Simien Mountains National Park
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How it came to be
The Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia were carved out of the plateau by erosion over a very long time. The northern escarpment runs for about 35 km, with cliffs up to 1,500 m high, and the massif includes Ras Dashen, the highest point in Ethiopia.
The cliffs are home to the walia ibex, a wild goat found nowhere else, along with the gelada baboon and the Ethiopian wolf, considered the rarest canid in the world. The national park was set up in 1969 by Clive Nicol and was inscribed in 1978, among the first sites on the World Heritage List.
At inscription about 80 percent of the park was used for settlement, farming and grazing. After some animal populations declined it was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1996, and it was removed in 2017 once they had stabilised. The resettlement of residents has been criticised as green colonialism, replacing local livelihoods with an eco-tourism economy.
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