Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

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

No responses yet

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

No responses yet

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

2 responses so far