diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 825fba16e07..7be5e34ccd7 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -109,6 +109,7 @@ Release 0.20.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-1368  HBASE-1279 broke the build
    HBASE-1264  Wrong return values of comparators for ColumnValueFilter
                (Thomas Schneider via Andrew Purtell)
+   HBASE-1374  NPE out of ZooKeeperWrapper.loadZooKeeperConfig
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1089  Add count of regions on filesystem to master UI; add percentage
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/zookeeper/HQuorumPeer.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/zookeeper/HQuorumPeer.java
index adc6bc2d13d..9d17b36f0b1 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/zookeeper/HQuorumPeer.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/zookeeper/HQuorumPeer.java
@@ -76,6 +76,9 @@ public class HQuorumPeer implements HConstants {
   public static Properties parseZooKeeperConfig() throws IOException {
     ClassLoader cl = HQuorumPeer.class.getClassLoader();
     InputStream inputStream = cl.getResourceAsStream(ZOOKEEPER_CONFIG_NAME);
+    if (inputStream == null) {
+      throw new IOException(ZOOKEEPER_CONFIG_NAME + " not found");
+    }
     return parseConfig(inputStream);
   }