Threats to Wild Dogs & Wilddog Conservation

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Threats to Wild Dogs & Wilddog Conservation

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Wild dog now protected in Namibia

WINDHOEK, Feb. 16 -- Namibia has amended the law to include wild dogs as one of the protected animals.

Environment minister Pohamba Shifeta signed the amended Schedule 3 of the Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1975 Tuesday.

The World Conservation Union listed the wild dog as a protected species in 1977.

Known scientifically as the Lycaon pictus, wild dogs are, according to the Namibia Nature Foundation, one of the most endangered mammal.

Over the years, the Namibia Nature Foundation, said the wild dog population in Namibia has fallen to about 600, while in the sub-Saharan region the population is about 5,000.

Today, wild dogs are found in about 14 countries out of 39 that used to have wild dogs 30 years ago.

In welcoming the amendment, the Namibia Nature Foundation said the listing came after a very long process.

"This changes the legal status of this animal as it was not protected at all up to date. This is great news for a previously maligned species and for conservation in Namibia," the foundation said.

Although this will bring new challenges for their management, the foundation further said, they are ready to work with all stakeholders, particularly farmers, to find proactive solutions for the good of the species.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016- ... 104079.htm


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Re: Wild dog now protected in Namibia

Post by Mel »

Well done, Namibia :-)


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Re: Wild dog now protected in Namibia

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^Q^


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Re: Wild dog now protected in Namibia

Post by Lisbeth »

Another step in the right direction \O \O Lots still to do O**


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Threats to Wild Dogs & Wilddog Conservation

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Posted on 31 August, 2018 by Africa Geographic Editorial in Conservation, People, Wildlife —

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© Endangered Wildlife Trust

There are only about 520 wild dogs remaining in South Africa, and a long-standing and successful project desperately needs your help to continue with their excellent work. Largely through their efforts, South Africa is the only country to see a significant increase in wild dog populations.

But the project is facing cash flow pressure in the face of increased costs and fragmented public focus.

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Wild dog conservation
© Endangered Wildlife Trust

The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s (EWT) Carnivore Conservation Program has many achievements to demonstrate their effectiveness, including recently reintroducing 14 wild dogs into Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, and eight wild dogs into the northern reaches of the Kruger National Park. These two relocations are part of 13 successful relocations during the past year, involving 73 wild dogs.

They also manage the largest vaccination project for the species – in the Kruger National Park, which now has the highest wild dog population in five years. Their involvement in Kruger and in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park also includes monitoring and reporting on snare victims.

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Tracking wild dogs in the wild
© Endangered Wildlife Trust

African wild dogs range over a vast landscape, making them difficult to monitor and track. This makes them more susceptible to human-wildlife conflict, snaring and diseases such as canine distemper and rabies.

EWT needs your help to raise R200,000 to fund the collaring of wild dog packs. The collaring of wild dogs helps to monitor, track and vaccinate them. It has got to the point where every individual wild dog is vital for the survival of the species. We cannot afford to lose any more of these intelligent and unique predators.

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Endangered Wildlife Trust wild dog conservation
© Endangered Wildlife Trust

The time to act is now, and every little bit helps!

Your donation goes to the costs that are involved in darting, collaring and tracking of wild dogs.

• R5,000 goes to the cost of fuel needed to drive to the wild dog packs

• R8,000 goes to the cost of the vet and field crew time

• R32,000 goes to the cost of a satellite collar

• R50,000 goes to the cost of darting, collaring and monitoring 1 African wild dog

Donations can be made at https://www.givengain.com/cc/ewtsavewilddogs or contact HeatherA@ewt.org.za for more details.

Thank you, keep the passion!

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African wild dog
© Endangered Wildlife Trust


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Wild dogs languish in boma prison for a year while humans argue over their fate

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Animal Abuse
Wild dogs.jpg
Wild dogs.jpg (126.51 KiB) Viewed 552 times
By Don Pinnock• 13 September 2018

There are about 450 adult wild dogs in South Africa and 14 of them – 5.6% of the SA population – have been holed up in a boma in Tembe Elephant Park for nearly a year as humans with different agendas squabble over what to do with them.

Wild dogs are beautiful – lean, intelligent canids with black, white and tan coats and a showy white-tipped tail. They’re highly social, efficient hunters and once ranged throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Today they’re listed as endangered with a very high risk of extinction in the wild. They’re the second most threatened carnivore in Africa after the Ethopian wolf and the most endangered in South Africa.

They’ve been exterminated across much of their range: virtually extinct in West Africa and greatly reduced in Central and North-east Africa. The largest populations are in Southern Africa.

Wild dogs are understandably a huge tourist attraction – considered one of ecotourism’s “Big 7” – and that, in part, seems to be one of the issues in the Tembe litigation and finger-pointing. They also, occasionally, eat cows.

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Here’s the backstory. In 2011, as part of its efforts to expand the range of wild dogs in KwaZulu-Natal, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) introduced several wild dogs to Tembe, which lies along the SA/Mozambique border. But in 2015 they broke out of the park, possibly because of threats from the increasing lion population – and livestock were easy picking. So most of the pack was rounded up in 2016 and sent to Northern Tuli in Botswana.

A second group of dogs were brought in and housed in a boma. Perhaps they’d be better behaved. But they soon broke out of the boma and joined a few members of the previous pack. At about this point the battle over their future began.

There are now 14 in the new pack – known as Albie’s Pack – and by all accounts they’ve never broken out of the reserve to go cow hunting. So where’s the problem?

The first issue is about space. Tembe is a provincial park run by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife which, earlier this year, announced it was going to move the dogs to Pongola, citing “scientific evidence suggesting Tembe is too small for wild dogs”.

Ecologist Wayne Matthews, who worked in the park for many years, agrees on the space issue. “It’s not the normal roaming distance for these animals. So they’re going to want to break out.”

An intensive study by EWT – which has considerable experience with wild dogs – refuted this, citing expanding nyala and impala populations and 23% more space than 14 wild dogs would require. It recommended that the dogs be released from the boma.

Matthews agreed there was enough for the dogs to eat, but a problem was that instead of catching nyala and impala, they were tending to pick off the suni antelope. ‘That’s a red flag, they’re a Red Data endangered species, so their protection supersedes the priority of the wild dogs. And smaller stuff can take a hammering.”

While they may be easy pickings, it turned out they’re actually not an endangered species. The Red Data listing is that suni are “not considered close to meeting any threshold for threatened status and it is confirmed of least concern”. Legitimate lunch?

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Ezemvelo, however, doesn’t mention suni, but won’t budge on the space issue. This does, of course, beg the question why, if they were worried about space, did they agree to release a predator into the reserve known to have large, well-protected litters?

The pending removal has rung alarm bells for Tembe Safaris, which has a tented lodge in the park (the only accommodation) and for which wild dogs are a big tourist attraction. In June this year it filed an affidavit against Ezemvelo to prevent their repatriation.

According to the affidavit, Tembe Safaris has a vested interest in the park and a right to be consulted on wildlife decisions: “Tourism is vital support for the park and wild dog sightings are among its greatest attractions, so their removal will result in a decline in tourism.”

This would not only negatively affect the safari company, but its 55 local Tembe employees.

The affidavit points out that the reason the dogs escaped was because Ezemvelo failed to maintain the integrity of the fences. However the local community, it says, support the release of the dogs, both because of the value of employment, but also because Tembe Safaris has undertaken to pay compensation for any farm animal killed by wild dogs.

The company has agreed to recapture the dogs after release if this becomes necessary, compensate the local populace for any damage caused by the dogs and pay for the fitting of electronic monitoring collars so they can be tracked at all times. If they are removed, says Tembe Safaris, “there is scant chance that they will ever be reintroduced”.

In support of their affidavit, the veterinary organisation Saving the Survivors has warned that keeping wild dogs in a boma for protracted lengths of time reduces their ability to survive interactions with lions and to hunt. In a letter to Tembe Safaris, Ezemvelo’s lawyer disputes this, saying “a pack released into Gorongoza after a two-year period in confinement re-adapted perfectly well,” but does not offer scientific support for this.

The attempt by Tembe Safaris to halt the removal is clearly a final straw in a list of irritations with Ezemvelo. According to their lawyer, Patrick Lander, these include:

- The decision to proceed with the abortive attempt lead by an unlicensed guide to collar an elephant for the entertainment of guests, which lead to the death of the elephant and abandoning the carcass next to a busy tourist track;

- The decision to defy the Tourism Act by using unlicensed tourist guides;

- Erecting an unsightly boundary gate;

- The decision to maintain an overpopulation of nyala, causing environmental damage and resulting massive destruction of certain sensitive indigenous vegetation;

- The downgrading of tourist facilities from three to two stars; and

- The restriction of after hours access to the park by licensed guides and instead granting access to unlicensed guides.

According to Wayne Matthews, if Tembe Safaris and Ezemvelo had a good breakout protocol and a compensation fund for local community for stock loss, it would be better, on balance, to release the dogs from the boma than cooping them up for months and months.

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“It’s not good to have wild dogs in a boma. You need to get the basics right. Sort out compensation, let the dogs go in and out of the park if they do, but have local people employed to monitor them. Fix the fences, get the community involved – these are management issues. It’s no good people throwing their favourite facts at each other and getting into litigation.”

Ezemvelo has agreed to pause on repatriation of the dogs pending legal procedures to be heard in court at some future date and, meanwhile, hearing the opinion of the local community. However the chairperson of the Tembe Community Trust, Joel Mthembu, is in no doubt about the value of keeping the dogs in the park. 1

“Tembe Park without wild dogs,” he posted on Facebook, “is like bread without butter.”

As the arguments continue, however, 14 now un-wild dogs hang out in a small boma waiting to do what they do best – run wild and free. It’s not a pretty conservation picture.


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Threats to Wild Dogs & Wilddog Conservation

Post by Lisbeth »

Common sense is not exactly abundant :O^


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Re: Wild dogs languish in boma prison for a year while humans argue over their fate

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O/


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Re: Wild dogs languish in boma prison for a year while humans argue over their fate

Post by Richprins »

"Prison", "Animal abuse"? Really, Pinnock. :O^

Anyway, original story here:

https://www.africawild-forum.com/viewto ... 320&t=8516


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
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Re: Threats to Wild Dogs & Wilddog Conservation

Post by Lisbeth »

‘Devastating loss to conservation’ as six endangered African wild dogs poisoned in the Waterberg

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Members of the TOOG pack. (Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

By Don Pinnock | 13 Dec 2023

A third of one of South Africa’s last remaining free-roaming packs of endangered African wild dogs has been poisoned.
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When Reilly Mooney of the Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative (WWDI) saw the first dead wild dog, she was shocked but held back the tears. This was a crime scene and her brain switched into professional mode. It was clearly poisoned.

Over a two-day search, a team of investigators found a total of six dead wild dogs on Mountain View Bush Lodge, a private game farm south of Lephalale, Limpopo. The scene was traumatic to witness for the team that has been involved in conserving this pack, and the loss is being felt by the broader community engaged in the pack’s conservation over recent years.

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A member of the TOOG pack. (Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

“The worst was when the investigators had finished and our team had to bury the dogs to prevent scavengers from feeding on them and becoming victims of secondary poisoning” said Mooney.

“For one dog, we dug a grave in a dry riverbed, covered it with lime to deter scavengers, filled in the grave and covered it with rocks. By that time, we’d found a total of six dead dogs.

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The last resting place.(Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

“Sitting there next to the grave of a dog I’d known since it was a tiny pup, I was gutted. I just lost it and the tears flowed. My team has been working to conserve the pack for three and a half years. We knew each dog and had spent significant time getting to know them and working alongside the community to conserve them.”

Conservation of the free-roaming TOOG Area Pack in the Waterberg, Limpopo, has until now been a community-driven success story. The pack ranged over a large area that included many private farms and reserves. Several dogs had been collared and monitored by a joint team of conservationists from the WWDI and the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) to track their movements and work with the community to conserve the pack. More than 50 private properties played a role in conserving this pack and high-pup survival rates led to a strong and healthy pack.

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Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative team in action installing a radio collar. (Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

‘Devastating loss’

Wild dogs are facing a high risk of extinction in the wild and are protected in South Africa by the Biodiversity Act and Threatened or Protected Species Regulations (ToPS). Killing them without a permit is a criminal act. An investigation is now underway, led by Detective Warrant Officer Cois van Deventer from the South African Police Service – Endangered Species Unit.

The poison used was found to be Temik, well-known in wildlife poisoning cases. The site at which the dogs were poisoned and the reason has not yet been verified and is part of the investigation.

Conflict between people and large carnivores is a leading threat to large carnivores worldwide. In the Waterberg, it arises when wild dogs predate on animals belonging to the widespread game ranching industry. As a result, the dogs are vulnerable to persecution for predating on what is their natural prey.

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Members of the TOOG pack in discussion. (Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

Until the latest incident, however, co-existence methods implemented by the team were showing success, and additional projects were underway to further help offset losses to game farmers. This is why the poisoning came as such a shock, Mooney told Daily Maverick.

“Recent efforts by conservationists and the community gave hope to the future of wild dog conservation here. The pack ranges across 125,000 hectares and we engage daily with landowners to keep the community informed about its movements.”

“Poisoning is an indiscriminate, unethical and illegal method used to eradicate predators and the dogs would have suffered immense pain before dying,” the WWDI and the EWT say in a joint press release. “The senseless act has undermined the efforts of the 55 private farms that have played a role in conserving this pack over the last four years.

“It is a devastating loss for conservation and for South Africa’s free-roaming African wild dog population, for the Waterberg’s biodiversity, for the team of conservationists dedicated to protecting the pack, for the community and for South Africa’s heritage.”

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Keeping the public informed. (Photo: Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative)

The Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative is offering a substantial reward for information relating to this crime which results in a successful prosecution.

Anyone with useful information that could further the investigation can contact Detective Warrant Officer Cois van Deventer from the South African Police Service – Endangered Species Unit at 082 872 1741. A TOOG Pack Disaster Fund has been set up to support the investigation and safeguard the survivors and donations are being called for. DM


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