Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

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

Hi guys,

We have a new assistant on the wild dog project - finally!  I’m very excited - I’ve been struggling to keep up with the workload (as you may have noticed from some of the infrequent and hurried posts recently), so it’s great to be joined by Roy, who’ll be helping out for the forseeable future.  Here is his introduction below (he’ll be writing lots of posts from on too). 

Rosemary xx 

Hi folks, 

I’d like to introduce myself… My name is Roy B. Ashton, and I joined the Wild Dog Project on 13^th October. I’m originally from England, but have spent much of my adult life living in the USA where I did a Masters degree and spent a couple of years training to be an all-round naturalist and nature educator. I have a degree from Cambridge University in Geography (emphasizing biogeography, ecology, and environmental studies), and I’m also a trained Safari Guide in South Africa, and a qualified Tracker with a Level III Track and Sign certificate from both the US and South Africa. Wildlife has been my longest standing interest throughout my life, and so it’s a privilege to be able to work with this project, and to study Wild Dogs in more depth and contribute to their conservation as the most endangered large carnivore in Southern Africa. I am also delighted that tracking (that is, footprints!) is a useful tool on this project as this is one of my particular passions.

I arrived here in Zimbabwe just a couple of weeks ago, and I was last here in 1995; it’s clear that life has become much more difficult in this country since then!  We only have electricity sometimes, so keeping food fresh is a challenge (fridge often off), as is cooking. Fortunately I am comfortable with a materially simple life with few comforts, and we’re blessed at our base with delicious clean borehole water (a rarity in this area) and a lovely hot shower heated by a wood-fire, and boons like those really help!

Among many other things, I will be writing the blog often now too, so I hope you enjoy the entries and please feel free to send any questions.

Best wishes in your direction,

Roy