Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Carnivores general, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe | Date: Oct 11 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

This blog will be quiet for the next couple of weeks I’m afraid: I’m going into Gonarezhou National Park to see if we can find some lions (no tigers or bears hopefully) to help some vets who want to survey the lion population for bovine Tuberculosis (bTB).  Obviously this is largely a disease of bovids, but lions can get it from eating infected carcasses and it has been a big problem for the lions in neighbouring Kruger National Park in South Africa. 

The lion population in Gonarezhou seems to be very low at the moment, and we will be starting a project to investigate why this might be, alongside our work on the wild dogs in the park.  Helping the vets with the bTB survey and getting some collars on at the same time will be a good place to start.  It will be no small challenge though!

Anyway, I’m going down to the south of the park tomorrow where there are no communication facilities, so wont be updating this blog for a while.  Rest assured we won’t be slacking though (!) and will post again with all the news when I’m back somewhere with internet connection. 

I have Reuben with me to help track the lions and wild dogs if we do find fresh spoor, and have left Misheck monitoring the wild dogs in the Save Valely Conservancy….

Back soon (hopefully!),

Rosemary

Tags: bovine TB, bTB, Gonarezhou, lions, Wild Dogs

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