THE PACK SURVIVES

The Bale Mountains National Park is one of the last bastions of the endangered Ethiopian wolf. Wildlife photographer and conservationist LATIKA NATH travels to the biodiversity hotspot to study the threats the species faces and the possible solutions at hand.

- LATIKA NATH

THE ETHIOPIAN WOLF IS THE rarest canid in the world. As a wildlife photographer, it had been my long-standing dream to capture this elusive, beautiful creature. In pursuit of this goal, I visited the Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP), 400 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where I met Claudio Sillero-Zubiri. Claudio and I had been colleagues almost two decades ago at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (wildcru.org) in the University of Oxford, where I was working towards my doctorate on tigers, and he had completed his dissertation on Ethiopian wolves.

I was received at the airport by an intrepid team of a guide and a driver, who helped me load my many bags of camera gear before we could set off for our destination. We stopped en route for a hot cup of coffee, and the driver looked horrifi ed when I asked for tea instead. His reaction was not unwarranted. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, and nearly everybody in the country drinks the brew. Bale Mountains National Park also holds much of the wild stocks of coffee indigenous to Ethiopia. Aptly, my tea turned out to be a shot of extremely sweet black liquid, with some spices added.

After about three hours on the road, the landscape began to change. We came upon grasslands and signs welcoming us to the national park. The park covers 2,150 square kilometres and comprises fi ve major zones: Gaysay Grasslands, Juniper Woodlands, Afro-alpine Meadows, Erica Belt, and Harenna Forest. The Sanetti Plateau, rising up to 4,000 metres above sea level, is also an important watershed for the country, and over 12 million people depend on the water from these mountains for drinking and power generation.