By Sandra Lai
What does the word caring mean to you? I found myself asking this question after spending 3 weeks in the remote Bale Mountains, a significant part of it capturing, vaccinating, and GPS-collaring Ethiopian wolves. It’s the dry season in Ethiopia — this year, it’s even crackingly drier than usual.
For many long days, our team of 14 people camped in the most rudimentary conditions, enduring freezing cold nights, scorching daytime heat, and relentless winds that carried fine dust everywhere. We were fetching precious water from small streams or natural waterholes. We were covered in dirt from setting up camp and wolf traps, wearing the same clothes without showering, and running on barely any sleep between wolf captures, VHF tracking, and relocating camp every two or three days. With more than 15 years of field experience, I have faced my fair share of challenges. But this was something else.
The team getting ready for a wolf capture © Abdi Samune
The discomfort was real. Yet at camp, despite our exhaustion, no one complained. Because this isn’t just a job — it’s a choice. Really, what makes someone endure all of this when they could be working in an office or leisurely sit on a beach with a drink in hand?
To me, caring means putting your own wants and needs aside to wholeheartedly prioritise that something or someone you say you care about. And it’s not about showing up only when it’s convenient for you. Rather, it’s especially when it’s inconvenient for you that genuine care shines through.
During captures, you wake up in the middle of the night. It’s -8°C outside. You quickly pull yourself from a short sleep and a tight, cosy sleeping bag to get ready for a trap check or for a wolf capture. It’s pitch dark. There are frost crystals on the ground and on your tent flysheet. The merciless cold wind cuts through you, biting your skin and making your eyes water. You disregard the physical pain and go. Yes, it’s hard work. But then, the magic begins. You release a wolf, now vaccinated against rabies and canine distemper. You watch it run, and you quietly breathe out a sigh of relief and gratitude. Because in that moment, you know: this animal is now protected for years against these diseases. It will have a better chance at life because you came here.
Most captures occur in the dark of the night © Jorgelina Marino
Why do we care about these wolves? How many of you, reading this, will ever see an Ethiopian wolf? Likely only a few people would — if any. So why does it matter? Why would you want to conserve something you might never see in the wild, be it a polar bear, a snow leopard, a pangolin?
I think French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry captured this feeling beautifully in his famous book The Little Prince:
"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well."
There’s something about the idea of a fiery red and black wolf roaming the Roof of Africa that captures the human imagination. Maybe one day, you too will have the chance to catch a glimpse of this mysterious wolf. Or maybe, one day, it will find you. That’s what happened to me, to Edriss, Claudio and Jorgelina, to so many in the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme... The Ethiopian wolf found us.
Ethiopian wolf pack patrolling their territory in the Bale Mountains © Antoine Coulondre
Words carry meaning but just saying you care is never enough, sincere care demands action. Otherwise, it's just empty words.
The challenges to overcome to protect this wolf are many, from aggressive tourism developments implemented without consultation with park experts and conservationists, to ongoing human encroachment in protected areas, to the constant struggle to secure funding that keeps this long-term conservation initiative alive.
In wildlife conservation, it often feels like one step forward, two steps back. But with these newly approved wolf preventive vaccination campaigns — kick-started by this expedition — for once, it feels like three or four steps forward. At the end of this 10-day trip, we vaccinated 13 wolves (plus one honey badger) from four areas near the Sanetti Plateau: Chafadalacha, Agicho, Lakota and Batu. Males from five packs were GPS-collared, allowing a closer tracking of wolf movements and activities in these difficult-to-access places. Wolf vaccination campaigns will continue throughout this year.
There will surely be setbacks ahead. All I can say is that we were there, in the thick of it, pushing forward despite the hardships. Maybe, thanks to those sleepless nights in the cold and dark, a slender wolf will continue to make its fleeting appearance in the vastness of the highlands — keeping it beautiful, evermore.
Our expedition team, composed of members of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authorities, and Bale Mountains National Park © Abdi Samune
To learn more about EWCP’s research and conservation activities, follow us on X/Twitter @KyKebero @ClaudioSillero @MarinoJorgelina @Arctic_paws and visit our website: https://www.ethiopianwolf.org/programme
Help protect the wolves with us: https://www.ethiopianwolf.org/donate