Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

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