Deep in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia, wildlife workers trek up above 9,800 feet to save some of the world\u2019s most rare carnivores, Ethiopian wolves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s cold, tough work,\u201d says Eric Bedin, who leads the field monitoring team in its uphill battle.<\/p>\n
In this sparse, sometimes snowy landscape, the lanky and ginger-colored wolves (Canis simensis) reign as the region\u2019s apex predators. Yet the combined threats of rabies, canine distemper and habitat reduction have the animals cornered.<\/p>\n
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\nBedin and his colleagues, traveling by horse and on foot through dramatically shifting temperatures and weather, track these solitary hunters for weeks at a time. Team members know every wolf in most packs in these mountains. The team has vaccinated some wolves against rabies, only to have hopes dashed when the animals died of distemper months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys work their asses off to protect these wolves,\u201d says Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford who heads up the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, of which the field monitoring team is an integral part. Down the line, humans stand to benefit from all this work too.<\/p>\n
Sillero and his colleagues have been at this for 30 years. They\u2019ve seen four major outbreaks of rabies alone, each leaving dozens of carcasses across the highlands and cutting some populations by as much as 75 percent.<\/p>\n