I write this blog rather bleary eyed after having been kept up all night by the sound of neighbouring villagers bashing drums and cracking whips in an attempt to keep elephants out of their maize fields. This time of year, the grass in the bush starts to turn yellow and elephants switch from being primarily grazers to browsers coincides with the time when crops like maize are ripening. During this time, elephants develop a real taste for crops and local farmers have their hands full as a result (as suggested by the pic above [photo by Trent Binford]). Anyway, back to the issue in hand…the wild dog project. Excitingly, we have at last taken delivery of the new field vehicle. It has taken three years of fund raising to enable us to buy this and the team is ecstatic. After years of heading out into the bush in a 36 year old land rover with the constant feeling that we were about to break down, we can now focus purely on the job in hand: conserving wild dogs in the area. Between the death of Steve the 36 year old land rover, and the delivery of the new car, we had a short hiatus in our field work efforts. During that time, we lost track somewhat of where the different dog packs are. Now we face the challenging task of tracking them down again. We have two months until the denning season begins, during which time we need to get a really good idea of where all the nine packs are moving within the conservancy, otherwise we have no chance of finding the dens. Finding the dens is crucial in terms of enabling us to count the dogs, to determine how many pups are born, and this year, to dart at least one dog in each pack to attach a radio collar. Mike and Ruben, featured in this photo will be doing most of the field work, and I will be handing the writing of the blog over to Mike as he will be the lucky one that gets to experience the day to day excitement of working in the bush. Mike is the project manager and Ruben the head tracker. However, I will still be on hand to answer any questions that anyone may have about biological or science issues.
Donations made here are
Mar 15th Cathy A USD 80.00
6 Comments
Good luck with your work, and I look forward to know any up date about your interesting research, thank you!
My, that is a spiffy new vehicle. Good luck finding all the packs and I look forward to photos and reports. Thank you!
s.
Does it help to just look for herds of Impala and Kudu, might the dogs be in these likely areas?
Hi Sheryl, F.J and Theresa,
The last few days we have been out and about looking for the dogs. We radio in the anti poaching game scouts first thing in the morning to request sightings of dogs and then head out to the scene of the most recent one and try to follow the dogs. This isnt easy, as the dogs are so mobile. Furstratingly, the only time we have come close to the dogs in the last few days was yesterday when I ran into a pack on my evening jog!! I run with my border collie, and I was struck by just how huge the wild dogs are by comparison!! Thankfully, the wild dogs didnt see the collie, otherwise who knows how they would have reacted!
Theresa, to answer your question, in our area there are impala and kudu all over and their presence isnt a good indicator of the presence of dogs. The only option is to follow up sightings, find spoor and then track. This denning season (starting in May), we hope to attach radio collars which will make our job of finding the packs much much easier. At the moment, we only have 2 packs collared, of nine.
Sorry about that Peter, I was hoping that would narrow your search a bit. What about the use of play backs, would that help at all? PS very glad your collie didn’t get in the mix! I’m guessing he is well trained to your commands.
Good grief. Seeing wild animals in the actual wild like that would give me a fatal fright. My dog would’ve barked her fool head off, I’m afraid.
s.