After a first degree from Wondo Genet College of Forestry, Ethiopia, I worked in the Bale Mountains National Park as a Wildlife Expert. In 1989 I attended the College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania and at my return became the Warden of Omo National Park. In 1994 I completed an MSc in Conservation at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent. A Darwin Initiative project looking at the ecology of Ethiopian wolves and communal natural resource management practices in Menz provided the basis for my PhD at DICE which I completed in 2001.

I am the Country Representative of the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Ethiopia and work on the conservation of Afroalpine areas in the north of the country, where I oversee ecological monitoring, community-based conservation, and community-based tourism development activities. I work closely with Claudio Sillero and WildCRU’s Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP), overseeing their activities in northern Ethiopia.