Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: May 26 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hello!  This is Rosemary here - the new wild dog project manager.  Sadly Mike has resigned from the project, so apologies to all of you who have been enjoying his witty posts… I’ll do my best in his stead.  I am assured his resignation is nothing to do with my arrival (!), but I shall certainly miss him (not least because I now have to figure out this blog system for myself…). I also apologise for the delay in getting a posting out - we had some problems signing in when the login details were changed.

Anyway, let me introduce myself briefly first, and then I’ll give you an update on the project.  I grew up in Zimbabwe and after finishing university (in England), I worked for a few years in Botswana, and then for 4 years in Kenya whilst doing my PhD.  When I was offered the job of running this wild dog conservation project, I jumped at the chance.  Not only did it get me back ‘home’ to Zim, but it sounded like a great opportunity to do really worthwhile conservation work. Not to mention being based in the most stunning area….

Rosemary tracking wild dogs in the Save Valley Conservancy
 

Anyway, I’ve been out in Zim for a few weeks now, and am enjoying getting the project up and running again at full capacity.  We have our new vehicle - which is currently being kitted out for the bush with bull bars, a long range fuel tank and a safari seat - and a motorbike which our scouts use for looking for spoor on the roads (saves a lot of fuel).   

Rueben and Misheck on the project motorbike

The most exciting news is that a couple of days before I came up to Harare to get the work done on the car, we found our first wild dog den for this year!  We suspect it belongs to a pack we call the Jacana pack but we’ll have to get a better look at some of the dogs to confirm that.  The pups are still too young to be out at the moment, but hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to show you some pictures of the puppies.  Wild dogs have an average litter size of about 10 pups, so the dens can get quite busy! 

The time in Harare waiting for the car is going ok - I managed to find some diesel coupons (which was a relief, otherwise I’d be stuck in Harare for ever more…), get our radios programmed, pick up some uniforms for our scouts and collect our dart gun. Oh, and get hold of some money and groceries, which is always useful.  Otherwise it’s just a case of catching up on the never-ending paperwork - at least being car-less in Harare makes me do it! 

Anyhow, I’ll leave this blog here for today, because I want to check it all posts properly before getting too carried away.  I’ll try and keep updates fairly regular from now on, so keep reading…the denning season is here now and it’s such an exciting time for the project.

Cheers for now,

Rosemary 

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