Monday, March 15, 2010

Which zebra is endangered?

The first thing I learned about the zebra was there are three different kinds of zebras. Didn't know that. There's the plains and mountain zebras. Then there is the endangered Grevy's zebra. It's featured on Animal Tails organic cotton short sleeved t-shirt; and it is a favorite of little girls. Here's what the hang tag say:
"Hello Darlings! I'm the high fashion queen of the African plains. I am also the tallest of  all the wild equines worldwide - as you'd expect from one with such great model credentials. I live in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, where I graze all day on delicious grass. My stripes are closer together and thinner than the Plains zebra. They act as good camouflage as the stripes help break up the outline of me when viewed through the bushes. I am named after President Grevy who received one of my relatives as a gift in the 1800's from Abyssinia.
It hasn't been good to be at the height of fashion, as I was hunted almost to extinction. Having such thin stripes compared to other zebras, hunters got more stripes per inch. My relatives have been turned into handbags, slippers, purses and rugs. Although hunting is now banned, we are still endangered because of loss of our habitat to arable farming domestic herds."

So, there you have it. Because of fashion wants, the Grevy's zebra's numbers in the wild went from 15,000 a few decades ago to fewer than 2,500 today. According the African Wildlife Foundation, the greatest threat today is loss of habitat to agricultural use. The AWF has made considerable progress in bringing back the numbers, and; hopefully, someday they will be removed from the endangered list.

This cool shirt is our current "Special". Visit http://www.rubij.com/ to see this and our other Animal Tails.

1 comment:

Stef Kramer said...

How sad. Such a beautiful animal.