Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Hi all,

During denning season we have lots of camera trap photos to sort through and label, and often we come across some interesting photos of other animals. We have seen photos of zebra, elephant, porcupine and warthog to name a few. Many people believe that wild dog dens drive away their game, but it is clear from these photos that this is not the case!

Aardvark

Banded mongoose

Civet

Warthog

Zebra

Becky

Hi all,

We have found a new pack, made up of three females from the Mapari pack and two males from the Teddy pack. One male and one female were first seen together on the 19^th July and about two weeks ago they were spotted again with the other three dogs.

Baloo – a male from the Teddy pack

Roxy – a female from the Mapari pack

The two males playing

Dogs playing

They don’t appear to be denning, but hopefully they will next year. We will also try to collar one of them when we find them again.

Becky

Hi all,

I recently mentioned a new den we had found in the south of the conservancy. The den belongs to a new breeding pack of 3 females and 1 male who have been named the Mambira pack (after the kopje nearby their den). All 4 dogs are from the original Bedford group. The 3 females split from the Bedford group a few months ago, and the male had left with a large group of males to form the Bedford Bachelors. He then re-joined with the 3 females in June. I managed to make a trip down there and change the camera trap, and the pups have finally emerged! The photos show there to be 5 pups, still very young, but all look healthy and very cute!

Claw spotting the camera trap

5 young pups

5 young pups

The den is on Senuko ranch which is run by a couple who are very fond of wild dogs. They help us to keep track of the dogs in the south of the conservancy and are thrilled the dogs have chosen to den on their ranch. They visit the den at least once a day and have had the privelege of seeing the alpha female feeding the pups. After all the deaths in the Mavericks pack it is extremely exciting to find this new breeding pack in the south, and we hope these pups all survive through to adulthood to help repopulate the south.

Becky

Hi all,

Misheck, one of the scouts, recently found a new den on Chishakwe; it is a small cave on the side of a kopje (a rocky hill). This is the first den we’ve found this year on this ranch we’re based on, so it was very exciting!

Mystery den

Originally we suspected this den belonged to a new pack of between 3 and 5 dogs who have been spotted frequently on Chishakwe and around the neighbouring ranches. Misheck was lucky enough to see 1 pup and estimated it to be nearly 2 months old already, so we assumed they had been denning for a while undetected.

A few days later, however, reports were coming in of 10 dogs closeby to Chishakwe headquarters and sightings of a similar number of dogs close to the new den. At the same time, we visited the Star pack den again (denning on the large kopje outside the conservancy) and realised that they had left that den about 2 days earlier. Everything seemed to point towards the new den on Chishakwe belonging to the Star pack (this would be their second den). In past years the Star pack have frequently chosen to den on Chishakwe, and they also seem to favour kopjes. The pup Misheck saw and the Star pack pups also seem to be of a similar age.

However, despite all this, we are still not entirely sure! Camera traps only show a couple of photos, and there are only ever 2 pups present. Rosemary also managed to take a photo of the pups in the hole, but again, there are only 2. If this is the Star pack, they have gone from 11 pups to 2, so we sincerly hope that is not the case!

Photo from camera trap showing 1 pup and another inside the hole

Photo taken by Rosemary showing only 2 pups in the hole

Even more mysterious is the fact that none of the camera traps have shown any adult dogs. Either the camera traps are not placed where the adults move, or there are no adults!! The latter is highly unlikely, but perhaps it is a small pack with very few adults, and we have just been very unlucky with placing the camera traps. The Star pack had 12 adults at last count, so if it is this pack, we would expect to see some adults on the camera traps.

All in all, we are still very perplexed! We’ll be making frequent visits to this new den, hoping to see some dogs which will help identify the pack, and to keep checking the camera traps. We’ll keep you posted!

Becky

Hello,

Helen here. I have been out visiting several primary schools which border onto the conservancy talking to teachers about the environmental education project. Although it is now the winter holidays, at each school I visited, several teachers met me to chat further. Many of the teachers had heard about the wild dogs and knew that they were endangered here in Zimbabwe. They were very keen to visit the conservancy themselves and see the wildlife here as well as hopefully see wild dogs, maybe at a den. It is great that the local schools and communities are so interested and enthusiastic in learning more about what goes on here.

Teachers from local primary school

Smiling school children

The  school term starting in September is full of national exams so we shall hopefully start the programme properly next year with a teacher training workshop on environmental education here on Chishakwe. We are looking to initiate a long term programme of education and school visits which will benefit the people living close to the conservancy as well as wildlife such as the wild dog and rhino which live in Save Valley.

Helen

Hi folks,

I’ve recently come back from 10 days in Gonarezhou, where I was conducting a large carnivore call-up survey, in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and Frankfurt Zoological Society.  I’ll tell you all about this in a later post, but during the time we were doing this work – focussed mainly on lions and hyenas – we also made significant progress with our understanding of the wild dog population in this large, remote wilderness area.

We were already aware of the existence of a pack in the very south of the park, and thanks to the exceptional tracking skills of Rueben, and a Parks scout Julius, they managed to locate the den of this pack.  This was extremely exciting, and is (to our knowledge) the first time anyone has located a wild dog den inside the park.  The den is about 3km off the nearest road, over ridges and through rivers and its find is a real credit to Rueben and Julius.  We have put some camera traps at the den, and I will post photos from them once I have been back to change the batteries.  In the meantime, we know there are at least 6 adults and 7 pups, although I think the pack is larger than that.

The den site of the Mabalauta Pack

Just as excitingly, we also found evidence of another successfully breeding pack in a totally unexpected area of the park, where we have never seen any evidence of wild dogs before.  We saw one wild dog one night (when we were doing the calls for lions), and the next day followed the tracks and came across an area with plenty of old and fresh adult and puppy tracks suggesting a recent den in the area.

Rosemary & Rueben looking at tracks by a water pan we came across

As you can see from the photo below however, the long grass in the area hampered tracking efforts, and we never found the den, but Rueben estimates about 10 adults and 8 pups from the tracks, which is fantastic.

Long grass in the area of the Chitanga Pack den

This was all very encouraging, and suggests Gonarezhou may in fact be an important conservation unit for the wild dogs.

Rosemary

I’m very sad to have to report that both the pups that we rescued from the Mavericks pack died in the last couple of days.  We had started to hope they were going to make it, having remained fit and healthy-looking for so long after the rest of the pack died, but unfortunately they succumbed to rabies in the end.

The pups were extremely well cared for at the Painted Dog Conservation Project’s rehab facility, by their fantastic staff Xmas Mpofu, Mkhalalawa Moyo, and Washington Moyo, but unfortunately once a dog has contracted rabies there is nothing that can be done for them.  I’m sure they will be as sad as us that the pups didn’t make it.

So once again rabies has wiped out an entire breeding pack of these endangered animals, and we continue the battle against it by trying to find a suitable vaccination strategy for the wild dogs themselves, as well as trying to keep the domestic dog population rabies free.

We do have lots of other positive news though, and I’ll leave it to Becky to write the next  post with some cheerier news.

Rosemary

Hi all,

Everything seems to have been a bit overshadowed by the terrible rabies outbreak. In situations like this it’s important to remember that, despite these awful deaths, the Save Valley Conservancy still hosts a globally significant population of wild dogs, and these numbers increase during the denning season. Amidst this rabies outbreak its encouraging to see the Star pack pups thriving, and we are hopeful they will continue to do so. Here are a few photos of this litter, now confirmed as 11 pups!

11 pups

Pups with yearling

Pups playing

Pups

Cute pup

The Bedford pack have now stopped denning, and their 3 pups are getting bigger and bolder each day. It’s possible the alpha female may have a second litter, so we’ll keep you posted about that.

The Maera pack may also have stopped denning, as they have now left their most recent den and the 9 pups are of the right age now.

We’ve also found a new den in the south of the conservancy; very promising, as the Mavericks pack was the only known breeding pack down there! The pups have not emerged from this den yet, but I will post some news of that den early next week when we know more.

Needless to say we will be keeping a very close eye on all packs following this rabies outbreak, but particularly those in the south of the conservancy who may have been in contact with the Mavericks pack.

Becky

Hi everyone,

I thought it might be time to introduce myself. I’m Helen and I’m here with the Lowveld Wild Dog Project helping to establish a conservation education programme.

Helen looking for tracks and signs at a water hole

We are mainly concentrating on educating people about the importance of maintaining biodiversity. We’ll initially be focusing on wild dogs, as there seems to be so many misconceptions about these beautiful creatures. We are already working closely with the primary schools bordering the conservancy, and I have already been to visit one of these schools, where I helped to judge a food-web poster project. The children were very excited and enthusiastic about leaning more about their surroundings and the natural world. The students who created the ten best posters will be coing to visit the conservancy in September for the day, and they will get to see wildlife up-close rather than just on paper.

One of the winners of the food-web poster project

At the moment there are many ideas for this education programme including a bush school and an education centre. During my time here I hope to implement some of these ideas and establish a mutually beneficial relationship between local communities and the conservancy.

Helen

Hi folks,

It’s very easy to get tied up with a single issue when dealing with something like this rabies outbreak, but we are still working at all levels of wild dog conservation whilst this is going on.

Some of you may remember a post a while ago, highlighting the threat to wild dogs from trafficking.  This is where wild dogs are taken illegally from the wild, bred in captivity and then sent to zoos and breeding centers in China, Korea etc, where they are (usually) kept in absolutely horrific circumstances.  See this link for the undercover video of this story, made thanks to the efforts of Painted Dog Conservation Project in Hwange.

Wild dogs are currently not listed on CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), due to a mis-perception that there is not trade in the species.  However, we are hoping to get this situation changed at the next CITES meeting, and PDC has a petition out to help us achieve this.  Please help us by signing the petition at www.painteddogsoncites.org.

Thank you for your support

Rosemary