GLTCA Wild Dog Project
The overall aim of the project is to assess the abundance and distribution of wild dogs and other large carnivores in Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park, with particular emphasis on the conservation status and cross-border movements of wild dogs.
Initial investigation of wild dog status will be done via a spoor survey, which will include all large carnivores, including lion, spotted and brown hyaena, leopard and the locally rare cheetah. This will provide valuable baseline data for assessing the impact of conservation efforts in the park on the carnivore population as a whole. This is to be followed up with the collaring of two packs, monitoring of these and continual efforts to locate more packs through spoor tracking and sightings. Finally, gathering of photographs of wild dogs in Gonarezhou will be ongoing.
History of the project
This project continues on from the previous years' studies in looking at the conservation status of the wild dog population of Zimbabwe's South East Lowveld, assessing the extent of connectivity between the Zimbabwean and South African portions of the wild dog population of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA), assessing the impact of the multiple conservation threats facing the population and developing tools with which to improve conservation prospects.
The researchers have now spent several years in south-east Zimbabwe. Following completion of a bush-meat project, they turned once more to conservation research involving wild dogs in the Savé Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe, particularly in light of upcoming Transfrontier Park conservation efforts. The 2008 study expanded on their previous research, looking at the conservation status and threats affecting the conservation of wild dogs in the context of the Zimbabwean portion of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area.
Aims and Objectives
Gonarezhou National Park (GNP) is an integral part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA) and yet very little is known about the status of large carnivores in the Park. The highly endangered African wild dog is known to occur, but little is known about its numbers, distribution and movement patterns. Given that the remaining wild dogs are thought to number between only 3 000 and 5 500 individuals, the population in Zimbabwe's south-east lowveld (of which Gonarezhou is a component) is likely to be of considerable conservation significance and merits attention. Moreover, wild dogs are wide-ranging species with potentially vast home ranges and are consequently one of the species most likely to benefit from the TFCA.
Investigating whether or not wild dogs are able to and/or actually do move across the international boundaries will provide a valuable measure of success of the scheme. Likewise, wild dogs can be used as a flagship species, whereby encouraging their conservation and expansion of suitable habitat would have a considerable positive impact on the conservation of the ecosystem as a whole.
Project details
The project aims to estimate the number of lion, hyaena, leopard, cheetah and wild dog using the Gonarezhou National Park. This will be done by an annual spoor survey throughout the Park and through collation of sightings records in collaboration with Frankfurt Zoological Society.
The abundance and distribution of African wild dog in Gonarezhou will be investigated, initially via a spoor survey and collation of sightings data and photographs. All signs of wild dogs noted during the spoor survey will be followed up and two trackers will be employed full time to help establish home ranges etc. Later on, individual packs will be closely monitored once collars are fitted.
GPS satellite collars will be fitted onto at least two wild dog packs and photos of all dogs in the Park collected. Both these actions will help clarify the movement patterns of wild dog, especially cross-border movements.
Photographs of wild dogs will be taken by the research team every time wild dogs are located in the Park. In addition, posters at both entrance gates will inform visitors about the project and request photographs of wild dogs if they should see them. To date several sets of photographs have been sent in by tourists. Frankfurt Zoological Society will also help with the collection of photographs. These photos are labelled, filed and used to create a quick-reference visual identification datasheet for the pack and will be shared with research and conservation teams in South Africa and Mozambique in case cross-border movements can be picked up through identification of individual dogs.
Background to the wild dogs of the Greater-Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area
The Greater-Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area and surrounds are home to an African wild dog population of global significance. In South Africa, Kruger National Park has a population of ~120 wild dogs, with 2-3 resident packs occurring in neighbouring ranching areas. The Zimbabwean population may be considerably larger and is of major conservation significance. Wild dogs occur at high densities in SVC. Populations are also known to occur in several other wildlife areas in the South East Lowveld of Zimbabwe. However, the extent of the distribution of wild dogs in the area, or the status of these populations is poorly understood. Furthermore, with the recent land reform programme, Zimbabwe has recently undergone significant changes in land tenure with major and poorly documented implications for wildlife conservation.
Prior to the land reform programme, Zimbabwe had a large and well developed game ranching industry. In 2000, at least 27,000 km2 of land was used for wildlife production and wildlife populations outside of protected areas were larger than they had been for many decades. Several characteristics made the Zimbabwean game ranching industry more conducive to conserving wild dogs (and other carnivores) than that in South Africa: ranches were generally larger, and were often unfenced, and land uses tended to comprise ecotourism or low off-take trophy hunting, relative to the higher off-take biltong hunting and live capture and sale operations common in South Africa (where predators are perceived to result in high costs to the landowner). Thirdly, there was an increasing trend for ranches to consolidate neighbouring properties to form large conservancies. As a result, several significant wild dog populations developed in ranching areas and on conservancies in the South East Lowveld.
With the onset of the land reform programme in April 2000, however, conditions for wild dog (and other predator) conservation changed significantly. More than 90% of white-owned farms and ranches were taken over for resettlement by black commercial or subsistence farmers. Due to the high human population densities in the South East Lowveld, the majority of former cattle and game ranches have been taken over by subsistence farmers. These changes resulted in several major threats to wild dog populations: major increases in snaring for bush-meat and depletion of populations of wild ungulates; habitat fragmentation due to bush clearing for agriculture, and elevated levels of contact between wild carnivores and domestic stock with corresponding increases in the risk of disease transmission.
