Dispatch 31 - The Painted Dogs of Tuli

The Boundless Southern Africa Expedition is all about nature, community and culture, it's a single symbolic Land Rover journey to link 2 oceans, 9 countries, 30 game parks and nature reserves, 7 Transfrontier Conservation Areas and the communities that live within or alongside these conservation areas. There is no doubt that Botswana is a jewel in the Boundless Crown to link nature, culture and community across Africa. After crossing at Pont Drift the Boundless Expedition was given the most wonderfully warm welcome. Botswana TV, Tourism authorities and the chairman of the Northern Tuli land owners association were all present together with Piet le Roux and his team from Mashatu Private Game Reserve. Within half an hour we were on a game drive with wild dog researcher Craig Jackson, the result was one of the finest Wild Dog sightings we have ever seen.

I'm with Craig Jackson, African wild dog researcher, from the Northern Tuli Game Reserve, part of the Transfrontier Conservation Area between Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa having just crossed the border at Pont Drift into Botswana, lovely welcome, some traditional dancing as the journey rolls on into an area an area that's going to be called, it was announced yesterday, Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area.

Craig, how successful has the reintroduction of wild dogs been into the Northern Tuli Game Reserve?

The reintroduction project into the Northern Tuli Game Reserve has been a great success. Often, reintroducing predators can be quite difficult for various reasons. Our biggest challenge was to make the pack of wild dogs resident on the reserve, trying to make them set up a territory on the reserve especially as it's unfenced. This species can cover massive distances so this was a major challenge. We'll the pack has settled in well, they've become resident on the reserve and they just had their second litter of pups in almost a year and a half now, so it's been a great success.

Craig, where did the pack of wild dogs originally come from?

The pack of wild dogs was brought in from Marakeli National Park in South Africa

The area is unfenced, how do you contain this pack in the Northern Tuli Game Reesrve, they're normally free-ranging animals that can cover vast distances?

We're attempting a world first here; we're trying to create artificial territories towards a peripheral of the reserve using trans-located scent marks from another pack of wild dogs in the north of Botswana. This is basically based on the fact that wild dogs are territorial, they respect the boundaries of their neighbours, and these boundaries are marked using scent marks, urine and faeces. So we've tried this now and we've had some great success.

So just in layman's terms you take samples of urine and faeces and you go around and you mark this territory and that is sufficient, there's no fences, to keep this particular pack within the area. But how long does this scent last?

We weren't exactly sure, but based on some other observations. In 1996 ten study packs in the north of Botswana that has been studied for a long period of time by Dr Ticker Von Tat (005), four of those packs died of rabies and he then noticed that it took several months before the neigbouring packs started to probe into these territorial voids and they slowly and gradually started to fill them after several months. So this basically indicated that although the dogs had been long gone the scent marks remained behind and these we're obviously good enough and lasted for several months signalling the territoriality of this pack even though they've died out some months previously and we've seen it appears to last for up to a year in some instances on the reserve.

This extremely interesting form of fencing, what would you call it?

We refer to it as a bio-boundary, basically a biological relevant boundary, you're essencially speaking the language of the animals, they communicate using this so we're trying to do the same now.

How do you monitor the wild dog movements?

How do you know that they're staying within this bio-line?

We use GPS collars, this allows one to radio-track them but it also takes GPS fixes at regular throughout the day and evening. This then you can later retrieve and put on a map and see exactly how they've moved in relation to the scent marks that we've put out in the field and also taking GPS point of, there's a few different experimental lay-outs on the reserve, some areas we put them out every one and a half kilometres and other areas we do 250 metres, so we've also been getting varied responses in those different areas and we've learnt a whole lot in the last 18 months about this and gradually improving the whole idea.

Today, just a few moments after crossing at Pontdrift into Botswana, we've had some of the finest wild dog encounters I've ever had, they seem extremely happy and contented here. What is the reason for this?

It's an awesome area for wild dogs, it's great habitat, mopani veld, and also plenty of game for them, especially impala, so they've done very well, they're very successful at hunting, they're well-fed.

Known affectionally as the painted dogs of Africa - you are on a research project here, it's supported by Land Rover - you're feelings about wild dogs…?

It's an awesome species and it's a great privilege to be able to live out here and follow them on a daily basis, they are a lot more interesting than other mammal carnivores particularly, their social structure, the way they ?

? (attack? Tact?) dominance and hierarchy, how they care for one another - they're very special, every day out in the field is very special for me, we often see new things. It's definitely a privilege to work with them.

When we're the pack first introduced, how many of them are there, just give us a little more information on this particular pack we saw today.

This pack originated from Marakeli National Park, unfortunately they kept breaking out of the supposedly preditor-prove fencing and I think on one or more occations some of the dogs were shot on the surrounding farming areas and so on, so this became a problem, they we're then captured and held in a boma from May 2007 till November 2007. They we're then trans-located to the Northern Tuli Game Reserve in November and held in a boma till 5th April 2008 and then released, so they've been free-ranging on the reserve since April 2008. During that time they've now had two litters of pups, last year they've successfully raised 12 pups and we've almost had a 100% till the age of one year old and now 10 days ago they just gave birth again, the pups are still underground, we haven't seen them yet so we're not sure how many there are. But the pack at this stage numbers 15 adults plus probably roundabout 8 to 10 pups.

The area that you've bio-fenced, what is the extent of that?

The Northern Tuli Game Reserve compromises 720 sq/kms, we put the bio-boundary just inside the perimeter of most of the reserve and to the west we had to bring it in a fair bit because there is a small village with a fair number of livestock that we've had to try and keep the dogs away from, so the area is probably in the region of 350 - 400sq/kms. These boundaries also, just as in free-ranging populations, it's not a hard boundary, they don't walk up to the scent mark and bounce back, they often move a kilometre or two through it, so it's slightly variable - it's not set.

Craig, the future of the African wild dog, your thoughts?

It's a very difficult species to conserve they require vast areas, if you want to support viable populations, each pack needs a large territory so for several packs to co-exist in a certain area you really need a large protected area, that makes it very difficult, so that is why they are endangered and they do come into conflict with people, either through direct persecution through farmers or other people who persieve them as threats or through accidental death like snaring and that where they're not specifically targeted but that's a major problem, road accidents, these sort of things. So at this stage they estimate the wild dog population to be 3500 to 5000 animals in total - that's even a wide ranging figure, so it's going to be difficult but speially if you look at the TFCA areas and that, the areas they want to expand for conservation, that certainly is important for wild dog conservation and certainly brings a little bit of hope for the future.