Wild dog facts and figures
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
End of the denning season
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 18 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs
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
Rosemary back
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
The reality of snaring
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
Dog Action!
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
Snared Dogs
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
Hunting - a brief comment
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 24 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs
Hi all,
As a response to some comments on my last post, I thought it worth a brief post on the very controversial issue of hunting. I’m not a hunter, I cannot for the life of me see why people would want to kill wild animals for sport and I will never understand what pleasure there is in looking at a stuffed head of a wild animal on your wall. Having said that, as a general rule, I am pro hunting. This is for the very simple reason that it brings in a lot of money which is used to conserve wildlife. It is a great shame that people do not pay the same amount of money to simply watch wildlife and take photos as they do to shoot it, but nonetheless, that’s a fact. And while it remains a fact, hunting is often one of the only ways wildlife can pay for itself. And sadly, in this world that is driven by economics, wildlife does have to pay for itself.
Zimbabwe is actually a good case in point. Due the political and economic situation in the country, ‘normal’ tourists are simply no longer coming here. This means that there is very little money coming in from tourism, and wildlife would no longer be a viable land use option for any private ranches or conservancies, unless they were able to make money from hunting. In the Save Valley Conservancy, many of the ranches would rather not be hunting, but in the current climate, they simply cant survive any other way.
Another example would be in Kenya, where I used to work. Hunting was banned in Kenya in 1977 and since then, over 70% of Kenya’s wildlife has gone extinct. Now obviously there are various reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that private land owners who used to conserve wildlife because they could earn money from hunting, had to convert to cattle faming because there was no longer any money to be made from wildlife.
Now, there have undoubtedly been entire theses written on the pros and cons of hunting, and it is by no means a simple issue. There are good, logical, fact-based arguments both for and against hunting and there are plenty of very emotional viewpoints too (also both for and against).
What I try to do is separate my personal (emotional) feeling about the actual act of hunting from the more objective view of hunting overall - which is that, like it or not - it’s usually important for conservation.
Rosemary
The lastest den
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 21 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs
Hi folks,
After a brief interlude to discuss why we need collars, I thought I’d better fill you in on the new den site we found last week. It’s on a ranch called Mapari Ranch, and we hadn’t been allowed on there since the beginning of the denning season because they were hunting. They had a one week break from hunting when they said we could go onto the property…. On day 1 Misheck found the new den and we cleared a vehicle access route to it. On day 2 we went in the car to see the wild dogs, on day 3 we were incredibly lucky and managed to fit a GPS collar onto one of the dogs and on day 4 when we went back to check on the newly collared dog, we even managed to see the puppies!! Wonderful to have been able to do all that so quickly, as we now aren’t allowed back on that property until the end of October! At least the collar will be collecting movement information for us.
Here are a couple of pictures of the dogs at the new den. There are at least 4 adults, and at least 6 pups. I think the very white dog (Luckybean) is especially beautiful.
The dog we collared (Sandy) is below. She is also a very striking individual I think - with very few black or white markings.
And very nice teeth!
All dogs were doing well when we last saw them and the pups were still very small (probably only about 6 weeks old) so they will still be at the den for a while. I’ll keep you posted with their news when we are allowed back on the property to check up on them again.
Back soon,
Rosemary
Why do we need collars?
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 18 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs
Hi guys,
Paula raised a very good point in her comment to the last post. Effectively - why do we need collars and how do they help conservation? This is a very good question, because all too often people will put collars on because it seems like a good thing to do, or just because they want some data for a paper they are writing. Now the latter isn’t necessarily a bad thing - sound conservation depends heavily on good background research which can often be written into papers. The problem is if the work stops there - the researcher has got their paper out and then leaves the animal collared with no further follow up. Unfortunately that happens all too often and it makes me mad too Paula!
I would like to reassure you however that the Zimbabwe wild dog project is 100% a conservation project (I have finished my PhD and so am not even looking to collect data for a thesis at the same time!). All aspects of project work towards the conservation of this incredibly endangered species, in a very hands on way.
So why do we need collars? Well - firstly because any realistic conservation measures need a certain amount of basic background information such as numbers of individuals, distribution of packs, litter sizes, pups survival and causes of adult mortality etc. All such information requires observations of the dogs and quite simply, wild dogs are virtually impossible to find without collars! They can have home ranges of up to 1500km2, which is a HUGE area of wilderness in which to look for the dogs, especially given the vast distances they can move on a daily basis. Although the home ranges in the Save Valley Conservancy are quite a bit smaller (between 400-1000km2) the area is still far too big to be able to locate the dogs regularly without collars.
As well as collecting the data outlined above, frequent observations of all packs are important to pick up any early signs of disease (e.g. rabies/canine distemper) so that measures can be taken to prevent, control or cure the disease. Collars also help to locate carcasses of dogs so we can look into causes of death. The GPS collars provide extra information on habitat useage, daily movement patterns, hunting times and patterns etc, all of which helps us understand the dogs ecological requirements so that we can better conserve them.
All collared dogs in this project are followed up regularly. We do not collar dogs unless we have the time, equipment and personnel to locate and observe them frequently. And although it doesnt make it any better when you see collared animals, there have been studies done which show there is no long term adverse effect on the animal from being collared. In fact in our study, one of the collared males became the alpha male of the pack after being collared, which at the very least shows that his fitness, strength and ‘attractiveness’ where not negatively affected by the collar in the slightest.
I hope that answers your concerns Paula. It is an extremely important point you raised and one I feel very strongly about too. I think at the end of the day, collars can be an extremely valuable conservation tool if used properly, but should by no means be deployed without very good reasons.
Rosemary
Another den and two more collars!!!
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 14 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs
Hi guys,
A very rushed post today as I am flat out with field work. Just wanted to let you know that we found a new den a few days ago (yipee!!) and managed to put 2 more GPS collars onto dogs. One on a female in the new pack and one on a male dog in a pack we already have collared, but we are hoping the pack will split when they stop denning. All very exciting and a great relief to have those collars so, since I am about to go away for a week or two…
Anyway, I have LOADS of exciting pictures to post and will tell you all about the new den when I am somewhere with a decent internet connection and time to write more. The new den has at least 6 very small pups, so should still be denning for a while - good news!
Back soon,
Rosemary xx
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Rosemary Groom is a post-doctoral research scientist with the African Wildlife Conservation Fund -
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