‘Underdogs’ launch at London exhibition

The last few months have been long, relatively sleepless but hopefully fruitful. My project on African wild dogs is finally approaching its launch at the 28 Stories exhibition in London on Wednesday 9 December. On show will be my book Underdogs: The Fight to Save South Africa’s Wild Dogs as well as photographs from the project so please join me at the private view from 6pm on the 9th.

Underdogs deals with the fight to save South Africa’s remaining wild dogs, a population that echoes the issues facing wild dog conservation across Africa. The African wild dog carries the unenviable title of the continent’s second most endangered carnivore and estimated numbers are tumbling towards just 3,000 across a continent whose human population recently topped one billion.

This will hopefully be the first of many guises the project will take and so I’m looking forward to 2010 already! After all, with the priviledge I feel having shared the world of five packs over the last 12 months, I don’t take my responsibility to these dogs lightly.

Size matters: The dogs of Venetia Limpopo

The wild dogs of Venetia Limpopo have had a turbulent last few years – mainly at the hands of lions – resulting in alpha female Stellar cautiously leading her small pack of five from rocky safe haven to rocky safe haven each day.

When Stellar became pregnant recently it was clear that her mind wasn’t just on survival for her pack but on growth and for a short while all seemed rosy in this colourful mopani and baobab clustered corner of South Africa. Though having lost her entire litter the previous year, the future of the pack hung desperately on her ability to find a safe den site.

The bitter irony of choosing a rocky high-ground for the den in an attempt to avoid dangerous competitors like lion and hyena was that she lead her pack straight into a leopard’s domain, a choice which cost her mate Abel his life.

The trauma of the attack split the pack leaving Stellar out on her own. Did she not flee with Fender, Rory and Baker because she had pups hidden away? It was too soon to tell as she would only bring them out of the den after a few weeks…but with one less member of the hunting pack, her chances of even keeping her pups alive that long would be slim.

We know Stellar has met up with the others but still spends time on her own. We also know a pack from Botswana and free roaming dogs have explored the boundaries of the Venetia territory. So is Stellar desperate for the support of the pack for the survival of her pups or will the others disperse and move on? It’s an interesting and crucial period in the life of the Venetia pack and one that echoes the broader fight to save Africa’s wild dogs.

In a natural and competitive environment where size matters, wild dogs have their own battles and with only a few hundred left in South Africa alone, losing an alpha dog is a real setback and an event that can change the fortunes of a pack and the balance of a population.

As we inspected Abel’s carcass, the importance and fragility of EWT’s efforts became clear, the only consolation in the thought that at least Abel wasn’t another statistic born out of man’s misunderstanding and intolerance of these charismatic canids.

Wild Dogs – an introduction

I’m currently working out of South Africa putting together a project on Wild Dogs and the struggle to secure and develop their population and I thought I’d grab the chance to post an update before I head back into the bush and away from the world of internet connectivity.

Wild Dogs always were pretty special to me but having the opportunity to follow them daily and observe their social intimacies and their hunting and survival strategies has given me a whole new respect for them.

So far I’ve been working alongside researchers from the Endangered Wildlife Trust on a reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo Province but the unique metapopulation conservation approach will also mean working in Botswana and the renowned Hluhluwe-Imfolozi reserve in KwaZulu-Natal.

Wild Dogs have large territories and out of denning season they can cover huge distances in barely no time at all and so I’ve been completely reliant on and continually impressed by the tracking skills of these dedicated few individuals.

Radio collars are used on certain individuals but the terrain and distances involved require more than an understanding of telemetry equipment, and a combination of traditional tracking techniques and an instinctive understanding of Wild Dog behaviour are put to the test daily.

As well as their susceptibility to disease, it may come as no surprise that Africa’s second most endangered carnivore has disappeared from much of its former range as a result of habitat loss and persecution.

Lions are a Wild Dog’s greatest natural adversary though and don’t need a second invitation to kill either adult dogs or pups. Having lost their alpha male and litter to Lions last year, it’s been fascinating monitoring the movement of the pack to avoid Lions, even up into inaccessible rocky areas.

But the dogs can only avoid Lions when they know where they are and this is usually done by keeping those massive ears tuned for Lions calling. But we did face an agonising wait one morning as the pack literally brushed shoulders with the Lion pride by unwittingly lying up on the adjacent side of a hill.

Wild Dog movements are also governed by the availability of prey. Impala make up the majority of their diet and despite Wild Dogs being among the most efficient large carnivores when it comes to hunting, it was excruciating to witness a handful of failed attempts on their part.

But one has to be on the ball when following Wild Dogs as they don’t hang around, especially when feeding, and on two occasions the pack consumed their prey in only a handful of minutes before we could even get to the scene.

It’s been a pure privilege working on this project so far and there’s more to come including visits to a Wild Dog pack in Botswana who are currently raising a litter of 13 pups and KwaZulu-Natal to see how the Endangered Wildlife Trust is managing the essential element of conservation – community education and engagement.

White-tailed Eagles, part 2

I recently returned to Scotland to try and get the shots of white-tailed eagles I felt I was missing from my last visit. The weather was perfect on all 4 days, giving me the chance to capture the eagles hunting at a higher shutter speed and a lower ISO.

While all seemed rosy with perfect conditions for the eagles to feed their chicks, truth be known these were one of the lucky pairs after a spell of bad weather had hit western Scotland earlier this spring, meaning that many nests have failed this year.

The weather I can put down to luck but the timing wasn’t by chance. I’d planned my visit to Skye for a few weeks after the chicks would be likely to hatch so that the adults would be hunting twice as hard to feed their growing chicks and to keep themselves in shape, providing me with more opportunities to get the shots I was after.

With some shots already in the bag from the previous day with the 1d mark3 and the calmest, brightest day of the lot upon us, the timing seemed perfect to try the new 5d mark2 with a 1.4x teleconverter and 400mm f2.8 combination. But, true to the unpredictable nature of photographing wildlife, the eagles didn’t want to budge from their nest, content with digesting the sea bird they had killed before our arrival on the scene earlier that morning.

In the end I had to be happy with what I’d captured on the first morning and this gave me the chance to see what other wildlife was thriving alongside the eagles on the island.

The trip provided me with my best views of golden eagles and one of my most memorable encounters with a pair of otters. Also, knowing that cuckoos are having a hard time of it at the moment, it made it all the more rewarding that by the end of the trip we’d seen 5 of these charismatic birds. In true Scottish style however, the warm weather following spring rains also meant one other thing – midges!

In all, it was again plain to see how important white-tailed eagles are to the local community. Sentimentality aside, a bad nesting season such as this one can have knock-on effects for tourism and the local economy and that came across in my conversations with those people whose lives are intrinsically linked to the presence of these magnificent birds.