Socio-economic instability and food insecurity drive extinction risk under climate change: Insights from the Vulnerable West African giraffe

Biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene increasingly reflects the interplay between environmental change and human well-being, particularly in semi-arid regions where climate-sensitive livelihoods heighten pressures on wildlife. To evaluate species persistence in these social-ecological systems, we developed a modelling workflow that integrates long-term monitoring data, empirically derived climate-survival relationships, climate projections and socio-ecological threat scenarios within a population viability analysis, using the West African giraffe as a model system. Although capture-mark-recapture analysis shows that temperature and rainfall influence survival, climate change alone will not drive population decline over the next century, nor will individual anthropogenic threats such as disease transmission or insecurity caused by political instability. Instead, extinction risk rises sharply when climatic stress coincides with declining carrying capacity and poaching linked to food insecurity, revealing how ecological limits interact with livelihood pressures. Even modest poaching rates cause high extinction probabilities alongside climate change and habitat loss, highlighting food insecurity as a dominant driver of anthropogenic threats that can cause biodiversity decline. These findings underscore that species' persistence in human dominated drylands depends less on climate trends alone and more on their interaction with social, economic and governance conditions that restrict animals' movement, increase human-wildlife conflict and potentially lead to poaching. More broadly, the workflow offers a transferable approach for anticipating populations' viability and guiding future species conservation planning in rapidly changing social-ecological systems.