The Ethiopian wolf is a wolf in fox's clothing: bright tawny-rufous with white markings, long slender legs, a fine narrow muzzle.Source 1Source 2
It lives only on the roof of Africa — mountain meadows between 3,000 and 4,500 meters, on islands of sky too far apart to cross.Source 3Source 1
It is Africa's rarest carnivore: fewer than five hundred adults, in six separated populations.Source 3Source 4
Its habits are split in two: packs greet and patrol together at dawn and dusk, but every wolf hunts alone.Source 2Source 1
The prey is rodents — above all the giant molerat, an Afroalpine animal found nowhere else.Source 2
The killer arrives on four familiar feet: rabies and distemper spill over from village dogs, crashing whole populations in weeks.Source 5Source 3
The response is a vaccine hidden inside a piece of meat, left in the field where a wolf will find it.Source 6
The program vaccinates the dogs too — more than three thousand a year around wolf country.Source 6
Meanwhile the mountains themselves shrink: sixty percent of wolf range has already gone under barley and potatoes.Source 5
To witness the Ethiopian wolf is to stand with the monitors who log thousands of sightings a year, holding a species steady one pack at a time.Source 7
