Susan Myers Stands Tall for Giraffes
Preston Hollow woman aims to prevent extinction
Preston Hollow’s own Susan Myers is sticking her neck out for giraffes.
“There are only about 100,000 giraffes left in the wild,” Myers said. “I realized they needed an advocate.”
Save Giraffes Now, a nonprofit founded by Myers in 2019, works in nine African countries and has several ongoing projects, all with the same goal: to protect these gentle giants from the silent extinction they’re undergoing.
“Their extinction isn’t as dramatic as elephants,’ for example, since there is a huge problem with poaching elephants for their horns and tusks,” she said. “But giraffes are living where there is a lot of terrorism, and the drought in Africa is also killing a lot of them.”
Myers and her nonprofit gained global notoriety when they rescued nine giraffes from a sinking island in Kenya earlier this year. Those giraffes are now living peacefully in a 4,500-acre sanctuary built for them.
“It was a great project because the local people were so involved,” Myers said. “It wasn’t just a bunch of bureaucrats. The local people built the raft that moved the giraffes over, and they were training the giraffes to get on it voluntarily using food.”
She wants to make moving giraffes less violent.
“You have to anesthetize them; they fall to the ground, then you have to then tie them up with ropes so you can guide them toward the barge,” Myers said. “We had mixed success. The good news is that they all made it safely to their new sanctuary.”
On their next trip to Kenya, Myers and other giraffe advocates will work on more efficient ways to track giraffes for anti-poaching and build giraffe orphanages.
At 67 years old, Myers has a wide range of experience in the workforce, from investment banking on Wall Street to coaching football.
Myers always knew she eventually wanted to do something with animals and even considered a career as a vet technician. She served on the board of directors for the Dallas Zoo but knew even then that she wanted a more direct and aggressive impact on saving dwindling wildlife and specifically giraffes.
“The more I got to know them through my work with the zoo, I became fascinated with their personalities,” Myers said. “They’re the good guys of the animal world. They don’t ask for much, and they’re very kind. They don’t hurt other animals or destroy trees.”
