The eastern and western highlands of Ethiopia, separated by a part of the African Great Rift Valley, comprise a diverse mixture of alpine grasslands and heathlands, deserts and rich woodlands and as a result is home to a rich small mammal assemblage of 84 species, many of which are endemic to the region. What is distinctive about this fauna is the family-level diversity and with 12 rodent and eulipotyphlan families occurring here it tops all of the SMSG Key Regions. In terms of numbers, it is dominated by murid rodents and shrews from the genus Crocidura, but it is also home to representatives of some families that don’t occur in the other SMSG Key Regions. These include Speke's gundi (or Speke's pectinator Pectinator spekei) - the gundi family is a group of small, stocky African desert-dwelling rodents - and the Lesser Egyptian Jerboa Jaculus jaculus from the Jerboa family. Thirteen globally threatened species occur in the Ethiopian highlands, of which are 7 Crocidura shrews. Four AZE-trigger small mammal species occur here: the Critically Endangered Harenna Shrew Crocidura harenna, Yalden's Desmomys Desmomys yaldeni, the Giant Mole Rat Tachyoryctes macrocephalus and, one of the SMSG’s Key Species, the Critically Endangered Ethiopian Water Mouse Nilopegamys plumbeus which has not been seen since the 1920s.

The Ethiopia's highlands are a densely populated rural area resulting in great pressure on remaining natural habitats from expanding and shifting agriculture, fires, and overgrazing. Barley cultivation and grazing at high elevations threaten grasslands and erinaceous heathlands. Less than 5% of the original forest cover of the Ethiopian highlands remains today and this is highly fragmented. The Harenna forest is increasingly being utilized to supply construction material, fuel and charcoal for the expanding urban population in this region.

The Bale Mountains National Park protected some of this region but is used heavily by local people and their livestock. Controlled hunting areas and wildlife reserves offer very little, if any, protection for native flora and fauna. The proposed Termaber-Wufwasha-Ankober conservation area in the western highlands would protect much of the ecoregion's biodiversity, as would the proposed areas for protecting the forests further to the southwest.

This region’s small mammals are extremely under-surveyed with the globally threatened species and four Data Deficient species urgently needing basic surveys of distribution and habitat associations.