Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Wild Dogs, poaching, zimbabwe | Date: Nov 29 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Dear everyone,

We spent two long days trying hard to desnare the snared pup in the Maera pack.

The first day we departed at 5.30am and using telemetry found the pack at exactly the same spot where a dry river crosses the dirt road where they had been resting the morning before. Graeme, who is qualified to dart and immobilize wildlife, joined Rosemary, Misheck and Roy. In low-range four-wheel drive, we approached them ridiculously slowly in the vehicle after pausing to prepare the tranquilizer dart. We halted every time they looked edgy or stood up; nonetheless as we got towards darting range—which is a mere 25 metres for wild dogs owing to their small size and thin skin—the Wild Dogs moved off through the trees. They moved off casually and slowly, not alarmed, but it was clear that we were disturbing them.

We were able to follow them the short distance to the next water-hole where we waited several hours, mingling two strategies—one being to approach the dogs using the vehicle, moving infinitesimally towards them and hoping not to drive them away before we got into range—and the other being to park in the shade by the edge of the water and wait, darting gun at the ready, for them to come down to the water to bathe and drink. That first day, the dogs came down several times to drink and bathe but the injured pup was not always among them, and not always within range. However, there was one moment when we had a perfect shot, and the dart apparently hit the pup squarely and discharged the drugs.

When this happened, the pup was clearly given a fright and the pop from the darting gun alarmed the rest of the pack, too. It felt like a shame to breach the trust we had built slowly accustoming them to the vehicle and staying absolutely motionless while they cautiously approached the water. However, we were trying to help. What a strange kind of hunting this was: for it is hunting indeed, in all respects except one—that we were trying to save a life rather than take one. And arguably our task was more difficult than hunting to kill, because we had to shoot one particular individual out of a whole pack, not any suitable individual—and we had to be in very close range, because to shoot further requires a higher velocity and can do much more damage to the animal.

When the dart struck the pup, he and the rest of the pack scattered. Assuming the dart had discharged into the pup and it would shortly be immobilized, we started a timer and split up on foot to comb the area and find the sleeping pup. We would have to be quick, because in the intense heat, an immobilized animal’s temperature will sky-rocket, and it will die rapidly from overheating, being unable to regulate its own temperature by panting, moving to the shade, etc.

The minutes ticked past and the sun beat down on us; we fanned out and circled around and could find no sleeping pup. When we reconvened, however, Misheck surprisingly reported that he had just seen the pack with the snared pup moving around and wide awake. Clearly, for some strange reason, the darting hadn’t worked—most likely, the drugs had discharged into bone rather than muscle, and so not resulted in immobilization. (The dart had clearly hit the pup—we found its hair on the needle—and the drugs had been discharged.)

We spent more time trying to follow the dogs to find another opportunity for a darting shot, but they were constantly on the move in inaccessible thick Mopane woods, and we were reluctant to further stress them.

Instead, we met again early next morning for a second attempt. This time, the pack had moved. We followed the radio signal and spotted them moving along a road toward another water-hole. Almost as we arrived, the pack killed two young warthogs—we heard them squealing and saw the Wild Dogs eating excitedly. I was glad to know that the injured pup would be eating today, although tried not to think about how hard it would be for him to swallow. He is growing every day, and that snare must cut every day a little deeper and a little tighter, squeezing the life slowly out of him as his body tries to develop.

We slowed to our ridiculous crawl and crept closer; again, as we neared the water-hole the pack moved off a short distance out of sight. We parked under a tree at the water’s edge and waited.

Hours passed, and the sun shifted, and we were no longer in the shade. After a long time, the dogs approached the water and came to bathe and drink. Cindy, as usual, was the first to enter—she apparently loves the water and has a particular taste for bathing. Others will follow her down, some more boldly than others: and some barely seemed to approach it at all—possibly naturally more timid individuals, possibly put off by our presence. Unfortunately, the snared pup is among the more timid.

However, he eventually came down to drink, and I was relieved to see him immerse is lower jaw and lap the water—water that will help keep him alive a little longer, as would the meat he’d eaten earlier. When he stood up and turned sideways, Graeme took a shot—it was a long shot, and difficult to see whether it had struck home. It turned out to have hit the ground and bounced. The pack scattered again, but moved off only a few dozen metres, staying in the vicinity of the water-hole.

Here’s a picture of them resting affectionately in the shade. They often lie touching each other. Here you can see one Wild Dog is resting its head and paw on the back of one of its friends. At one point several of them did this in a kind of chain of body-pillows, but I couldn’t get a picture of it!

We waited 8 hours at that water-hole for chances to dart the injured pup. Much later, the pack came down to drink again, but unfortunately the snared pup did not come to the water. One adult barked pointedly in our direction. The signal was so clear that it was unmistakable—he was saying to us, ‘Go away! Push off! Give us some space!’

Although we were as quiet as we could and sat still or almost still for hours on end, our presence was certainly keeping animals from their much-needed drinks. We saw Warthogs and Wildebeest come within sight but stay away because they saw and smelt us. It’s highly likely other creatures wanted to drink too, which we never saw.

One adult male warthog was the only mammal other than the Wild Dogs which dared to come to the waterhole while we were there. He was a beautiful specimen—if Warthogs can be beautiful—and showed all the quiet, solid confidence of a strong male. He wasn’t fazed by the Wild Dogs who were drinking not far along the shore, despite the fact that they’d killed two of his kin at the same spot hours before—possibly his own children. At one point, one of the Wild Dogs showed interest in him and began to stalk along the shore towards him. He simply grunted and charged at the Wild Dogs, who scattered without leaving. Then he went back to his spot to continue drinking.

In the picture, the warthog male has just charged towards with wild dogs which have scattered–the ones you can see are looking nervous and clumping together. At the end of the charge, the warthog just stood there and stared towards them. I was impressed at his fearlessness.

He was more concerned about us, but only showed this by taking his time and keeping an eye on us, rather than by any nervous caution. He drank slowly, and then stood motionless by the water’s edge for a long time. I could tell that he wanted to wallow, but was calmly assessing the situation. He eventually turned round and lay down in the shallows. Ah, that cool water! Were the water-hole less attended by possible predators, I’m sure he would have rolled in the mud.

All day a Hamerkop waded in the water-hole, stalking elegantly like a heron, darting its beak to catch insects and once, a frog. I was amazed to watch it washing its food—I wasn’t aware that birds do things like that. The frog was wiggling, and so the Hamerkop slammed it repeatedly against the ground to kill it properly. It would stop wriggling temporarily, and the Hamerkop would move back to the water, rinse the frog in the water, and then attempt to swallow it again. It would wriggle again, and the Hamerkop would repeat this procedure, always washing the frog before every attempt to swallow it, presumably to remove the sand that got stuck all over the frog when it was being bashed on the ground. Once the Hamerkop swallowed the frog while it was still wriggling, but then quickly regurgitated it and continued bashing and then washing the frog until the frog was finally properly dead. Then it washed it one more time and swallowed it whole. Shortly after that, the Hamerkop took a rest, perching on a dead branch nearby and emitting one satisfied white dropping onto the dirt away from the water.

The Wild Dogs were totally disinterested in the Hamerkop, which showed no fear of them, as you can see in this picture.

As it neared dusk, we could see the dogs still resting a hundred metres away through the trees. We decided to try approaching them instead. We drove through thick brush, squeezing between trunks and squashing small trees, wincing at the damage the woody vegetation would be doing to the underside of the vehicle.  Although they all got up as we got close, Graeme did manage to loose another shot at the pup, but in the thick vegetation, it also missed.

It was getting dark, and we were finally stumped. Disappointed, we drove home as the stars came out. We would have to wait for another opportunity when Graeme is available and the Maera pack are in a suitable location—and with luck the snared pup will still be alive, and we can have another go at saving its life. In the meantime, although the wound is nasty and the pup is clearly weakened, it can still keep up with the pack and is still eating and drinking—so there is hope yet.

Yours exhausted,

Roy

Tags: African Wild Dogs, darting, de-snaring, Hamerkop, poaching, snare, snare injury, snared pup, warthog, water hole, Wild Dogs, wildlife immobilization, zimbabwe

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Nov 28 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

This is a quick post (more details to follow) just to let you know that unfortunately we were unlucky with our efforts to remove the snare around the pups neck.  We spent the last two days trying - 12 hours the first day and 13 hours yesterday but very sadly we didn’t succeed in managing to immobilise the pup.  We even had one dart that went in and the drug discharged but for some reason the pup didnt go down -so frustrating!  Roy or I will post again soon with more details but I just wanted to update you on the little pup, and our efforts to remove the snare.  Luckily, he is still with the pack and clearly being looked after by them, but as he continues to grow and the snare wire tightens, it will get a lot worse. 

I want to say a HUGE thank you to those who have donated to the project to help us save the pup.  And to Maina for reiterating our appeal on the main Wildlife Direct Website.  Support like that is really invaluable and it’s great to know there are people out there who care enough to donate money to try and help.  So a big thanks to Pirjo, Trish, Yuri and Jerome for their donations - Please be assured we will continue our efforts to remove the snare at the next opportunity and hopefully we’ll be lucky next time.  Your support makes this continued effort possible.

Thank you.

Rosemary  

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Nov 24 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Recently, one of our scouts reported a wild dog pup with a snare around it’s neck.  Yesterday, for the first time in a while, we managed to get a decent look at the pack, and especially of the snared pup.  The poor little fellow has the most horrific wound around his neck and on closer inspection you can actually see the snare still tight around his neck…

It was heartbreaking to watch him struggle along behind the rest of the group, sitting down at every available opportunity.  The adults were remarkably attentive though, and we witnessed several adults licking his neck to clean the wound. Such behaviour has probably kept him alive - by preventing infection. 

When he eventually made it down to the water, he enjoyed a quick dip and then moved off to lie by the side of the pan until the others were finished playing.

The most distressing thing is not being able to do anything about it immediately.  Unfortunately, until I have my wildlife immobilisation licence (I will be doing the course next February), we need to rely on someone else to come and do the darting, and he is not always available at short notice.  There is also a considerable cost associated with calling him out and getting the pup immobilised (US$100 per day fee plus the cost of drugs and fuel and scout time), and the current prevalance of snaring is really eating into our budget.  (Likewise, for me to do the course so I can immobilise the dogs myself, costs US$1500).  If anyone could help us in this snare-removal campaign by donating funds, we would be extraordinarily grateful: it really is heart rending to see something like this and be prevented from taking immediate action by money and circumstances.

However, we are prioritising removing the snare at the moment, and I hope to be able to report some good news soon.

Back soon,

Rosemary

PS - I promise to post some good news in the next blog - there are lots of positive things going on here as well!!

9 responses so far

Category: Wild Dogs, poaching | Date: Nov 21 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Rosemary here again.  I’ve been away from the field for a couple of weeks but am now back in the conservancy and catching up with all the dogs.  I’m afraid I have some bad news to report though - Racoon, the young radio-collared female from the Bedford pack has been killed by poachers.  That makes her the second collared dog to be killed in snares in the past three months.

She went missing only a few weeks after the dogs left their den in early September, and we hadn’t been able to get a signal from the collar for a while, until yesterday… We were tracking from the top of a big hill trying to locate the Bedford pack, and as usual, doing an opportunistic scan for Racoon’s collar as well.  It was an enormous surprise to pick up a signal and I was very excited until I noticed that the area the signal was coming from was in an area of re-settled farmers (’war-vets’)…….

Anyway, we went off in that direction, and, accompanied by a couple that run Turgwe Hippo Trust ( a non-profit hippo conservation organisation based in the conservancy) and their scouts, walked through the bush following the signal.  Finally we came across a poachers den, with skins and bones scattered around and a fire for roasting meat.  The signal was coming very strongly from that area, but it still took us a good 20 minutes to actually find the collar, which had been cut off the dog and hidden under a pile of boulders!

Spot the collar…. (the bit of orange belt under all the rocks!)

It was very sad to find the conclusive evidence that Racoon had been killed - I had suspected that was the case for a while, but you cant help holding out hope until the evidence is there to show otherwise.

We didnt find the carcass sadly: chances are the meat would have been cut up and sold (labelled as something else as people dont officially eat wild dog meat!), and perhaps the skull taken for use in witchcraft medicine.  I guess we wont ever know for sure.  Whatever happened though, it is a sad and cruel end to the life of a beautiful, young wild dog, and illustrates all too clearly the threat popsed by snaring to these remarkable and highly endangered species.

Back soon,

Rosemary  

Tags: painted hunting dogs, poachers' dens, poaching, radio collars, snaring, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

5 responses so far

Category: Random | Date: Nov 16 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

It’s not always action here at the Lowveld Wild Dog Project in Zimbabwe. The last few days have been a quiet period with Rosemary and Rueben away; we haven’t seen or found sightings of the Wild Dogs for a few days, and have spent time on ‘housekeeping’ activities such as bicycle and motorbike maintenance—transport in the bush creates heavy wear on vehicles of all kinds and repairs are often needed, despite lack of parts, so we often have to improvise.

Here’s how we pump fuel for a fieldwork trip, using a gravity (siphon) pump.

The elephants were becoming such a problem on the ranch where we stay that we had to start doing night patrols and firing warning shots to scare them off. Interestingly, on the night that we started, the elephants were suddenly nowhere to be seen or heard, and haven’t been around since. Coincidence, or did they (somehow) get the message?

The rains have come here, and there have been a couple of gorgeous torrential storms on the ranch which wipe everything clean and re-shape the sand in the roads. It seems the storms do something to the sunlight, which looks clearer and crisper afterwards.

The impala must be nearing their birthing season (usually at the start of December, when the rains have come) because I observed some of the rams starting their ‘false rut’ behaviour, when the hormones from pregnant females stimulate some mating behaviour, although the main breeding season for impala is in June-July. The males were roaring ferociously, sounding frighteningly like lions, and chasing females around.

Having said that, as I lay in bed the other night, I did actually hear lions roaring outside.

Till later,

Roy

Tags: elephants, impala, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

2 responses so far

Category: Random, Uncategorized, Wild Dogs | Date: Nov 12 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

We have found spoor of the Nyarushanga Pack, a less-known pack in the West of the Conservancy which we don’t have a radio-collar for, so we rarely see them except during the denning season, but it’s good to know they’re still around.

We also have good news from a data-collection perspective: the missing piece of the GPS collar that we recovered from the poacher’s house has been handed in, and should hopefully be brought to our house today. We are hoping this is the piece with the data on it…It should have logged the movements of the collared dog, Sandy, which can help us get a sense of home range size and core areas for the Mapari pack.

A number of other interesting things have happened recently including Rueben finding the rarely-seen Pangolin between our house and his. This attracted a small crowd because this animal is so rarely seen. No-one present had seen one before.

It curls up in a scaly ball when threatened:

And can easily be picked up….even the local policeman dropped by for the occasion:

But it got tired of pretending to be scared of us and unfurled to wander away:

Then later that day when we were looking for the Bedford Pack, I met the legendary Greater Honey-Guide, a famous bird for its unique and wonderful behaviour. It evolved a special mutualistic relationship with people, in which, when it finds wild honey, it will come and find a human and attract his or her attention. Then it will lead you to the honey so you can smoke out the bees, on the understanding that you will share some of the honey (and bee larvae) with the Honey-Guide. Well, the one I met was trying to lead me to some honey, but sadly we were on other business and I wasn’t able to follow it! Here is a picture of the Honey-Guide who was inviting me to a possible feast.

On the way home, just a couple of hundred metres from our house, we found the fresh drag marks of a leopard pulling away an impala it had killed. We followed them a short distance to find a mostly uneaten impala ewe with its unborn foetus lying cold against a rock nearby. By the next day, both were entirely eaten. Below is Rueben following the drag marks.

Living in the bush produces so many interesting stories!

All the best,

Roy

Tags: African Wild Dogs, GPS collar, Greater Honeyguide, Honeyguide, Leopard, Pangolin, pangolin pictures, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

6 responses so far

Category: Wild Dogs | Date: Nov 11 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Rueben and I picked up a signal from the Bedford Pack soon after we’d found their spoor along a dirt road. We drove in the appropriate direction, dodging pairs of temperamental bull elephants on the way, until the signal was coming from a place we could not drive to, and so got out and walked off through the thick bush, keeping our eyes open. A scrambling sound on one of the granite kopjes (small hills) to our right made me swing around, and I caught a glimpse of something that wasn’t an antelope furrily scampering away. Leopard, I wondered? However, it turned out to be the unassuming Rock Hyrax…

Rueben walks FAST through the bush, and I had trouble keeping up with him. This is what you see walking behind him (when you catch up):

However, we walked all the way to another road, where we found the Bedford Pack’s tracks, running along the road. So we returned to the vehicle and pursued them again hoping they’d stay close to the road this time.

Rueben banged on the roof, and I braked quickly. “Do you see them?” he asked, but I could not. He is excellent at spotting animals, and it’s helped by the fact that when we’re radio-tracking from the vehicle, he sits high up in the back, with a much better view than mine from the driving seat. Soon I could see the Bedford Pack retreating further down the road partially hidden by some long dry grass. We got close enough that Rueben counted 31 individuals present, the same number he’d counted previously. Although they were constantly on the move and hard to watch, they did seem to be hanging around a particular general area—which we soon explained:

Rueben spotted some vultures and we pulled over to investigate; Rueben seems to have a knack of walking directly towards what he’s looking for even if he doesn’t know where it is. Three minutes walk from the road, in a dry V-shaped gulley, with an audience of vultures spectating patiently, lay a female Kudu, her back end bloody but her eyes not yet misted over. Rueben found fresh Wild Dog spoor and estimated that the Kudu was killed less than two hours ago by members of the Bedford Pack. Here is a picture of it.

Her front half was still untouched, and Rueben suggested that a couple of dogs must have been hunting separately from the rest of the pack, and had eaten their fill before returning to fetch the rest of the pack.

We popped back to the vehicle to fetch some more equipment and returned. In the few moments we were gone, the kill had been dragged several feet away. Some animal must be very close by and probably watching us….We had a good look around, but saw nothing. Rueben suggested the vultures had done it, but then I found fresh canine marks in the Kudu’s neck that were not there before; the Wild Dogs must still have been close, around us.

From the fact that we counted the full pack present, it seems that all the Bedford Pack’s pups from this year are still alive and well, which is great news.

By the way, we’d love to hear from anyone reading this blog. You are invited to leave comments whenever you want!

See you later,

Roy

Tags: African Wild Dogs, Kudu, Kudu kill, radio tracking, telemetry, vultures, Wild Dog kills, wild dog pack, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

4 responses so far

Category: Random | Date: Nov 05 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi all,

As the internet is suddenly working well this morning I’ve taken advantage of it and added some photos to the post called “The Maera Pack alive and swimming” from a couple of days ago. Have another look at that post. I hope you enjoy them!

And here’s one of me blogging away…

See you later, 

Roy

Tags: blogging, wild dog photos, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

2 responses so far

Category: elephants, zimbabwe | Date: Nov 05 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi everyone,

I’ve had a backlog of blogs because we’ve had even less electricity than usual in Zimbabwe. ‘Usual’ mostly means we only get electricity some time during the hours we are asleep, which at least cools the fridge a little and charges the inverter batteries so we can use a computer during the day.

But for the last 3 nights and 2 days, we’ve had none at all. All the carefully prepared food in our fridge rotted, and I had to throw away so many hard-to-procure meals that it was heartbreaking.

It was the elephants that did it. They come here to the ranch every night, and they are always beautiful, and always very dangerous. Last night they were so close to the house I wondered if they were going to rip the holey mosquito screens off once and for all.

Here’s a picture I took the other day of some of them, near our house—

A couple of days ago, some of these elephants pushed over or pulled down the power lines. I’m not sure what their reasoning was, surely living trees are more interesting to eat, but there you are, and as one guy here said, ‘I don’t speak elephant.’

They are damaging the trees between the buildings here. Typical elephant feeding signs look like this—

Of course, I feel privileged to share this spot of the earth with wild elephants. The conservancy is one of relatively few remaining places in Africa where elephants have enough habitat and space to roam freely, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to all the trees they want to eat. A bit of this sort of damage around the houses is par for the course, then, but beyond a certain level it does become a problem to the people living here—

Last night they broke through the electric fence around the house of the landowner in two places and destroyed all her banana trees and badly damaged a big mango tree. They also broke the pipe supplying all the water to the house. If they keep it up at this rate, I don’t think anyone is quite sure what to do.

If you’re reading this, it’s proof that someone has repaired the power lines…and that the elephants have not yet pushed them down again!

Roy

Tags: African Elephants, conservation, electricity in Zimbabwe, elephant damge, elephants, human-elephant conflict, human-wildlife conflict, zimbabwe

2 responses so far

Category: Wild Dogs, poaching, zimbabwe | Date: Nov 05 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

Yesterday was a very hot day, and a day that taught me that patience is often worthwhile.

Misheck, Champion (the Head of Security), Alfred and I set off at 6 am to meet Godo, the man in whose house we found Sandy’s radio collar the other day. Godo had promised to show us the location of the snare and the carcass, which he’d told us he’d find out from his son, who was supposed to have set the snares.

We met him in the shade of a tall rock and a leafless thorn tree near his house. I took this picture from that spot.

At first there was a long discussion in Shona about how on earth we could find the carcass when Godo insisted that he’d not been there but only heard about it from his son. The SVC is a HUGE area of some 3,442 square km, and although we were only searching one ranch, it was one of the bigger ones—creating a daunting and seemingly impossible task.

Below is a picture of the two snares found at the location. The one on the right killed Sandy. The scouts had to use the machete to remove the skull.

And here’s a picture of the team that day, triumphant at having found the carcass against major odds, although no-one was celebrating the conclusion of such a sad story.

From left to right: Alfred, Champion, Godo, one of the scouts, and Misheck.

The fact that Godo had recognised the location and been able to lead us to the dog and point it out to us made everyone suspect strongly that it was indeed Godo who was responsible for the snaring, and not his son. It turned out that Godo was already a wanted man on that ranch, for several previous counts of poaching. The Head of Security, Champion, commanded him to return the missing upper part of the GPS collar within three days, and told me privately that Godo would probably be arrested when he did so.

The scouts found two snares at this location, pictured below with the machete that we used to remove Sandy’s head so we can preserve her skull. Yes, I know, it’s macabre. But as Rosemary would say, ‘it’s science.’

This is what a Wild Dog skull looks like—

This adventure also enabled me to collect hair and tissue samples from Sandy’s carcass, which we label and keep in the tubes pictured below, till we can get them to a laboratory for analysis.

Hair and Tissue samples—

As you may know, poaching is a major—if not THE major—problem for wildlife conservation in many parts of Africa. It takes a strong and well-organized effort to control it—and presumably an improvement in Zimbabwe’s political/economic situation would ease people’s desperation to set snares for food, also.

Well, if Sandy’s unnecessary early death comes to anything more than samples, I hope it at least made for an interesting story.

Until next time,

Roy

No responses yet