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

This <strong>Special</strong> <strong>Edition</strong> of <strong>Walia</strong> is Dedicated to Simon Thirgood
1962-2009
From a vantage point on the Morobawa plateau in the Bale Mountains, in the warm sunlight, Simon and I
sink down into a couple of tussocks of Festuca grass. The year was 2003 and we were looking around for
potential sites for the project that we were tentatively calling the Bale Ecosystem Project. Having spent a few
hours walking over the plateau, we settled in the warm grass and, deeply content, our conversation roamed
from the minutiae of the research questions to which we wanted answers to the intractability of barriers to
conservation in Ethiopia to the allure of the Bale Mountains.
Simon Thirgood was an applied ecologist, born in Liberia in 1962 and brought up in Canada. His
professional work was built on a solid scientific foundation with a PhD from the University of Southampton
on the behavioural ecology of fallow deer and post-doctoral work, based out of the University of Cambridge,
on the mating system of black lechwe in Zambia. From 1992, the practical application of ecology grew in
his work, initially through the Joint Raptor Study which examined the interaction between the management
of moorlands in Scotland for driven grouse shooting and the conservation of birds of prey. This work
culminated in his first book, Birds of Prey and Red Grouse which he co-authored with Steve Redpath. His
interest in Ethiopia emerged through his relationship with Karen Laurenson and her work on diseases among
wild carnivores and domestic dogs in the Bale Mountains - as a key to understanding the disease threats to
Ethiopian wolves. Simon’s interest and work in conservation culminated in his appointment, with Karen, as
Programme Manager for the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). Simon, Karen and their young family were
based in the Serengeti and he was responsible for projects in Tanzania and Zambia. Simon also had significant
input into FZS projects in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa. Following two years in the Serengeti, Simon
was offered the position of Head of Ecology at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen. In
recognition of his abilities as an applied ecologist, he became one of the editors of the Journal of Applied
Ecology and, at this point, he edited his second book - People and Wildlife: Conflict or Co-existence (coedited
with Rosie Woodroffe and Alan Rabinowitz).
From 1995, when Simon first visited Ethiopia, his commitment to the country and the conservation
of its unique biodiversity and ecosystems grew. Throughout his career, he recognised the value of investing
time and energy in mentoring talented students and, as such, he supported or supervised three PhD Ethiopian
students (Anagaw Atickem, Anteneh Shimelis and Ermias Admasu) as well as other post-graduate students
from the Universities of Oxford and Addis Ababa. He was generous with his time and support of the students,
working with them through the questions they were setting out to answer and he became a role model for
many of these young people. He was also excited by the potential to seek answers to research questions in
Afroalpine ecosystems such as those in the Bale Mountains and any brief walk with him in the mountains
always led to questions being asked and hypotheses being proffered. He recognised the extraordinary value
and allure of the Bale Mountains and, with Karen, ensured that it became a key site for FZS’s work in Africa.
Simon’s untimely death in August 2009, while working to set up a project, funded by the Darwin
Initiative, to strengthen the community conservation work of the people in Guassa-Menz, means that his
contribution to science and conservation in Ethiopia will probably remain intangible, unmeasured. And yet
his influence and legacy will be profound, primarily through the people to whom he reached out and touched
with his energy, clarity of vision and thought, and his acerbic but always accurate evaluations of their work.
<strong>Walia</strong>-<strong>Special</strong> <strong>Edition</strong> on the Bale Mountains I