The most extensive and tallest range in southern Ethiopia, the Bale Mountains rise eastward from the Rift Valley and northwest of the arid Somali Region to an altitude of 4,377m at Tullo Deemtu, Ethiopia’s second-highest peak. The Bale Massif comprises a vast lava plateau studded with half a dozen volcanic cones that rise to altitudes of greater than 4,200m.
The Bale Mountains are named after a once powerful Muslim state that was founded in the area in the 11th century, conquered by the Christian Emperor Amda Tsion in the early 14th century, and reverted to Muslim rule under Ahmed Gragn in the mid 16th century. The original Muslim state was renowned for producing high-quality cotton cloth, and also enjoyed a strong trade relationship with the Red Sea port of Zeila, in present-day Somaliland 500km to the northeast. It was also the base of the 13th-century Arabian missionary Sheikh Hussein, a rather mysterious figure who is widely regarded to be the most important medieval proselytiser of Islam in the southern Ethiopian interior, and whose shrine in the lowlands about 100km northeast of the massif ranks among the country’s most important Islamic pilgrimage sites. In 1942, the name of the former Muslim state was revived with the creation of Bale Province, which was centred on the eponymous mountains and governed from the town of Gobe prior to being split between the federal regions of Oromia and Somali in the administrative reshuffle of 1995.
Bale protects a highly diverse flora. More than 1,300 species of flowering plants have been collected in BMNP, including 160 Ethiopian endemic species and 23 that are unique to the park. One of the most common and distinctive plants throughout the Bale region is the red-hot poker, an aloe-like shrub of the endemic African genus Kniphofia, identified by its spear-shaped orange, red and yellow flowers.
The Bale Mountains were one of the last parts of Africa to attract zoological exploration. The mountain nyala, for instance, remained unknown to science until 1908, despite its considerable bulk, fearless disposition and relative abundance in suitable habitats, and even then the type specimen collected by Ivor Buxton was shot in the mountains of Arsi rather than Bale. The earliest recorded visitor to the Sanetti Plateau was the German naturalist Carl van Erlanger, who traversed it in 1899 and discovered the giant mole-rat in the process.
Bizarrely, no further expedition to the upper slopes of Bale was documented between then and the late 1950s, when the Finnish geographer Helmer Smels made several visits to the area, discovering – among other things – that the mountains hosted a previously unsuspected population of the rare Ethiopian wolf. The favoured habitat of the Ethiopian wolf, as well as that of the giant mole-rats that form its main prey, are high-altitude moorlands such as the Sanetti and Web Valley. The wolves also sometimes stray into the juniper woodland around Dinsho, but large mammals more characteristic of this habitat include the endemic mountain nyala and Menelik’s bushbuck, as well as warthog and bohor reedbuck.
The African Birding Club recently named BMNP the continent’s fourth-best birding site, due to the exceptional wealth of rare and localised species among the 310 recorded.
Hosting exceptional alpine scenery along with a diverse fauna, which includes the world’s largest population of the endangered Ethiopian wolf and mountain Nyala in addition to a wealth of rare bird species, the Bale Mountains National Park is among the best natural tourist attractions in Ethiopia and is guaranteed to please anyone seeking to enjoy the taste of Ethiopia’s natural elegance.
Article By: Kaleab Ayenew
