Int’l Organizations Keen to Enhance Cooperation with Ethiopia on Wildlife Conservation

Addis Ababa January 25/2019 International organizations working in wildlife conservation expressed their keen interest to enhance their support to Ethiopia’s efforts in improving its conservation system.

Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Austrian Development Corporation are among the international organizations that are working with Ethiopia in wildlife conservation.

Dr. Justin Irvine, Country Director of Frankfurt Zoological Society told ENA that strengthening the conversation system of wildlife resources is essential for Ethiopia, a country that has astonishing biodiversity and landscapes.

Despite the amazing natural endowments of biodiversity and wildlife, there is an increasing dependence of the population on these resources, thus pausing a challenge on the wild life resources of the country, he said.

Irvine said “As an international organization working on biodiversity and wildlife conservation, our organization is ready to try to help Ethiopia’s efforts to conserve the biodiversity and wildlife.”

The Society wants to engage in supporting the conservation process by developing people’s livelihood around the parks so that they can diversify their farm productions outside of the parks, he explained.

He further stated that “if the life standard of the people around the park is improved they will be encouraged to protect the biodiversity and the wildlife in their respective localities”.

“We need to have an improved partnership working with different government departments across agriculture and natural resource management, we need to link the federal remedial solutions with regional and zonal authorities because those linkages could be more effective to bring vital changes in wildlife conservation for the future”, Dr Justin elaborated.

Austrian Development Cooperation is the other development organization that has been working with Ethiopia on natural resources management since the past ten years.

According to Stefab Hlavac, Head of the Cooperation, his office is engaged in conservation works on Semein Mountains National park and wants to expand the practice.

“We want to continue this contribution not only to other parks and people living around the woredas, but also institutions like Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission to see how the Ethiopian government could engage in best practices in preserving wildlife”, he said.

The Head said that the Cooperation is planning to do research on the current status of Ethiopia’s wildlife and parks in order to introduce strong programs that can improve the situation.

According to Ethiopian Biodiversity Institution, the country has over 6,000 species of plants, 277 species of mammals, out of which 35 are endemic species, and more than 800 species of birds.