By Emily Wax
01/09/2006

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Below is an excerpt from the Washington Post:

On the expansive grounds of the National Palace, the official residence of Ethiopia's president, two malnourished cheetah cubs live as special guests.

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Many Ethiopians found the recent attention paid to the cheetah cubs ridiculous when this country is struggling with poverty, nearly a million people rely on food aid and a disputed election resulted in violence and thousands of political arrests.

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This Horn of Africa country was once home to some of the continent's largest populations of elephants, black rhinos and giraffes. But starting in ancient times, its wildlife population has been depleted for commercial gain.

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Ethiopia has few environmental activists, and its poaching laws are rarely enforced. Conservation policies routinely crumble as families kill rare goats or cut down trees just to stay alive.


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National parks have never been very popular here -- thousands of farmers were pushed off their land when Emperor Haile Selassie set them up during his reign from 1930 to 1974. During a civil war in the early 1990s, park property was looted, animals were killed for food and profit and many people moved back onto the parkland.

In 2004, about 2,000 families were forced to leave their homes in the grasslands of the Nechasar National Park in southern Ethiopia. They said they received no compensation from the park, which is being developed by the African Parks Foundation of the Netherlands in cooperation with the government, according to a report by Refugees International, "Ethiopia: The Human Cost of Tourist Dollars."

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Many Ethiopians found the recent attention paid to the cheetah cubs ridiculous when this country is struggling with poverty, nearly a million people rely on food aid and a disputed election resulted in violence and thousands of political arrests.