15 June 2007
James Malcolm on leaving
It has been a privilege and a pleasure to act as Field Coordinator for EWCP for the last two years, but now it is time to leave (a sentiment heartily endorsed by Claudio Sillero my long suffering supervisor in Oxford). I will return to my regular job teaching Conservation Biology to undergraduates in California. (I intend to devote half the course to dealing with obfuscatory bureaucrats.)
I think it is time to leave as the march of technology has reached the field station in Bale. A telephone has been connected this week and mobile coverage is coming soon. The idea of having my breakfast and dinner interrupted by calls from angry girlfriends and supervisors is not my idea of fun. (However I endorse the coming of hot showers.)
I am delighted to hand over to Dr.Graham Hemson, who is as funny as he is competent. He will steer EWCP through whatever shoals lie ahead.
Two looming problems are potatoes and global warming. Potato cultivation has taken over the Bale Mountains in the last twenty years and already extends above 3600m. Although Ethiopian wolves can coexist with cows, sheep and goats, their habitat is irreversibly destroyed by ploughing, and potatoes in other parts of the world are cultivated above 4000m, the upper limit of the wolves’ range. The high afro-alpine moorlands, the wolves’ prime habitat, could be overtaken by sub-alpine vegetation if global warming intensifies.
However, there is a mood of optimism in Bale. A new General Management Plan for the Bale Mountains National Park may yet guide the park so that it realizes its potential as a conservation area of global significance with the Ethiopian wolf as a flagship. A new tarmac road may bring the tourists that have been promised for the last thirty years.
Good luck of EWCP and the Bale Mountains.
James Malcolm
I think it is time to leave as the march of technology has reached the field station in Bale. A telephone has been connected this week and mobile coverage is coming soon. The idea of having my breakfast and dinner interrupted by calls from angry girlfriends and supervisors is not my idea of fun. (However I endorse the coming of hot showers.)
I am delighted to hand over to Dr.Graham Hemson, who is as funny as he is competent. He will steer EWCP through whatever shoals lie ahead.
Two looming problems are potatoes and global warming. Potato cultivation has taken over the Bale Mountains in the last twenty years and already extends above 3600m. Although Ethiopian wolves can coexist with cows, sheep and goats, their habitat is irreversibly destroyed by ploughing, and potatoes in other parts of the world are cultivated above 4000m, the upper limit of the wolves’ range. The high afro-alpine moorlands, the wolves’ prime habitat, could be overtaken by sub-alpine vegetation if global warming intensifies.
However, there is a mood of optimism in Bale. A new General Management Plan for the Bale Mountains National Park may yet guide the park so that it realizes its potential as a conservation area of global significance with the Ethiopian wolf as a flagship. A new tarmac road may bring the tourists that have been promised for the last thirty years.
Good luck of EWCP and the Bale Mountains.
James Malcolm
# posted by Claudio Sillero @ 15.6.07 
