By Zelealem Tefera, Born Free Foundation Ethiopia
Can you see the wolf? ... No I can’t, where is it? Far in the horizon was the answer. This dialogue took place when Claudio and I were looking for wolves in the Guassa Plateau in 1995. I was amazed how someone could spot an animal so far away just by the slightest movement it was making, and even know what the species was. The love and intimacy that has grown between the wolves and a man and the resulting conservation actions now span twenty years. The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) was set up to protect the Ethiopian wolf from extinction. Fewer than 500 individuals live in highly human-dominated landscapes, with the safest strongholds in Bale and Simien Mountains. From its inception in the 1980s EWCP has focused in the conservation of the unique Afroalpine habitat by using the wolf as a flagship. In the early 1990s it was the only field conservation initiative in Ethiopia, managing through a difficult period when other projects were discontinued.
EWCP’s contribution is not limited to the protection of the Ethiopian wolf. Unlike other conservation projects EWCP has contributed to training and building Ethiopians capacity in the field of conservations biology, a profession which is sadly neglected. I would go as far as saying that more PhD and MSc studies have been carried out on Ethiopian wolves than on any other Ethiopian endemic, and this was possible by the support and supervision provided by Claudio and EWCP. I include myself as a pioneer beneficiary, initially as a collaborator, then as a graduate student and later working for EWCP and as Frankfurt Zoological Society country representative (EWCP’s longest serving NGO partner). EWCP’s ecological monitoring and environmental education components are the longest running such activities in the country, and other similar conservation projects are learning from EWCP’s experience.
In a nutshell, I would say that in the last 20 years EWCP has contributed tremendously to our understanding of species and biodiversity conservation in Ethiopia, and we are grateful for those who founded the programme, working tirelessly in difficult conditions to save one of our nation’s unique flagship endemics, the majestic Ethiopian wolf.
Photo: Young Zelealem standing next to Lobelia rynchopetalum in the Sanetti Plateau, 1986 © JC Hillman