Walia Special Edition on the Bale Mountains (2011) - Zoologische ...

The separation of domestic and wild ungulates should be maintained wherever possible. This
will also minimise grazing competition between these groups. In the BMNP, this will primarily be
enacted through law enforcement, but if seasonal grazing is allowed in some areas of the park under
management agreements, key habitat areas for wild ungulates should be excluded from grazing
agreements. Outside the park, in hunting concessions, forest priority areas, participatory forest
management areas, or even kebele land, potential disease transmission to and from wildlife should
be used as a factor in landuse planning and livestock owners should be encouraged to designate
domestic animal grazing grounds in areas least used by wildlife. Good land use planning might also
help to minimise conflict from crop destruction by wildlife.
Contingency disease control tools and plans for outbreaks of ungulate disease, in particular,
in mountain nyala should be developed. As no mountain nyala are held in captivity, it will be
challenging to develop vaccine or treatment control tools for the future, but this should be considered
in long term plans. The feasibility of other methods of control considered, although financially and
logistically realistic options are likely to be rare.
Mountain nyala occur in six subpopulations and conservation efforts must be increased in
all subpopulations across the species range and particularly those that are not contiguous with the
BMNP population. Thus if a catastrophic event occurred, metapopulation management could allow
for reintroductions between subpopulations.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Wellcome Trust for financing the study and MSc for Fekadu Shiferaw and
the Institute of Zoology for offering an MSc placement. Wildlife sampling was conducted with the
technical and financial assistance of Dr. Richard Kock of the Pan African Rinderpest Control PACE,
OAU_IBAR. Technician Dinku Degu kindly assisted with the collection of the livestock samples.
The work was conducted with the permission and assistance of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation
Organization and the Ethiopian National Animal Health Research Centre, the University of
Edinburgh and the Bale Mountains National Park. We are grateful for Scott Newey for carrying out
the distance sampling analysis.
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Atickem, A., Loe, L.E., Langangen, Ø., Rueness, E.K., Bekele, A. and Stenseth N.C. 2011. Estimating
population size and habitat suitability for mountain nyala in areas with different protection
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Blood, D. C., Radostitis, O.M and Henderson, J.A. 1983. Veterinary Medicine. A Textbook of the
Diseases of Cattle, Pigs, Goats and Horses, pp 692-696.
Campbell, A.D. and Turner, A.W. 1953. Studies on contagious bovine pleuropnumonia of cattle. IV.
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