AWDC, Newsletter June 2002

Hello and welcome to the first newsletter from the field this year.

This year is off to a positive start; the Zambian Wildlife Authority granted renewal of AWDC’s permits to radio-collar the wild dogs and continue research activities, which was a great relief after a delay of 18 months. Under the original permits in 2000 it took five months to get the first radio-collar on a wild dog, due to the logistics of finding the dogs and staying with them long enough to fly in a vet and darting equipment to assist with the collaring.

The opportunity came much earlier this year. The first sighting of the dogs since the permits came through revealed a very pregnant alpha female, and a male (I've nicknamed Billy along with his classification name) with a new neck snare. The dogs were lying on a wide open plain, the perfect place for darting. Fortunately the snare was loose, and we were able to dart Billy with the assistance of Ian Stevenson from Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) to remove the wire. This provided a perfect opportunity to fit a radio-collar, as there was no neck wound and he was one of the males targeted for collaring. The pack has not been seen in that open area since, but has disappeared up in the escarpment to den. Not a bad first day in the field for the year.

The radio-collar has allowed us to obtain regular sightings and home range data, even in the thick bush of the Game Management Area (GMA), where this pack is now based. We have tracked the dogs returning morning and evening to the same area for the last ten days, which indicates they have a den. The den location was confirmed yesterday on an aerial tracking flight, where one of the dogs kindly stood up and flashed his white tail so we could spot him from the plane. It is right in the foothills of the mountains in a deep and heavily vegetated gully.

The area has low predator density so the remote and hidden den should be well protected from lions and spotted hyenas, which would prey on pups. Getting to it to obtain a count on the pups may be a challenge, but it looks like we should be able to drive most of the way up a dry river bed and then walk in and spy on the dogs from a ridge above them.

The end of last year saw a social shuffle between the wild dog packs in the area; the males from the Mushika pack split off and joined the two remaining females from the Jeki pack, leaving six lonely females in the Mushika area; the Jeki females are now breeding, and we’ve named the new combination the Mhunyamashi pack, after the area they are now hunting - this was voted more imaginative than "Pack Three".

The first sighting of the Jeki females for nearly twelve months occurred three days before the end of season last year, when they appeared with two seven month old pups in tow. The father is a mystery but it is likely it was Blacksaddle, a male who visited their area quite a bit last year, before the Mushika males joined them permanently.

Unfortunately there is now only one of those pups left, a yearling named Galadriel. This is a very poor survival rate from a litter that was probably nine or more pups, and is likely to be a consequence of the high snaring in the GMA and possibly a lack of adults to feed and raise the pups. There may have been only the two females and Blacksaddle in the pack, which would leave only two adults to hunt to feed the mother and pups.

AWDC has a new field assistant for the season, Trish Pontynen from Australia. I met Trish at a conference in South Africa last year, when she was working with a project studying leopards in the Kalahari. She has offered to help out until November this year, and there is certainly enough work for two.

Now the permits are through the list of activities for this year includes: two spotted hyaena surveys, a lion census of the park, a seasonal vegetation survey, tracking two packs of wild dogs at opposite ends of the park, educational work with the local villages, plus fundraising and report writing and all the less fun activities. With Trish’s help I also hope to have enough time to work on my PhD, as apparently Universities set deadlines these days and I can’t hand it in in ten years time. I think its also probably good for my sanity not to spend more than three years driving around in the bush by myself and talking to the animals.

The first four months of 2002 were spent back in the lab at Sydney University extracting DNA from dog pooh again, and the results were encouraging. This means that I may not have to attempt to take blood samples from all the wild dogs in the area, or the other more remote parks in Zambia, but can instead collect wild dog droppings from each area to obtain DNA information. Logistically this simplifies things a lot, and the smell has finally faded from my nostrils now that I’m back in the fresh air of Africa. 

Special thank you to: Yancey Walker; Dwight Hibbard; Cincinatti Zoo USA; Arthur Vorys; Mark Reed, Sedgwick County Zoo USA; Danida; Afrikeye; Werribee/Melbourne Zoos, Australia; The Wallace Research Foundation, USA; Elefriends Australia; University of Sydney, Australia; Conservation Lower Zambezi; Airwaves Charters, Zambia; Philip and Julia Leonard; Ian and Noeleen Parsons; Gwabi Lodge; and all the safari camps in the LZNP.

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