The Ethiopian wolf is a amazing animal but unfortunately it
is now down to an overall populations of
fewer than five hundred individuals. As the name would suggest it is endemic to
Ethiopia, specifically the few remaining mountain ranges which possess suitable
Alfroapline grasslands above 3200m in altitude.
The largest of the six remaining populations is found
in the
Bale Mountains and it is made up of 210 individuals with 113 of them being
mature individuals capable of breeding. The age which wolves are capable of
breeding is 2 years old and once they reach this age they have the potential to
breed once a year till 10-12 years of age. Each brood is contains on average
between 3 to 6 pups with the chances of each pup making it through their first
year being 45% for females and 55% for males. However not every individual has
the opportunity to breed, only 57% of females get to breed, this is due to the pack system which the Ethiopian wolf employs much like most canine species only the Alpha female of each group breeding each year.
A Wolfs diet consists nearly completely of rodents (96%) which
are found thr
oughout the mountain ranges they inhabit, specifically this takes
the form of giant mole rats and Blick’s grass rats. However they have also been
known to feed on other small mammals such as Starck’s hares and Rock Hyrax and
it is these prey items which makes up the remainder of the wolves diet (4%).
The Ethiopian wolf populations have been experiencing
significant population declines for a number of reasons, such as disease,
hunting, habitat lost and cross species breeding. The main two disease which
are effecting wolf populations are the rabies virus and CDV (canine distemper
virus). There were serious outbreak of CDV in 2005/6 and 2010 and these cases produced
a fatality rate of 43% and 68%. These numbers are extremely significant especially
now the population in now less than 500 individuals, for instance if there is
another outbreak of CDV within the next few years this could take the
population dangerously close to an unviable population. Rabies outbreaks also
increase mortality rates significantly with an outbreak in 1991-92 killing 77%
of remaining individuals in the Bale Mountains and with the increase of feral
dogs in the area there is increasing risks of further outbreaks.
Another pressure which is attributes to the decline of the
Ethiopian wolf is the loss of habitat, there is now only around 4200km2
of suitable habitat left for this wolf and this is spread out between the six
remaining populations with only 2779 km2 of the available
area being used by the remaining population. Habitat declines are mainly due to
the increase of farming in the area, the high altitude grasslands provide
fertile pastureland for local’s livestock. As the human population continues to
increase there is a higher demand for free land for food production and at the
current rate of use the Ethiopian wolf is destined for extinction.
It’s not only an expanding human population in the area
which is causing the decline of Wolves, feral dogs are also causing population
declines as well as hybridisation of genetics when the two species come into
contact. Although only a few cases of
this happening have so far been observed this dilution of the gene pool will affect
the ability of the wolfs population to increase.
There is a conservation
effort in progress to attempt to prevent the extinction of the Ethiopian Wolf,
for instance the Bale Mountain population has been continually monitored for
the past 30 years sadly despite these efforts the population is still
declining.
Hopefully in the very near future this will change giving
the Ethiopian Wolf a chance to escape extinct.
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