25 Birr Mountain Nyala

Issued under the Derg military junta, which had deposed Haile Selassie in 1974, this coin was part of a conservation-themed series produced in coordination with the World Wildlife Fund. The Mountain Nyala — a large antelope endemic to the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia — had been granted international attention as a threatened species only in the 1960s, after Western zoologists formally described its precarious population status.

The .925 silver version sits alongside a gold issue from the same series, both struck for collector export rather than domestic circulation. The Derg's embrace of wildlife coinage was largely a foreign-currency exercise.