Remnant Populations Of Ethiopian Wolf - World's Rarest Big Carnivore - Cling To Roof Of Africa

[hatrack]

Living on the roof of Africa, the Ethiopian wolf is one of the world's rarest carnivores, if not the rarest! Trapped on a few mountain islands rising over 4,000 meters above sea level on either/both sides of the Great Rift Valley, this unique canid has so far survived millennia of human-animal interactions in one of Africa's most densely populated rural lands. But the threat of climate change and a shifting agriculture frontier may require new conservation measures, according to Argentine-born Claudio Sillero, the world's foremost expert on the Ethiopian wolf, who has spent two decades championing this rare species.

"I first heard of Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia in 1987, over dinner with friends in a farmhouse near Naivasha. The New York Zoological Society was looking for someone to study the Abyssinian wolf or Simien fox (as it was known then), a mysterious carnivore found only in a few Ethiopian mountains. That night I rushed to my carnivore books to learn more about this enigmatic animal and, less than ten days later, I was in a plane bound for Bale," Claudio Sillero told Mongabay.com. In 1995, Dr Sillero founded the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP). The organization works with both the Ethiopian government and local communities to protect the wolf and other highland species.

"By and large the people that live in the Ethiopian highlands are relatively tolerant of wildlife, but their priority is one of survival, and unless their livelihoods can be brought into line with sustainable practices, the meadows and moors they need to graze their cattle, gather firewood and tend their crops will soon be all degraded to bare rock," Sillero says, describing the difficult position that Ethiopian locals find themselves in. One of the biggest impacts the local population has on the wolves is their increasing tendency to raise domestic dogs.

"Domestic dogs not only compete for food, chase them, and transmit rabies and canine distemper to their wild cousins, but may even hybridize with them," Sillero says calling domestic dogs the most "real and immediate threat to wolves". To address this concern, the EWCP has worked long and hard to eliminate potentially dangerous contact between dogs and wolves, including giving rabies vaccines to over 60,000 dogs. Conservationists are also working to ban dogs within the National Park.


EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1109-interview_ethiopian_wolf_sillero.html

[rucky]

1. beautiful

[NickB79]

2. Are there any captive breeding populations established yet?

At the very least they need to preserve some remnants of the population if the worst came to pass.