Seven Ethiopian Wolves in One Morning

I'm a wildlife biologist. I had published papers on Ethiopian wolves — on their diet, their territory, their alarmingly low genetic diversity. I had never seen one in the wild. That is the absurdity of the field: you can know a species completely on paper and never once meet it in person.

The Sanetti Plateau is 4,000 metres above sea level, a wide empty moorland that feels less like Africa and more like the surface of another planet. We drove in darkness, and the guide, a man who has walked these slopes for twelve years, said almost nothing. In the back of the 4x4, I pressed my face to the cold window like a child.

6:04am

The first wolf appeared from behind a rock at 6:04am. I wrote the time in my notebook without thinking. A moment later a second, then a third, then more than I could count in real-time — seven wolves total, gathering in the golden low light of the plateau, hunting the giant mole-rats that are almost their entire diet. Our guide, twelve years in this place, had never seen seven in one morning. He was crying.

The Ethiopian wolf is Africa's most endangered carnivore. Fewer than 500 adults survive, almost all confined to the highlands of Bale and the Simien — a population on the knife's edge.

I spent three more days on the Sanetti Plateau after that first morning. I didn't see a single wolf. That is how conservation works — it is not a reward system, it is a gift economy. The morning they gave me is the one I will spend the rest of my career trying to protect.