June 21st : World Giraffe Day

World Giraffe Day

The longest day is for the tallest animal on the earth.  June 21st is the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. The Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) the only NGO in the world that concentrates solely on the conservation and management of giraffes in the wild throughout Africa decided to celebrate June 21st as World Giraffe Day to promote awareness to save Giraffes.  It was first celebrated in the year 2014.

The friendly, active (they sleep for just 2 hours a day), inspirational and unique animal is found at just around 100,000 in the wild.  In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, giraffes have recently had their listed status changed to Vulnerable to extinction.  Giraffes are officially extinct in more than seven African countries.

It's all because of human greediness.  On one side, they have been hunted for medicinal use and to make fashion products.  Another side, their habitat was reduced by 90% because of encroachments.  It would be a tragedy if giraffes were to go extinct in the wild. 

There are four separate species of giraffe in the world. The Masai giraffe lives on the border between Kenya and Tanzania, the reticulated giraffe and the southern giraffe live in countries like Botswana, and the northern giraffe, dominates much of the north of Africa. 

Like how no two humans have the same fingerprints the same way no two individual Giraffes have the same spots. 

If you want to donate, please visit the below link. Please check for authenticity before donating.

https://giraffeconservation.org/2021/11/29/worldgiraffeday2022/

When I was digging into my stamp file, I got only one Giraffe stamp.  The below stamp was issued by Poland in the year 1972.

Odd World - Poland

 My Poland collection of Odd and Unusual MSs and stamps

Circular stamps

Extra Large stamp

SIPA Monthly Meeting Update: Nov-9th, 2014

Today's meeting kicked off with Mr. Hemachandra Rao highlighting a recent magazine issued by American Topical Association. He was pleasantly surprised to find that a write-up on Castles, it featured Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur in 2nd place right after Malbork Castle in Poland. While India has issued at-least two sets of stamps on Forts of India, the details presented in the magazine was impressive.

Another article in the magazine is written by a philatelist's wife, who observed a new theme of stamps featuring trains as a side-artifact (i.e. not as the main subject, but part of background and usually hard to locate). Some of stamps that Mr. Rao is interested in (ships) are shown with a steam train in the horizon!

Yours truly, Deepthi mentioned how use of stamps for doing school projects is increasing. Currently, I and my sister are working on "Agriculture through Stamps" and "Timeline".

Mr. Anil Kumar Reddy voiced his thoughts around scope for collecting definitives. Apart from being cheaper than commemoratives, the variety in re-issues (adhesive, paper, perforation, water-mark, color etc.) would be worthy of study.

Mr. Bhaskar, provided an update on upcoming exhibitions including Karnapex and other exhibitions at Tiruchi and Coimbatore.

Mr. Nelson, continuing on his alphabetical countries theme, covered Angola. Seems like there are 3 distinct periods: Portuguese, Independent (post 1975) and Republic (post 2002). In recent times, the stamps issued by Angola has increased significantly (relatively speaking).

He also talked about the recent issue on Anagarika Dharmapala by India Post (on 25th October 2014). There is not of concerns in vernacular magazines on suitability of issuing such a stamps, purportedly reciprocating a Swami Vivekananda stamp issued by Sri Lanka.

Mr. Venkatasubbu Ramakrishnan spoke on his efforts to consolidate all details of India issued stamps from 1947 on-wards and make it available as Excel files for easy search and cataloging personal collections.