Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 30 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Just a quick update on the packs.  The Nyarushanga pack is doing well and their second litter is still doing fine.  The Mapari pack which we thought was only 4 adults and 6 pups has now finished denning, and when we found them yesterday, we saw 6 adults and 7 pups!  So that’s good news.  The Maera pack adults are doing well; we saw all 11 of them the other day, but they are sadly down to only 3 pups now, after having started with at least 6…. They appear to be two from one litter and one from a later litter.

The Bedford Pack is proving hard to see, as they like to rest on top of hills so we have to walk to find them, and they tend to be very wary of people on foot.  We located them today by using the collars but couldnt see them… they ran down the other side of the hill as we got up.  We have 3 collared individuals in that pack, but were only picking up the signal from 2 of the collars.  Racoon, the young female collared dog either isn’t with the pack anymore, or her collar is broken.  We really need to see them to confirm that.  Hopefully it’s either just the collar malfunctioning, or the pack has split and she is somewhere else with other dogs.  We’ll keep looking for her.

The Mavericks pack in the south is doing OK, but we didnt have any luck removing the snare from the young female.  It appears as though it may have come off itself though, and she is doing well.  The collared male is still limping badly, so we’ll keep trying to dart him to treat the wound when an opportunity arises.  It’s possible the alpha female in that pack is pregnant too, which would be very exciting, although extremely late to start denning.  I’ll keep you posted.

We are also getting reports of other packs and spend much of our time trying to locate these.  It has been reported that one of the females of an unkonwn pack in the north is also pregnant, so watch this space…

Will be going to Harare for a few days soon, and will post again after that,

Rosemary 

3 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 25 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Just a very quick update on the Nyarushanga pack, where the secretive Mina is the Alpha female…  We got the photos back from the camera traps we put up at the den last week and, incredibly, they show a second litter of pups at that den!!  So not only is this very small pack successfully rearing 6 pups (which was impressive enough), but they have at least 3 pups from a second litter, who are only about 6 weeks old.  Amazing. 

We were wondering why they hadn’t moved from the den yet, as the other pups must be almost big enough to move on now, but clearly that’s why.

Here’s a picture from the camera trap showing one of the big pups with one of the new littlies, and below the mother of the new litter with 3 of the new pups.

I’m currently in the south of the conservancy, trying to dart and de-snare that female with the snare around her neck.  The pack is incredibly skittish though, so it’s tough, but hopefully we’ll get her soon.  The male that had the snare around the waist that Lindsay removed is doing well, and the wound is healing nicely.

Back soon,

Rosemary

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 22 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi all,

I’ve had a request in the comments section from Emma for some information on wild dog measurements, specifically weights and sizes etc, so this post is going to be a factual one…

Adult wild dogs can weigh between 17-36 kilograms (37-79 pounds). Average weight in southern Africa is about 25kgs. Emma – we haven’t yet got the weighing scales we need to weigh the dogs accurately when we have them immobilised, but the few we have done ranged between 23.5kg (a fairly young adult female) to 27kg (an older male).

Wild dogs are fairly tall and slim animals; they stand about 75cm at the shoulder (the ones we have measured are between 70 and 78cm), and head and body length (excluding the tail) is on average 100cm. The tail is about 30-40cm. Our girth measurements of immobilised dogs (just behind the front legs) are between 63 and 68cm.

Hope that answers your question regarding weights and measures Emma. As for litter sizes, we have litters (with one mother) ranging from only 2 pups to 14 pups. The litter sizes we know about from all the females are 14; 6; 6; 6; 4 and 2. According to the literature, average litter size is around 10. Some of the smaller litters are from subordinate females breeding in the same pack as the alpha female, or from first time mums.

Please everyone feel free to ask if you want any specific info like this – I’m always happy to let you know or find out for you if I don’t know!

Rosemary

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 18 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Well it seems that the denning season is pretty much over for most packs.  I’ve been to 2 of the dens and no dogs have been around although there is still fresh spoor at the den sites so they probably haven’t gone far.   And reports from other people about the other packs suggest they are on the move too.  Now is when those collars come in handy… I will spend the next few days radio tracking to find all the packs, check how many of the pups (and adults) are still present in the pack and start to look at where they are going now they have finished denning. 

Sherri & Sheryl, hopefully I’ll be able to give you a report soon on how ‘your’ dogs Racoon and Mina are doing.  We just put more camera traps up at Mina’s den to see whether they are in fact still using it, so hopefully I’ll get some interesting  pics from that.  And Racoon is of course collared so I’ll be using her to locate her pack.

It’s  a very interesting time for the project now, but sad that the denning season is over.  Watching the interactions between the pups has definitely been a highlight; see the photo below showing some of the bigger pups at the Bedford den ‘playing’ with some of the smaller pups.

Back soon,

Rosemary

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 15 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Just a very quick post to let you know that I am now back in the field with the wild dogs.  Sadly Lindsay has gone back to Harare - I’m sure you’ll agree from her blogs that she did a great job in my absence, so it’s a shame she cant stay longer. 

I will spend the next few days finding all the packs and checking up on them and hopefully we’ll also get an opportunity to dart that second dog in the south, with the snare around it’s neck.  The scouts are on (much-deserved) leave for a few days though, so we’ll wait for them to get back before darting.

Will keep you posted with the news, but blogs may be sporadic over the next few days as I will be flat out with field work.

Cheers for now,

Rosemary 

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 09 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Rosemary here again.  Apologies for not introducing you to Lindsay before press-ganging her into writing blogs.  She is a Zimbabwean girl who is training to be a pilot but is kindly covering the wild dog project for me for a couple of weeks while I have been guiding in Tanzania.  I’ll be back in Zim next week to take over from her again.

Due to slow connection speeds in the Save Valley at the moment, Lindsay asked if I would post some pictures of the snared dogs she has talked about in the previous blogs.  It doesn’t make nice viewing I’m afraid, but I think it’s important to show the reality of the consequences of snaring.

Fortunately Lindsay was able to remove the snare from the first dog and here are a couple of photos from that operation:

And finally the snare was removed (the blue colour is the antiseptic wound spray!):

As Lindsay said, these dogs are incredibly resilient, so hopefully he will survive.  Let’s hope we can get the other one darted soon too and that neck snare removed.

Over to Lindsay again until I’m back next week,

Rosemary

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 08 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

 Well I’m back down in the south again to try have another go at darting the other snared dog.  The people on the ranch have seen the pack (Mavericks) and they all seem to doing fine..even the one with the neck snare.  The male that we did last week appears to be well on the road to recovery.  Such strong animals!

As for the north of the conservancy….all sorts of action up there!  A pack of 8 (which we oringinally thought was only 6) was sighted right up at the top boundary).  Very positive.  When we had a look at the Mapari den they had moved!  But only to their old den from 2006 which is about 1 km away, so we found them without much trouble.  We only managed to catch a glimpse of them as they ran off, but they’re all still there and healthy.  Sadly at the original den there was a dead pup that we found, so down to 5 now for them.  There were no obvious clues as to how it died, but I’m sure it was a natural death: snake bite, or he was sick, or just the runt.

At the Flourishing Bedford den (31 dogs in total, young and old) we finally found Missy!!  The missing Missy who’s been so shy and it looks like she’s pregnant or lactating too. But we also only saw 13 out of the 14 pups, so not sure what happened to the missing pup, but this is how nature takes it course.

And lastly in the south a big, lone, male dog was sighted drinking at a pan with zebras, wildebeast, impala and other antelopes.  That’s quite an interesting sighting as he’s a bit of a mystery dog??  Maybe he’s the sole remainder of the pack of 12 from last year that have all succumbed to snares.  Will have to find out and let you all know….

Well ciao for now till next time..

Lindsay

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 06 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of news up here for a while, but as you might be aware Rosemary is away for a while and I’m helping out till she gets back and we’ve had quite a week so far!

First of all the exciting news…The ‘Mavericks’ Pack down in the south of the conservancy, we now know has 4 dogs and not the suspected 2 that we had only seen before.  Very encouraging as it is down here that the poaching is the worst due to the ‘illegal’ settlers and….well…lets just say non-conformal government actions.

However, now for the depressing part, the way we found out was that 2 of the dogs in this pack have been snared. One older male dog around his waist and the other female around her neck. 

To summarise the last 3 days, we basically tracked the dogs the whole day (for like 10 hrs) and finally caught up with them and managed to dart the male with the waist snare.  Very elusive dogs these and not stupid either.  They certainly know how to give one a run around! Anyway we cut the wire off, it had dug really deep into his one hip and had actually (squeamish people stop reading!!) cut right through his penis and the sheath so that it was literally in half…poor boy!!!!  We cleaned out the wound thoroughly, gave him some antibiotic and watched him run away into the dark (we only finished at 6.30pm) after he’d been given the reversal dart drug.  I’m sure feeling much better.  When we saw the dogs the next day, our patient was certainly looking more comfortable and much happier and seemed to be on his way to good recovery.  They are so resilient these animals.

The next day we had another shot at finding them again and darting the female this time with the neck snare.  Unfortunately we were not so successful.  The dogs were feeling quite harassed by this stage, as you can imagine after being snared for days, followed for more days by these strange animals..us.. and then also having to evade bush fires which are raging in the conservancy at this time of year (made worse by increased ‘settler’ populations).  The alpha female in this pack didn’t get her role for nothing here.  She is extremely intelligent, quick, strong and responsive to the needs of her pack and was most certainly not going to let them be further stressed out by us, and so she has to be with 3 injured companions in her care.  (The collared male is limping quite badly on his left front leg – but it doesn’t look too bad). 

So after a real ‘bundu bashing’ day without achieving anything further, we decided to give it a bit of a rest for a day or so till the poor animals had got some peace and settled down a bit, when maybe we could try again…if only they knew we were the good guys who actually want to help them!  Hopefully she’ll hang in there though and give us a chance to help her when we try again.

On a sad note, in the area where we managed to dart the dog, there was an old rhino carcass lying decimated and forgotten about up against a rock where it’s life came to a tragic end.  Another statistic to add to the rapidly growing number of shameful rhino slaughtering.

Anyway that’s it from me for today.  Will be back soon with more exciting bush news updates from the heart of the Savé Valley Conservancy – our little piece of paradise. 

Cheers for now

Lindsay

4 responses so far