Across Africa, national policies that established protected areas (PAs) typically limited local use of wildlife and other resources. Over time, these policies have raised tensions with rural communities and today threaten to undermine conservation goals. This article examines community-PA relationships at four important sites in Ethiopia-a country of rich tradition with an unusual colonial past. Using focus groups and household surveys, we found that despite local tensions, most respondents held positive views toward wildlife and nearby PAs. Factors influencing positive views included receiving PA benefits, good relations with PA staff, higher education levels, being older, having a large family, diversified income sources, owning fewer livestock, and fewer incidents of wildlife conflicts. In contrast, the devolved control of PAs from federal to regional levels has not influenced community-PA relations as intended. Our results suggest that relations could be improved through involving communities in co-management arrangements, honoring resource tenure and use rights, providing benefits, and implementing conservation education programs.

A better understanding of common property resource management systems and institutions is important for conservation and development, as fortressbased approaches towards conservation are increasingly questioned. This paper examines how an indigenous resource management system has operated and supported the protection of an Afro-alpine area in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia. The community was mainly concerned to regulate their own use of natural resources, including collection of firewood and thatch, and grazing by livestock. The original common property resource management system operated under a previously undescribed indigenous institution known as the Qero system, which was enforced through sanctions and punishments imposed by the community. The Qero system was suspended following the Agrarian Reform in 1975, which resulted in the breakdown of the traditional land tenure and land rights systems within Ethiopia. In the Central Highlands, user rights and management responsibility shifted to include formerly marginalized groups. Nevertheless, the common property management system has shown sufficient resilience to withstand these changes and pressures, and is still functioning with defined user groups and byelaws to regulate resource use and manage the area. Nevertheless, attitudes to current and future management are polarized between former and present managers of the common property regime.

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is a very rare, endangered, endemic species surviving in isolated mountain pockets in the Ethiopian highlands, with nearly 50% of the global population living outside protected areas. In this paper we compare the ecology and behaviour of an Ethiopian wolf population living in Guassa, a communally managed area in the Central Highlands, with that of the Bale Mountains National Park in the Southern Highlands. Ethiopian wolves live at lower density in Guassa (0.2 ± 0.05/km 2 ) than in the Bale Mountains, but giant molerats (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus), the main prey for Ethiopian wolves in Bale Mountains, do not occur in the Central Highlands. Faecal analysis identified nine prey categories across wet and dry seasons common to both populations. In total, rodents accounted for 88% of prey volume in wolf diets. Home-range size was positively related to pack size (r 2 = 0.85) and there was no difference in mean home-range sizes in both areas. In Guassa, however, wolves spent less time in the presence than in the absence of humans, but wolves spent similar amounts of time in the presence and absence of cattle. These findings suggest wolves can cope with, or adapt to, the presence of livestock and people in communally managed areas.