Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Carnivores general, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe | Date: Oct 22 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

I’m back briefly from the first phase of field work in Gonarezhou National Park.  We just spent 12 days working in the south of the park, attempting to find and collar lions (to test for TB), and hoping that we may be lucky enough to find some wild dogs.  We were not specifically looking for hyenas, but got to see lots of them too!!

Our approach with the lions was to look for fresh tracks along the roads, follow the spoor for a while until we could guess where the lions might be resting up, and then that night go and play lion-attracting noises on loud speakers, along with setting up a bait, to try to lure the lions within darting range… The first night we tried we attracted a hyena, a civet and a large herd of elephants who were not best pleased by the noises of squealing pigs and dying buffalos, so we had to abort our efforts rather abruptly!

The following night, we had only been calling for about 15 minutes when a beautiful lioness stalked up.  Unfortunately she came over to my vehicle which was playing the sound, rather than over to the bait where the vets were waiting to dart her!  Eventually she got the idea and went towards the bait, but by this time a large clan of hyenas had been attracted to the bait and did a very thorough job of keeping her away!  Even had we had an opportunity to dart her, we could not have done so with so many hyeanas around, as they may have attacked her once she was too drugged to defend herself and before we could get to her.  So we contented ourselves with observing the interactions for a while and then packed everything up and left them in peace.

We didnt get many other opportunities to dart lions there - although we will be continuing to try over the next week or so - but did manage to track and find a pack of wild dogs which was MOST exciting!  We found fresh spoor early one morning and followed it for a few hours until we came across where the dogs were resting.  Unfortunately, as wild dogs tend to do (!), they saw and smelt us before we had a good look at them and bounded off.  Nonetheless, from the tracks and the number we actually saw, it seems to be a good sized pack - at least 15 adults and 10 pups.  It was also the first pack of dogs I have seen in the park and was thus doubly as exciting! 

Anyway, I’ll be heading back into the park on Sunday for another week or so, to continue to look for both lions and wild dogs and will post again when I’m back.  Hopefully I’ll have some more exciting pictures to show you then!

Rosemary  

Tags: call-ups, Gonarezhou National Park, hyenas, lions, spoor, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

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