SENKELE— In the tall-grass woodland of the Great Rift Valley in southern Ethiopia lies the Senkele Swayne’s Hartebeest Sanctuary. The area has long been home to the Swayne’s Hartebeest, an endemic subspecies of antelope known locally as Qorkey.

Named after H.G.C. Swayne (1860-1940), a British expeditionary who first identified the species in Somaliland in 1891,  it would have become extinct due to disease and poaching if not for its habitat in Ethiopia.

Senkele Swayne’s Hartebeest Sanctuary (SSHS) was established in 1971 during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I. Today it rests on 58 square kilometers (22 square miles) of land shared between Oromia and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) regions of the country, home largely to the Sidama people.

Records show that up until the start of the 1990s, there were more than 3,000 Swayne’s hartebeests (Alcelaphus buselaphus swaynei) in the wildlife sanctuary. But the situation was about to turn bleak for the long-faced, reddish-brown mammal that once flourished here.

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