Ethiopia deploys hidden rabies vaccine in bid to protect endangered wolf

Oral vaccination campaign will use goat meat baits to pre-empt outbreaks of rabies among Ethiopian wolves

Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor

Wed 22 Aug 2018 16.02 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 17.03 BST

Rabies vaccines hidden inside goat meat baits have been deployed in the first campaign to protect the Ethiopian wolf, Africa’s most endangered carnivore.

There are less than 500 of the wolves in the high mountains of Ethiopia and they are very vulnerable to infectious diseases from domestic dogs. The oral vaccine approach will next be rolled out to cover all six surviving populations of the wolf.

“Thirty years ago I witnessed an outbreak of rabies which killed the majority of the wolves I had followed closely for my doctoral studies,” said Prof Claudio Sillero, director of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme(EWCP), a partnership between the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and the Born Free Foundation. “We now know that pre-emptive vaccination is necessary to save many wolves from a horrible death and to keep the small and isolated populations outside the vortex of extinction.”

Earlier trials showed the wolves preferred goat meat baits to rat meat or intestines and that delivery on horseback and at night into a pack’s territory meant fewer baits were eaten by other animals. Tests showed that almost 90% of the wolves eating the bait developed immunity.

Read on  

Moustached monkey is separate species

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website

17 January 2018

A monkey from Ethiopia and Sudan with a "handlebar moustache" has been identified as a distinct species.

Scientists took a fresh look at the distribution and physical appearance of patas monkeys in Ethiopia, confirming there were two species rather than one.

It was originally described as a separate species in 1862, but was later folded in - incorrectly - with other patas monkeys to form a single species.

Details have been published in the journal Primate Conservation.

Patas monkeys are found from west to east across sub-Saharan Africa; they are among the fastest-moving of ground-dwelling monkeys - able to reach speeds of about 55 km/h (34 mph).

Spartaco Gippoliti, from the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group, reassessed the species status of patas monkeys in the Blue Nile region of Ethiopia and Sudan.

His analysis led him to revive the classification of the Blue Nile patas monkey (Erythrocebus poliophaeus) first proposed more than 150 years ago

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New dominant ant species discovered in Ethiopia shows potential for global invasion

Date: November 22, 2016

Source: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

A team of scientists conducting a recent biodiversity survey in the ancient church forests of Ethiopia made an unexpected discovery -- a rather infamous ant species (Lepisiota canescens) displaying signs of supercolony formation. According to D. Magdalena Sorger, a post-doctoral researcher with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and a key member of the team, the discovery is significant for two reasons. First, supercolony formation in ants is rare, with documented cases of only around 20 species worldwide. Second, other species in the Lepisiota genus have recently made headlines as worrisome invasive species, one in South Africa's Kruger National Park and another that shut down Australia's Darwin Port for several days. The team's findings, were published in Insectes Sociaux in November.

In Ethiopia, forests frequently surround Orthodox churches, some of which are more than 1,500 years old. These forests range in size from only a few hectares to more than 400 (~1,000 acres) and can be considered relict oases within largely barren land and agricultural fields. While L. canescens is native to the general region, it is now moving in large numbers into disturbed habitat like some of the more degraded church forests, but also beyond forest boundaries, into neighboring agricultural fields, and along recently constructed roads and other urban structures.

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Conservation hopes up for the endangered banana frog restricted to Southwest Ethiopia

Date: February 18, 2016

Source: Pensoft Publishers

As the natural forest cover in Ethiopia is already less than 3% of what it once has been, the banana frog species, dwelling exclusively in the remnants of the country's southwestern forests in only two populations, is exposed to a great risk of extinction.

Through their survey, a research team, led by Matthias De Beenhouwer, Biodiversity Inventory for Nature Conservation (BINCO), Belgium, have now extended the species' range, thus making the first steps to saving the charming frogs. The study is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Although Ethiopia is known for its high number of both animal and plant species that do not live anywhere else in the world, there is a concerning lack of conservation activities to preserve the local biodiversity. Moreover, while as much as 41% of the amphibians ever recorded in the country are exclusive for its fauna, there have been only few researches. Without such, pointing the hotspots in greatest need of protection and restoration, as well as taking adequate measures subsequently, is impossible.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160218114755.htm

Lions rediscovered in Ethiopia's Alatash game park

1 February 2016

A previously unknown population of at least 100 lions has been discovered by a wildlife charity in a remote park in north-western Ethiopia.

Born Free Foundation said it had obtained camera trap images and identified lion tracks in the Alatash area close to the border with Sudan.

The area is thought to have lost all its lions in the 20th Century because of hunting and habitat destruction.

The number of lions in Africa has declined by half since the 1990s.

The lions are thought to be of the Central African sub-species, of which only about 900 were thought to survive, Born Free Foundation's programmes manager, Mark Jones, told the BBC Newsday programme.

"Even though the team only visited the Ethiopian side of the park because of logistics, lions were likely to exist in the larger, adjacent Dinder National Park across the border in Sudan," he said.

Dr Hans Bauer, a renowned lion conservationist from Oxford University, who led the expedition, said this was the first time that the presence of lions had been confirmed in this area.

He estimated that the area could host a population of 1-200 lions.

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Wolves are better hunters when monkeys are around

An unexpected co-existence in the Ethiopian highlands

Date:June 22, 2015

Source:Dartmouth College

Summary:Through a rare mixed-species association observed between a carnivorous predator and a potential prey, biologists have identified that solitary Ethiopian wolves will forage for rodents among grazing gelada monkey herds. Through consistent non-threatening behavior, the Ethiopian wolves have habituated gelada herds to their presence, foregoing opportunities to attack the juvenile geladas in order to better capture the rodents.

Gelada monkeys are a close relative of baboons. As grazing primates, they eat grass and some herbs. They live in large herds, between 200-1000 individuals. Ethiopian wolves are the rarest canids in the world, with only between 300-500 individuals remaining in the wild. These wolves are rodent specialists. Both geladas and Ethiopian wolves are endangered and endemic to the Ethiopian highlands.

Through extensive data collection from all-day follows on the Guassa Plateau in north central Ethiopia from 2006 to 2011, researchers studied a band of approximately 200 gelada monkeys, who regularly associate with the wolves living in the area.

According to the study's findings, gelada monkeys would not typically move upon encountering Ethiopian wolves, even when they were in the middle of the herd -- 68 percent of encounters resulted in no movement and only 11 percent resulted in a movement of greater than 10 meters. In stark contrast, the geladas always fled great distances to the cliffs for safety whenever they encountered aggressive domestic dogs.

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'New species' of ancient human found

By Rebecca MorelleScience Correspondent, BBC News

28 May 2015 

A new species of ancient human has been unearthed in the Afar region of Ethiopia, scientists report.

Researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth, which date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old.

It means this new hominin was alive at the same time as several other early human species, suggesting our family tree is more complicated than was thought.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The new species has been called Australopithecus deyiremeda, which means "close relative" in the language spoken by the Afar people.The bones were found in the Afar region of EthiopiaThe remains belong to four individuals and date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old

The ancient remains are thought to belong to four individuals, who would have had both ape and human-like features..

Living with Lucy

Lead researcher Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the US, told BBC News: "We had to look at the detailed anatomy and morphology of the teeth and the upper and lower jaws, and we found major differences.

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Ethiopian jawbone may mark dawn of humankind

A 2.8-million-year-old mandible and a digital model of a key fossil paint a complicated picture of the genus Homo.

Ewen Callaway

04 March 2015

The 2.8-million-year-old jawbone that may have come from the first Homo.

A 2.8-million-year-old battered jawbone from Ethiopia may represent the earliest ancient human fossil ever discovered — pushing back the known origins of humankind by 500,000 years. The remains, alongside a digital reconstruction of a damaged fossil from a key early-human species, point to an evolutionary explosion at the dawn of our genus, Homo.

Modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the latest link in a chain of ancestry that stretches back 5 to 7 million years to a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos, humanity's two closest living relatives. An incomplete fossil record means that researchers have had a hard time finding the other links of that chain, and distinguishing true human ancestors from evolutionary dead-ends — side branches in the family tree.

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New Species of Horse, 4.4 Million Years Old

Dec. 12, 2013 — Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia.

About the size of a small zebra, Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli -- named for geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, who earned his PhD at Case Western Reserve in 1987 -- had three-toed hooves and grazed the grasslands and shrubby woods in the Afar Region, the scientists say.

They report their findings in the November issue  of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

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Stone-Tipped Spears Pre-date the Human Race -via Andy Cobley

Spears feel very much like a human weapon of war—so it's surprising to find out that, in fact, the stone-tipped projectiles pre-date our species by a bewildering 85,000 years.

A team of archaeologists from University of California at Berkeley have uncovered remains of the oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, and their analysis suggests they're 280,000 years old. They were found at an Ethiopian Stone Age site known as Gademotta, and are reported in PLoS One.

But that age means that they're far older than Homo sapiens—which either suggests we're wrong about how long our race has existed, or that our predecessor species were smart enough to make weapons. Yonatan Sahle, one of the researchers, explains:

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Combating Key Viral Livestock Diseases in Ethiopia

Nov. 15, 2013 — Gelagay Ayelet Melesse's doctoral research reveals that there are several serotypes of the virus causing foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and the African horse sickness virus (AHSV) and several different hosts for these viruses in Ethiopia. His study also highlights the economic repercussions of these viruses and other viral diseases in domestic livestock. His findings may contribute to improved strategies for controlling and combating the spread of such diseases and to increased self-sufficiency in food.

Livestock play an important role in Ethiopia as a livelihood both for nomads and for farmers cultivating the land. Indeed, products from livestock are the country's second largest export after coffee.

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New species of lion discovered - In Ethiopian zoo?

DNA confirms genetically distinct lion population for Ethiopia

November 2012. A team of international researchers has provided the first comprehensive DNA evidence that the Addis Ababa lion in Ethiopia is genetically unique and is urging immediate conservation action to preserve this vulnerable lion population.

Large and darker manes
While it has long been noted that some lions in Ethiopia have a large, dark mane, extending from the head, neck and chest to the belly, as well as being smaller and more compact than other lions, it was not known until now if these lions represent a genetically distinct population.

Genetically distinct from all lion populations
The team of researchers, led by the University of York, UK, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, has shown that captive lions at the Addis Ababa Zoo in Ethiopia are, in fact, genetically distinct from all lion populations for which comparative data exists, both in Africa and Asia.

The researchers compared DNA samples from 15 Addis Ababa Zoo lions (eight males and seven females) to lion breeds in the wild. The results of the study, which also involved researchers from Leipzig Zoo and the Universities of Durham and Oxford, UK, are published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/addis-ababa-lions.html#cr

Big Manes Make 'Rasta' Lions Special

The Addis Ababa Zoo in Ethiopia is home to the descendants of a collection of lions that belonged to the late emperor Haile Selassie, revered by the Rastafarian movement. Unlike other lions, these big cats have dark manes that extend all the way to their chest and belly. Now researchers say their genes also set them apart.

A group of scientists led by Susann Bruche, of Imperial College London, studied the DNA of eight males and seven females in the zoo. The team found the zoo lions are genetically distinct from all other existing lions. In total, the zoo houses 20 lions that belonged to the collection of Emperor Selassie who founded the zoo in 1948 with seven founding lions (five males and two females); these were said to have been captured in south-western Ethiopia though their geographical origin remains controversial.

The males currently at Addis Ababa Zoo are thought to be the last lions with such thick, dark manes. Wild populations are believed to have vanished due to overhunting for the manes, the researchers said, but some sightings of lions with similar locks have been reported in the east and northeast of Ethiopia.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/23905-big-manes-make-rasta-lions-special.html

Outrage as World Bank funds power lines linked to controversial dam

The Gibe III dam threatens the livelihoods of 200,000
August 2012. Human rights organizations, including Survival International and Human Rights Watch, have fiercely criticized a decision by the World Bank to fund power lines in Ethiopia linked to the controversial Gibe III dam.

The newly-approved project will help transport power generated by a notorious hydroelectric dam in southern Ethiopia, to Kenya's power grid. Ethiopia's controversial Gibe III dam is expected to be complete by 2014, but the devastating social and environmental consequences of its construction are generating widespread opposition. The decision to help back such a controversial project violates World Bank guidelines on safeguarding indigenous peoples' rights and involuntary resettlement.

Lower Omo Valley people livelihoods endangered
More than 200,000 indigenous people in the Lower Omo Valley stand to have their livelihoods and food security destroyed by the dam. Water levels are already unprecedently low and are devastating the self-sufficiency of pastoralist tribes such as the Bodi and Mursi and the hunter-gatherer Kwegu.

Violent land grabs
Added to this, violent land grabs, forcible resettlement and human rights abuses are rife in the Lower Omo, as the government clears land to make way for lucrative sugarcane and cotton plantations irrigated by the newly-dammed river.

Ethiopia has failed to consult any indigenous communities over the construction of Gibe III or its aggressive plantation plans, which are devastating the Lower Omo Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The dam will also affect many tribal communities across the border near Kenya's Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake.

Survival International's Director Stephen Corry said, ‘The electrical needs of Kenya and Ethiopia should not be used to justify such flagrant human rights abuses. This is yet another ill-fated project supported by the World Bank, which will destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. These are some of the most self-sufficient communities in the Horn of Africa, and yet their human rights are being openly trampled on by an organization that ought to have learnt from history, rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.'

Survival International, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers all condemn the World Bank's decision to fund these transmission lines.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/omo-dam.html

Leaked map reveals Ethiopia’s plans to industrialise Omo valley and for mass evictions

Omo valley wilderness destructrion
March 2012. Ethiopian authorities have inadvertently revealed the existence of highly ambitious plans to resettle Lower Omo Valley tribes who stand in the way of a massive plantations scheme. The map was included in an internal report by the country's Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA), into the environmental impact of planned sugarcane plantations in the Omo.

Leaked to Survival International, the map shows where Ethiopia intends to resettle tribes whose land and communities stand in the way of their ‘development' plans. It reveals the huge ambition of the project, which is already destroying the land of tribes such as the Mursi, Bodi and Kwegu. Reliable sources have confirmed to Survival that construction has already begun on at least three resettlement camps on Bodi land in the north of the Lower Omo Valley.

Violent human rights abuses against all indigenous communities in the Omo Valley are becoming commonplace, as the rush to ‘develop' gathers pace. One Mursi man told Survival, ‘I am waiting to die because the government has taken my land...The government is collecting all the people in the Omo Valley to put in one place.'

Many tribespeople have been told that the government will take away their cattle (a vital part of their livelihood). They will then have little choice but to become workers on the plantations which will occupy their lands. 

One Bodi told Survival, ‘The government is lying to us. It says to us, you have to move down the Omo Valley. We will give you everything to eat and drink.'

Survival's Director Stephen Corry said, ‘This leaked map reveals what the Ethiopian government has wanted to conceal - its intention to resettle indigenous tribes in the Lower Omo Valley. Taken together with the widespread reports of violent evictions and intimidation, it clearly shows Ethiopia's end goal - and its refusal to respect the rights of anybody who stands in its way.'

Map here:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/omo-valley-map.html

Ethiopian bush-crow mystery solved

Scientists discover a ‘glass wall' that holds the answer to one of nature's little mysteries 
March 2012. Why would a smart and adaptable bird that eats almost anything and can survive happily in even the most heavily degraded habitats, have a world range so small it would fit comfortably inside Norfolk?

That question has baffled and confused scientists ever since the Ethiopian bush crow's peculiarly restricted distribution was discovered back in the 1930s.

But now, after researching the exact location of the birds and their nests in southern Ethiopia, a team of problem-solving, Sherlock Holmes-style scientists have unravelled the mystery. And the answer is elementary. A new study published in the Journal of Ornithology shows the globally threatened bird's range exactly follows the edge a unique bubble of cool, dry climate.

Temperature barrier
Lead author of the study and RSPB principal conservation scientist, Dr Paul Donald, is delighted he finally has some answers. He said: "The mystery surrounding this bird and its odd behaviour has stumped scientists for decades - many have looked and failed to find an answer. But the reason they failed, we now believe, is that they were looking for a barrier invisible to the human eye, like a glass wall.

"Inside the ‘climate bubble', where the average temperature is less than 20°C, the bush-crow is almost everywhere. Outside, where the average temperature hits 20°C or more, there are no bush-crows at all. A cool bird, that appears to like staying that way."

The reason this species is so completely trapped inside its little bubble is as yet unknown, but it seems likely that it is physically limited by temperature - either the adults, or more likely its chicks, simply cannot survive outside the bubble, even though there are thousands of square miles of identical habitat all around.

BirdLife International's Dr Nigel Collar is co-author of the study. He added: "Whatever the reason this bird is confined to a bubble, alarm bells are now ringing loudly. The storm of climate change threatens to swamp the bush-crow's little climatic lifeboat - and once it's gone, it's gone for good."

The Ethiopian bush-crow
The Ethiopian bush-crow is a small, starling-like crow with a pale grey head and body, black wings and tail, and bare, blue skin around the eye. The bird, listed as Endangered with approximately fewer than 9,000 individuals existing in the wild, could be the most vulnerable species to climate change in the world.

Scientists are now planning to start a monitoring programme on the temperature of the birds' nests to see if it can unlock the answer to the next question: why are they so sensitive to climate?

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/ethiopian-bush-crow.html 

Unidentified lark spotted in Ethiopia -

Significant Ethiopian discovery - Heteromirafra larks by David Hoddinott
September 2011. David Hoddinott, while leading a birding tour to Ethiopia, had what may prove to be a very significant sighting.

David writes "I travelled to north-eastern Ethiopia with a group on a reconnaissance birding tour, where we visited the remote area of Jijiga, little visited by foreigners, let alone other birders. On seeing the magnificent grasslands to the east of the town we decided to bird an area of suitable habitat to look for Heteromirafra larks. Three known species exist in this aberrant genus of large-headed, small-bodied and short-tailed grassland larks:

1 - Rudd's lark
The highly localized and threatened Rudd's Lark, endemic to South Africa and restricted to several diminishing patches of pristine upland grasslands.

2 - Sidamo lark

The Sidamo Lark, (also known as Liben Lark), restricted to the Liben Plains of southern Ethiopia, critically endangered and recent BirdLife International reports predict it will be mainland Africa's first bird extinction; More about the Sidamo lark.

3. Archer's Lark - Not seen since 1922

Archer's lark is known from just 2 sites in Somalia and not seen since it was collected in 1922! No living birders or ornithologists have seen this bird!


David continues: "After just ten minutes of walking we flushed a Heteromirafra lark and I managed to get decent photographs of this bird. This area appeared similar to the Liben Plains but these grasslands lie 590km northeast of the Liben Plains - some distance indeed. We were also approximately 90km from the type-locality of Archer's Lark across the border in Somalia."

Sidamo or Archer's lark?
If it turns out that this species is Sidamo Lark then this will be fantastic for the conservation of a critically endangered species, and if it's Archer's Lark - well then, even better, and another bird has been "rediscovered" for science. An alternative hypothesis is that Sidamo and Archer's Larks are actually the same species and that several isolated populations exist.

BirdLife International research trip
Whatever the final result will be, this was almost certainly a significant discovery and of major conservation concern. Rockjumper Tours have been in touch with BirdLife International and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds over this sighting. As a result, a team of researchers made a trip to the site in May 2011 and obtained DNA samples so that these can be compared with the specimens of Archer's and Sidamo Larks. Their research will hopefully give us a better understanding of north-east Africa's Heteromirafra larks, their taxonomy, population size, distribution and conservation requirements.

David Hoddinott was leading a birding tour for Rockjumper Birding Adventures.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/Heteromirafra-larks.html