Born Free

Category: EWCP | Date: Oct 06 2009 | By: bornfree

“We are against rabies! Dhukkuba saree ni balaaleffanna!” A small band of demonstrators is marching towards us, placards waving, fists raised. It’s not quite a G8 protest, but this group is equally fervent about their cause. Rabies must be eradicated in their town!

It’s September 28th, Rabies Day 2009, and the Dinsho Primary School, situated on the boundary of the Bale Mountains National Park, has organised a demonstration to show their commitment to stamping out rabies in the area in order to protect the endangered Ethiopian wolf. The children, ranging in age from eight to 15 years old, made their own posters and banners highlighting the cause, and after marching through the town chanting their slogans, ended up in the grounds of the school where a presentation had been organised by some of the other pupils.

This included a poetry reading by one of the students, as well as a play written and acted out by three pupils to highlight the dangers of rabies within the community and the threat the disease poses to the Ethiopian wolves.

Rabies is transmitted by domestic dogs from the villages surrounding and within the National Park, and is fatal to the wolves. Outbreaks have occurred in 2003, 2008 and most recently in May 2009, and have caused significant losses to the wolf population in the Bale Mountains. The Rabies Day event, coordinated by the EWCP education officer, was attended by local community administrators and elders, as well as other EWCP staff and school pupils. Not even a sudden downpour could dampen the enthusiasm of the children, and they made sure that everyone understood their message: “Save the Ethiopian wolf! Jeedala fardaa haa kunuunsinu!”

You can also help save the Ethiopian wolf by donating in the box to on the right of this page!

Tags: ethiopia, Ethiopian wolf, rabies

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Category: EWCP | Date: Sep 08 2009 | By: bornfree

We’ve recently started a Saturday morning soccer club in Dinsho, making use of the sports grounds that the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme donated to the local community with the help of a generous donor.

Every Saturday morning we have around 30 local kids, all under the age of 12, turn up for the match (although the number seems to grow each week!), who then get divided into two opposing teams – EWCP and FZS (the Frankfurt Zoological Society, who also work within the National Park). It’s all terrific fun and rather chaotic, with the all the members of both teams charging after the ball – as you can imagine, the off-side rule does not apply!

Unfortunately EWCP is two games down at the moment, but we’re optimistic of making a comeback soon! While it’s great to get the kids together, keeping them busy on a Saturday and have them playing as a team, the matches also serve to increase EWCP’s presence within the community and encourage the kids to get involved in our activities in and around the National Park. 

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Category: EWCP | Date: Aug 28 2009 | By: bornfree

In early August, EWCP had one of our students from Mekelle University in Ethiopia write up his findings on a study he did looking at rabies in villages surrounding the Bale Mountains National Park, where EWCP is based. The student, Abera Yilma, has been conducting research into the effectiveness of EWCP dog vaccinations and was comparing the incidence of rabies in vaccinated and unvaccinated villages.

Abera went from village to village, interviewing community members and farmers about the incidence of rabies in these areas over the past 5 years. Interviewees were asked how many cases of rabies there had been in humans, livestock and dogs. The answers from people in kebeles (villages) where vaccinations had not taken place were then compared to those people living in kebeles where EWCP vaccinations had occurred.

The results clearly showed that the number of rabies cases in unvaccinated villages was much higher, often with five times as many rabies cases occurring in these villages! In vaccinated villages, there were no reported cases of rabies in humans, while in unvaccinated villages there were a total of 55 cases in the past 5 years! The number of dogs with rabies was also drastically reduced when they were vaccinated. In the unvaccinated areas there were 150 cases of rabies reported in dogs over the past 5 years, compared to a total of only 20 cases in the vaccinated villages.

Rabies is the major threat to the survival of the endangered Ethiopian Wolf, and has the potential to wipe out the last remaining populations of this very special species. For the past ten years, the EWCP vet team has worked throughout the Bale area to vaccinate domestic dogs, helping to control and prevent the spread of the disease to humans and animals. Abera’s rabies study has proved that vaccinations of domestic dogs are successful in preventing rabies in these villages.

But it isn’t always easy to get villagers to bring their dogs for these voluntary vaccinations. Hopefully the results from Abera’s study can be used in our education campaign to help them realize how important these vaccinations are, not only for the survival of the wolves, but also for their own health and that of their livestock!

Your donations can help the EWCP vet team reach their annual target of vaccinating 7000 dogs in and around the Bale Mountains National Park!

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Category: EWCP | Date: Aug 21 2009 | By: bornfree

Following on from the recent Ethiopian wolf rabies vaccinations during May and June, life has settled down somewhat in the Bale Mountains. The EWCP monitoring team has been deployed to Sanetti (the vaccination site) and back to Morebawa (the rabies outbreak site). We also have a constant presence in the Web Valley (the October outbreak site). The good news is that no wolf carcasses have been found since the end of vaccinations in June. The two carcasses found on the Sanetti Plateau during the vaccinations tested negative for rabies. As they were both juveniles, they most likely died naturally – this time of year sees high mortality in wolves of this age, due to them being independent and struggling to find food by themselves.

We have had repeated visits to the packs where we were vaccinating in Sanetti. All wolves except one have been observed since they were vaccinated. This is an exceptionally high return rate, a great effort by the monitoring team.

We recently had further good news on the return of the team from Morebawa. During the rabies outbreak, the team had only seen 26 live wolves, and so it was feared that as many as 70 were dead or missing. However, we have now sighted 32 live wolves, and we know that seven of the remaining eleven packs still have an adult male and an adult female. The survival of these breeding pairs will be crucial for ensuring a rapid recovery of wolf numbers in this area.

All the monitoring team have worked exceptionally hard and we are lucky to have such dedicated and skilled staff. 

Tags: ethiopia, rabies, wolf

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Category: EWCP | Date: Jun 19 2009 | By: bornfree

It’s 2am on the Sanetti Plateau. And it’s cold. Very cold. There’s no wind, no sound at all in fact. With the sleeping bag pulled over my head it’s only through a small crack that I can see the light from the full moon filtering through the tent fabric. Then suddenly the silence is shattered by a slightly out-of-breath cry: “Wolf!” Ibrahim, our vet assistant, has just checked the traps and has run back to report that we’ve caught a wolf! There is an immediate flurry of activity in the surrounding tents. Beanies and gloves are hastily pulled on, vet supplies are checked, someone grabs a large blanket, and we’re off. In the moonlight it’s easy to find our way over the deserted landscape, towards the trap where our Ethiopian wolf awaits.

As we near the trap site, we hang back while Ibrahim and Alo spread the blanket between them and make their way towards the wolf. Suddenly they break into a run, and in a flash have thrown the blanket over the surprised wolf and are holding it on the ground. As soon as it is covered, the wolf relaxes, and the rest of us rush in to assist with the vaccinations.

It’s an adult male, he’s in good health and probably weighs about 17kg. From his size, coat colour and teeth wear, Claudio reckons he’s the dominant male of the pack. Leta quickly gives him two doses of rabies vaccine, one on each hindquarter, and attaches a blue tag to his left ear for identification purposes.

His legs are checked for any trap injuries, and within five minutes he’s ready to be released. Alo loosens his hold on the wolf’s body and as soon as we remove the cloth covering his eyes, he’s off into the night, turning only once to look back at us before running off. All in a night’s work.

That was wolf number four from Nyala pack – only one more to catch and we can move on to the next pack.Over the past two weeks the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) team has been camped at over 4,000m above sea level on the Sanetti plateau, running a vaccination campaign to prevent a rabies outbreak from spreading through the wolf population. EWCP wolf monitors first noticed something was wrong when they returned from a trip to the West Morebawa population – 11 wolf carcasses were found and samples sent to laboratories returned positive results for rabies. The EWCP team, based in the Bale Mountains, was given permission by the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority to vaccinate 50 wolves in the Sanetti population against rabies, with the aim of isolating the outbreak and stopping its spread. We sprung into action and managed to successfully vaccinate a total of 48 wolves in 9 packs, making sure that at least one female in each pack was vaccinated. For now, the threat of rabies seems to have been contained, but for how long? Interventions like these are a costly exercise, requiring a hefty investment in terms of both finances and EWCP resources. And it only takes one rabid dog to come into contact with one Ethiopian wolf for the disease to spread like wildfire. Left unchecked, a rabies outbreak could have devastating effects on a species that numbers less than 450 animals in the world today.

The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme has to tackle emergency rabies outbreaks like this as soon as it can and therefore funds are vital in order to purchase vaccinations.  Any funds you would are able to offer will be very well spent protecting the Ethiopian wolf from extinction.

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