The Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP) is a protected area of approximately 2,200 square kilometers and is located 400 km southeast of Addis Ababa in Oromia National Regional State. This park belongs to the Bale-Arsi massif, which forms the western section of the southeastern Ethiopian highlands.
The park encompasses the largest area at 3000m above sea level in Africa. The highest peak in the BMNP, Tullu Dimtuu, sits at an altitude of 4377m above sea level and is the second highest peak in Ethiopia. The park includes an Afro-alpine plateau more than 3500m above sea level, which is the largest area of Afro-alpine habitat on the African continent, as well as a major section of moist tropical forest, the second largest in Ethiopia.
The Bale Mountains National Park has a lot to offer, not the least of which is its spectacular scenery. Its high mountains, sweeping valleys, dramatic escarpment, and wide expanses of forests provide visitors with a diversity of vistas unique to the Ethiopian highlands. The Bale Mountains ecosystem and its associated diversity of habitats are an internationally recognized centre for endemism and biodiversity, with 25% of mammals and 6% of birds in the area endemic to the country. There are also a number of rare endemic amphibians. In fact, it has been estimated that more mammal species would go extinct if the habitats of the Bale Mountains were to disappear than if any other area of equivalent size on the globe were to disappear.
The area contains the entire global population of the Giant Molerat (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus), the largest global populations of endangered Ethiopian Wolves (Canis simensis) and Mountain Nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni). Further, the Bale Mountains harbor 40% of the 1,000 known species of medicinal plants in Ethiopia and the largest remaining natural stand of wild coffee genetic stock. Half of the park is montane forest, including both cloud forest and moist tropical forest – the second largest in Ethiopia and the origin of Ethiopian wild coffee.
The mountains and forests of this ecosystem are also critically important water catchment areas for southern Ethiopia and western Somalia, supplying perennial water to 12 million people in the lowlands of the two countries
