Eye On Africa – Redae Tesfai

Join the Africa Center community for the next installment of our Guest Speaker Series: Redae Tesfai. On Tuesday, November 15 at 4pm in Johnson Hall Room 108, Tesfai will discuss his work studying an important but rare population of African wild ass that exists on the Messir Plateau in the Danakil Desert of Eritrea. Because they are the world’s most endangered equid, subject to habitat loss, competition with livestock, and hunting, it was important to assess this rare population’s potential viability. By exploring population growth rates using an age-structing matrix model, Tesfai found that the greatest threat to population viability seems to come from livestock impacts on the resources that limit the African wild ass population size under anticipated climate change scenarios. Attend this guest lecture to learn more about how the presence of domestic herbivores, particularly cattle, may negatively impact the nutrient level of wild equids and threaten the survival of the critically endangered African wild ass in the arid ecosystem.