Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Here’s a picture of Sandy, the collared Wild Dog of the Mapari Pack. (Sorry it’s a little dark, it’s the best one we’ve got!)

Misheck told us he was scared to go closer to the houses because of possible aggression from poachers. He is easily recognizable with his scout uniform, and (as usual) was working alone and unarmed. So although he said he was sure the signal was coming from a house, we weren’t completely certain.

We suspected the worst, but nonetheless we remained open-minded, hoping the pack was just skirting the edge of the village.

We set off early the next morning with both our scouts, the Conservancy’s Head of Security, two men from National Parks and, having told the police that we needed to retrieve the collar, several armed policemen were sent too—a veritable truckload.

While Rosemary and I stayed with the vehicle, the rest of the posse went off through the bushes and over the hill and came back with the collar and a very very forlorn and ashamed-looking man in a blue shirt and handcuffs.

They also brought a genet skin and some hand-made arrows they’d found in his house.

The arrows looked like this:

The police had apparently already beaten him (!) although the fellow insisted that it was his son who had set the snare that had caught the collared Wild Dog and that he’d not been involved.

Although poaching is illegal and a major conservation problem, it was hard to watch a father be arrested and marched out of his house by a large group of police simply because he (or his son) was trying to feed his family—especially in these very hard times in Zimbabwe. There are people starving in this country.

Thanks to Rosemary’s skilful negotiation, police agreed that he would not be sent to prison provided he would furnish us with full information about the location of the snaring and the carcass—things he’d have to find out from his son.

Tomorrow, the Head of Security should have that information from him and then I plan to go with Misheck to find and photograph the carcass, and collect the skull, samples for DNA analysis, and as much other information as possible about the incident.

Watch this space,

 Roy