Rabies threatens world's rarest dog
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Twenty animals out of 500 killed in past
month.
28 October 2003
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A rabies outbreak has hit the world's rarest dog, the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). Twenty animals have died in the past few weeks; more are expected to succumb.
The crisis is centred on the Bale Mountains national park in southeast Ethiopia, home to 300 of the 500 remaining wolves. From samples of dead animals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed the infection as rabies last Friday.
"We should be moving to vaccinate the wolves," says Stuart Williams, coordinator of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) in Addis Ababa. With government approval, this could begin next week, he says. Without vaccination, up to three-quarters of the animals could die, as happened during an outbreak in 1991, when the population dropped from around 450 to 120.
EWCP staff are combing the mountains for dead and sick animals. Since 1996, they have sought to protect the wolves by vaccinating domestic dogs within ten miles of the park. It looks as if an immigrant dog brought the disease, Williams says.
Farmers and their dogs enter wolf territory in August and September to graze livestock. This is also the wolves' breeding season; social contact spreads the disease.
Until now, the Ethiopian authorities have been reluctant to allow vaccination of wolves. They are wary of releasing the genetically modified vaccine. Officials are also cautious following bad publicity that surrounded a rabies vaccination programme for wild dogs in the Serengeti - the animals subsequently died out from distemper.
"We could arguably have prevented the current outbreak," says conservation biologist Claudio Sillero of the University of Oxford. "Now we'll have to do everything in a rush."
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The Ethiopian wolf, a relative of the grey wolf found in Europe, Asia and America, lives only the mountains of Ethiopia. In the past 50 years, disease, political instability, and the spread of agriculture have placed it at risk of extinction.
The population had only recently recovered from the last rabies outbreak. Disease seems to strike when populations rise above a density of one animal per square kilometre. In other words, the wolves are most vulnerable when they seem to be doing well.
"Six months ago we were complementing ourselves," says Sillero, who collaborates with the EWCP. It might be better, he adds, to try and stop wolf numbers from booming and busting, even if this means they do not reach their maximum: "As a manager, I'd rather have a lower stable state."