Rosemary Groom

The wild dog project here in Zimbabwe is going well. I recently came back from completing a spoor survey in Gonarezhou National Park where we picked up signs of several packs of wild dogs, which is very exciting. We will be attempting to find their dens over the next couple of months; no small challenge in a 5000km2 area of total wilderness! Logistics are a little easier in our other focal study area, the Save Valley Conservancy, where we have already located two den sites – excitingly the pups have recently emerged at one of the dens. Unfortunately, snaring continues to be an issue, killing and injuring more wild dogs than anything else, but we continue to do what we can to mitigate this problem.

We are making good progress with our environmental education plans, including design of resources and the identification of priority schools, and should have our education officer employed within the next few months. Likewise, our plans for domestic dog vaccination campaigns are coming on well, and we will be holding the first campaign in September.

Denning season is well underway with the wild dogs in Zimbabwe’s Lowveld. We have located the dens of five packs to date and continue to monitor them closely. Very sadly, in late July 2010 we had a pack wiped out by rabies – most likely spread from domestic dogs in the surrounding community. Thanks to our close monitoring of the situation, we were able to both ascertain cause of death and were able to rescue the last two surviving pups and take them up to a wild dog rehabilitation facility in the north west of the country. So far they are doing well and will be released back into the wild after teaming up with other rehabilitated individuals to form a pack. Although too late for this pack, this incident highlights the need for the rabies vaccination campaigns we have planned for late September – we hope to be able to vaccinate close to 1000 domestic dogs in communities bordering wildlife areas.

Last month, we visited many of the schools surrounding the Savé Valley Conservancy (SVC) to get feedback from teachers and students about the developing environmental education programme. Teacher training was highlighted as the key issue, and thanks to RSGF we have the resources to carry out such workshops early next year. We have organised a scholarship programme to allow children currently receiving primary school scholarships to continue their education at secondary level. The new motorbike for the education officer has recently been purchased and resources for the schools are being bought and/or collected. A few pilot programmes have been employed at some schools, and results have been very positive.

The most exciting wild dog news from the past months is that we managed to locate a den site in Gonarezhou NP and fit a GPS collar to one of the dogs denning there – the first time either has ever been achieved in this large, wild and remote corner of Zimbabwe!

The first of our rabies vaccination campaigns was held last month, and was a great success. We worked in collaboration with AWARE Trust and the district veterinary department to vaccinate domestic dogs in and around the south of the Savé Valley Conservancy against rabies and other infectious diseases. We provided fuel for the awareness campaign as well as 750 rabies vaccines, 250 ‘7 in 1’ vaccines (including canine distemper and canine parvo-virus) and needles and syringes, and had a very good turn out to the vaccination sites. Together with the veterinary department vaccines, several thousand dogs were vaccinated against rabies.

On the wild dog side, we have recently located another den site; the pack is denning four-five months later than is usual, but seem to be doing well so far. They have seven pups of about 2 months of age. We managed to de-snare another adult wild dog last month (and a leopard) and our anti-poaching efforts continue.

Read more about the activities undertaken and findings of this project in the final report below.