow the “safety in numbers” philosophy of survival. While adult ostriches rarely face predation, baby ostriches have a tougher time. Most won’t make it through their first year. The theory then, is that more chicks in the brood make it more likely yours will survive to adulthood.

Endangered or Not?

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently classifies ostriches as a species of Least Concern. Like humans, rats, and dogs, they appear to be doing just fine. That classification fails to take in the whole story however. While the ostrich thrives in many areas of Africa, in the Sahelo-Saharan region of north Africa, populations are in steep decline. This thin band of dry scrubland and sand sits right along the southern border of the vast Sahara desert. It is a tough place to eke out a living at the best of times and unfortunately home to far too many now endangered species*.

Known as the north African or red-necked ostrich (Struthio camelus camelus), the birds from this region look a little different than those at Safari West. Ours have a more blue or gray hue to their skin. Currently science considers the red-necked ostrich a subspecies of ostrich, rather than a different species altogether. Were they to be reclassified as a distinct species, they’d almost certainly be considered endangered. The red-necked ostrich once ranged from coast-to-coast throughout the Sahara and Sahel, from Mauritania to  the Red Sea. These days, the birds survive only in a few isolated pockets.

Introducing the Sahara Conservation Fund

One such fragmentary population struggles on in southern Niger. Our friends at the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF) have made this small population the subject of a new and ambitious project. Trendsetters in the world of conservation, SCF focus their efforts not so much on any individual species, but on a specific ecosystem. In this case, the Sahelo-Saharan region of north Africa.

In the last half-century, ostrich in this region have disappeared at an alarming rate, largely due to hunting for meat and feathers. Ostrich also struggle with habitat lost to human development. SCF’s strategy on this conservation front revolves around three principles:

1. Protecting the remaining population.
2. Captive breeding and bolstering of the population.
3. Reintroduction of the animals into secured areas.

To aid with the breed and release aspect of this strategy, SCF has enlisted the aid of Stephen Gold at the Wildlife Conservation Network. With his expertise and assistance they’ve begun constructing a remote breeding facility made up of shipping containers and a solar array. Self-reliant and suitably rugged, this cutting-edge incubation facility should be online by the next ostrich breeding season.

March of the Ostrich

Critical work like this goes on all across the globe, and we at Safari West try to help as best we can. We don’t breed ostrich, since their overall population remains strong. Instead we keep them so our guests can experience these phenomenal creatures up close and personal. As we teach about the species and their endangered populations in north Africa, we also send conservation dollars to SCF and WCN. This money finances some of the critical work on the ground.

Come visit Safari West to see these majestic animals for yourself. Impressive, amusing, and even a little intimidating, nothing in the world is quite like an ostrich. Learn all about the many phenomenal features that make ostrich so unique, and then consider making a donation to conservation. Whether to SCF, WCN, or directly to our own Safari West Wildlife Foundation, any money you provide helps in the global fight for conservation.

*Within the Safari West collection, Sahelo-Saharan species include the ostrich, sulcata tortoise, fennec fox, vulnerable Aoudad, critically endangered addax, and extinct in the wild scimitar horned oryx.

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Each year our keepers work diligently and endlessly, not just to keep our animals healthy and happy, but to ensure that their lives are as naturalistic as possible. There is a very straightforward motivation driving this goal. When animals are allowed to live out their natural behaviors, those behaviors tend to include courtship and breeding, and that is something we very much want. Safari West is and always has been a conservation breeding facility. Our mission is based on the never-ending work of keeping the most vulnerable species in existence alive and genetically viable.

In the case of critically endangered species like the addax or the Waldrapp’s ibis, this work is incredibly important simply to keep the species’ numbers up. As a useful side-effect, captive born animals breeding in captivity preclude the need to go out and capture wild specimens.

This, of course, leads to the question so often asked of why we need captive animals in the first place. First of all, captive populations can and do serve as reserve populations in the case of the extinction of their wild cousins. We’ve seen this in action with the scimitar horned oryx; an antelope that was hunted to extinction in the late 1980’s. Since some specimens had been captured and a successful captive breeding program developed, the species survived even though there have been none outside of human care for nearly thirty years. In March of 2016, an ambitious scimitar horned oryx reintroduction project was initiated that is even now working to re-wild hundreds of descendants of those once-captured scimitar ancestors.

The other reason why it’s important to have captive specimens in properly run and accredited zoos and wildlife parks is because of the well-documented tendency of humans to only protect the creatures and places we’re familiar with. It is doubtful that the world would’ve worked as hard as it has to preserve the giant panda if the creature had remained unknown to all but the Chinese who live in the panda’s native range. There is something about a face-to-face encounter with a polar bear, an elephant, a giraffe, or a cheetah that inspires compassion and dedication in our species.

There is a famous quote that comes up frequently here at Safari West. It comes from Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum in a paper he presented to the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1968.

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

It is the role of facilities like Safari West to be educators and leaders in the field of wildlife conservation. Everyday we strive to inspire that so-critical passion and understanding even as we work to advance and refine our captive breeding programs.

The year, 2016 has been fantastic for many of our programs. Among our famously reproductive species, we had a banner year. We saw seven new wildebeest and even more cape buffalo. The serval cats had another litter of kittens and the southern screamers (South American water birds) came in with eight downy hatchlings.

Speaking of birds, they ran away with it this year. Between the American and African greater flamingos, we had a whopping fourteen gray, puffball babies. Though they’ve already grown to the size of their parents, their famous pink coloration is only just starting to come in. The newly renovated Amani Oasis Aviary proved particularly productive and this spring we were inundated with a variety of ducklings, pigeon chicks, and both African and roseate spoonbill babies. While our scarlet ibises nested en masse, as usual, they didn’t even come close to the sacred ibises that together hatched seventeen youngsters!

Among our more endangered species, we had exciting reproductive successes as well. Our critically endangered addax antelope and dama gazelles produced four and two babies respectively. We also greeted six newborn Nile lechwe.

Some of our happiest moments came with the births of three new giraffes; each of whom made the news. Nikki, Dubs, and TJ are all around a year old now and growing taller by the day.

Finally, we experienced success with species we haven’t seen reproduce successfully before. Safari West is currently home to four thriving warthog piglets who, other than the fact that their tusks haven’t come in yet, are the spitting image of their piggy parents. We also have two reclusive striped hyena cubs tucked away behind the scenes. Timid and shy animals, the arrival of these two babies marked a huge step in our hyena breeding program.

As we look forward to 2017 we expect to see similar results from a number of our species. We also have some high hopes for a few other programs. Our critically endangered Waldrapp ibises have never successfully reproduced here but our flock increased in size this year and there’s a chance that these colony nesters will feel more at home with their greater numbers and make 2017 another year of firsts. Likewise, our long single hamerkop—a fascinating bird explored in this month’s Safari Spotlight—was recently introduced to a potential mate. They’ve been seen spending a great deal of time together in and on the massive nest these birds are famous for. Will we see baby hamerkops next year? Only time will tell.

At Safari West, we’re very proud of our conservation breeding programs. The work is rewarding and the results are often adorable as well as being important to the work of conservation. In the upcoming year, please accept our invitation to come out on safari with us. These creatures, whether babies or adults, are fascinating and vulnerable pieces of our world and we should all take the time to know them better.

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