Wild coffee and rare parrots in the Abyssinian highlands

THERE it is! I told you!” the smallholder whispered triumphantly to the project ranger, as a yellow-fronted parrot (Poicephalus flavifrons) poked its head out of its nest cavity in a large tree. This was doubly good news, first because the parrots were breeding, and second because this modest farmer was responding to the project’s conservation message within the local communities.

This was happening in the Kafa Biosphere Reserve (KBR) in south-west Ethiopia, home to one of the country’s last natural highland forest areas, a habitat rich in wildlife. Its species diversity includes 300 mammals, 260 birds and almost 5,000 varieties of plants, including wild