University of Pennsylvania Graduate Student blogs from the Ethiopian Simien Mountains

Blog by Noah SNYDER-MACKLER (NY Times)

My Ethiopian office is one of the few places in the world — all in Ethiopia — where one can find the gelada, the lammergeyer, the walia ibex and the Ethiopian wolf. Each of these species is listed as either threatened or endangered.

I have been fortunate — or rather lucky — enough to see one wolf, some lammergeyers, a few dozen walia ibex and hundreds of gelada. Naturally, my colleagues and I aren’t satisfied with seeing just one species every day. We need variety. We need hobbies. So we spend some of our free time looking for other animals. Looking for and photographing animals during the day captures only half of the wildlife in the habitat. We have seen some of the nocturnal Simien animals (when you gotta go, you gotta go, even in the middle of the night), but we are sure that we missed the majority of the nocturnal animals. More on NY Times