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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Category: Carnivores general, zimbabwe | Date: Oct 05 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Just a quick post this time (and apologies but no photos!), as I am flat out with the carnivore spoor survey.  We’ve been starting at 5:00 every day to get to the start of the transects in time for sunrise when we begin driving slowly along the roads. The trackers scan for spoor and we record any fresh carnivore tracks we see - however big or small. 

We are finding a lot of evidence of lions and hyenas, supporting our belief that the populations of these two higher carnivores are increasing considerably in the conservancy.  Good for their numbers but bad for wild dogs with whom they will compete for prey and even kill the pups…  

Leopard numbers are good but we have seen virtually no sign of cheetah.  I’ll let you know more when we’ve finished and got some firmer results.  In the meantime, I just wanted to let you know why we are a bit quieter than normal here…

Back soon,

Rosemary  

Tags: Carnivores, cheetah, hyena, leoards, lion, spoor, tracks, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

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Category: Carnivores general, zimbabwe | Date: Jun 05 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Rueben and I have just come back from Gonarezhou having completed the first half of the spoor survey we were doing there.  It was hard work and involved lots of driving, but was well worth it - it’s such a beautiful place.  We picked up evidence of good populations of spotted hyenas and leopards, but very few lion tracks and not very many wild dog tracks either.  We even picked up some cheetah spoor which was exciting, as I’m told cheetah are not often seen in the park.

We drove spoor transects in both the morning and evenings on most days - when the sun is at the best angle to see the tracks in the sand - and then just camped out where we ended up or where we wanted to start the next day.  A wonderful opportunity, and magical to lie in a tent and listen to the sounds of the bush all around: elephants splashing through the river, hyenas making a kill, nightjars singing and owls hooting. 

Elephant tracks crossing the dry river

As always, the scenery was stunning….

 and the wildlife was special.  (Nyala calf)

We were also lucky enough to see several herds of buffalo, elephants, hyenas on two separate occasions, and even a flash of a pair of leopards running across the road!  The birdlife is awesome too.

Although we didnt see any of them, the tracks we saw suggested the park also has good numbers of the smaller carnivores - civets, genets, porcupines, wild cats and even aardwolves.  Maybe we’ll get lucky during the next stage of the survey.

We’re off back to the park on Sunday, so the blog will once again be quiet for a while…

Rosemary

Tags: Carnivores, cheetah, Gonarezhou, hyena, leoards, lion, spoor, tracks, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe

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Category: Random, Uncategorized, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe | Date: May 05 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

I just came back from a trip to Gonarezhou National Park; one of Zimbabwe’s biggest national parks and certainly the most wild and remote area in the country.  The purpose of the trip was to do a recce for a forthcoming spoor survey we intend to carry out to investigate the status of wild dogs (and other carnivores) in the park. 

 Our bush camp

I was with a lowveld local – Clive Stockil – who probably knows the park better than anyone else, and we really did some proper exploring!  Some of the tracks we used had only been mapped again last year after 30 years without being used.  And here I use the word ‘tracks’ in the loosest possible sense – I certainly couldn’t see any evidence of a route through the bush, but fortunately Clive seemed to know where we he was going and we ended up emerging unscathed at the other end of the park!

We also managed to cross the Runde river – one of the biggest obstacles to working in the park – and were the first vehicles across this season.

We were rewarded at the other side by views of the famous Chilojo cliffs – truly spectacular.

We were very excited to pick up on a good number of wild dog tracks in the park, as well as tracks and other evidence of lions, hyenas and many of the smaller carnivores.  It will be very interesting to see what we find when we start working there properly later this month.

Back soon,

Rosemary

Tags: Gonarezhou National Park, spoor, Wild Dogs, Wilderness, zimbabwe

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 14 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi guys,

I think I mentioned in a previous post that we’ve been doing a spoor survey over the past few weeks; looking along the roads for the tracks of Africa’s large carnivores.  We’ve found the tracks of pretty much everything; lions, leopards (lots), wild dogs, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, brown hyenas, civets, african wild cats, honey badgers and porcupines.  We even saw an actual cheetah the other day (!), which was very special as they are so rare. 

This is a family I saw earlier this year on the road

We also bumped into a black rhino yesterday whilst looking for tracks.  He’d been de-horned by the rhino team here in an effort to prevent poaching.  A sad, but necessary thing to do.  Hopefully he will at least survive, despite not having a horn.

Still another 10 days or so of early starts and spoor transects…

Back soon,

Rosemary

Tags: African carnivores, cheetahs, leopards, lions, spoor, tracks

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