Circles of death

Poaching is one of those topics that wherever you go it is bound to draw debate – often controversial, sometimes heated but never dull. It’s a topic that I feel strongly about even though it’s often hard to form clearly-defined principles. The news of the choice to award Swazi environmentalist Thuli Mahama the Goldman Environmental Prize highlights some of the issues that make poaching a polarised and murky topic.

On paper, the recognition of the work of Mahama is a victory for common sense. After all, many of the fat cats, officials and game reserve employees that get caught poaching the animals that they are charged to protect often get off scott-free. All the while, the desperate rural villager poaching meat to feed his starving family is hit so hard with the heavy hand of the law that it often costs them their lives. And this is what Mahama has been fighting for – an end to the violent anti-poaching tactics that leads to suspected poachers being hunted down, killed or beaten. She wants to see poachers prosecuted through the correct legal channels.

Like I said, on paper the theory is noble. If the work of people like Mahama can ensure that all poachers are treated equally and convicted, no matter what their status, then it will be a victory for conservation. However, out on Africa’s plains of reality, just as in other parts of the world, the situation is much less clear-cut. Poachers are often armed, sometimes set booby traps and more often than not work in groups. As a result, plenty of game rangers and anti-poaching scouts are killed by poachers every year.

Let us assume that arrests are made – this does not always end in a prosecution or even result in a poacher being deterred from crossing that line again in the future. The late Bruce Bryden, former chief ranger in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, recalls how his successful arrest of a gang of poachers from Mozambique turned sour. The group were simply released from custody on the grounds that they were all high-ranking police or security officials.

One of the most difficult areas to draw judgement on is the issue of dealing with the hungry subsistence poacher who is out to catch an impala for his family compared to dealing with the poacher who is looking to pocket cash in return for rhino horn, ivory or tiger bone. It is the latter that attracts the scorn of the media (and rightly so when their quarries are the critically endangered) while the simple hunter-gatherer often attracts pity.

Mahama points out that the poaching carried out by the hungry rural villager is ‘nothing more than the odd killing of an antelope or warthog’ but while that may be their intent, the method of setting dozens of wire snares also leads to the maiming or slow and painful death of countless other species that the hunter-gatherer has no interest in eating. As a result, this ‘subsistence’ poaching can have a greater negative affect on the overall biodiversity of an area through this kind of secondary impact.

But we can’t afford to sit back and compare how or why animals are poached or what a poacher’s intent may be. We are losing too many species and habitats at such an alarming rate…and in a year when we are supposed to be celebrating biodiversity! Yes, poachers do need to be dealt with through the legal processes championed by Mahama but at a time when rhino poaching is on the increase again we also need to look broader toward the issues of security, demand and trade. As chief executive of SANParks Dr David Mabunda recently said:

No matter how hard we try to reduce or stamp out this inferno, the solution will come from…taking the war to the “Armani-suits and silk tie” clad rhino dealers and reduce the demand in South East Asia through international interventions driven by CITES.

In reality, it’s a multi-tiered offensive that nations need to invest in when it comes to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan later this year. Greater legal protection of wildlife and a crack-down on trade will no doubt be discussed but, on the ground, better protection of endangered species and habitats is a necessity. That includes more anti-poaching patrols in sensitive areas, better fences along human-wildlife conflict boundaries and certainly a better deal for the army of grossly underpaid yet committed game rangers and scouts whose difficult and dangerous job it is to protect our natural wealth. No longer can we sit back and expect someone to be a guardian of an endangered species on a pitiful salary when if it wasn’t for their devotion they could be earning far more money illegally plundering that same species.

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The translocation of Rory

As the son of Stellar, the charismatic alpha female Wild Dog on South Africa’s Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve, Rory has come from good stock. The problem is that following the unexpected deaths of the two other males in his pack, Abel and Baker, Rory recently became the only possible mate if his mother Stellar was to bear a litter of pups again.

With just a few hundred African Wild Dogs left in South Africa, if Rory were to mate with Stellar it would fly in the face of conservation efforts to build a genetically viable population. So the decision was made to dart Rory and to move him to another reserve to start a new pack. Rory would then be replaced at Venetia by males brought in from Botswana…creating two breeding packs in the process.

The Venetia dogs were moved into a boma (a large enclosure) to make the darting and translocation process easier. This will also allow the pack to be monitored closely when the females are introduced to the new boys from over the border.

The morning of 17 February was overcast. A good sign as it meant Rory would be less likely to overheat during his long journey to KwaZulu-Natal. But he had to be darted first…surely a straight-forward task in a fenced area with strategically-positioned bait? You’d think so.

Five darts and five long hours later and Rory finally went to ground under the influence of the tranquiliser drug. The team of vets and researchers went straight to work removing the darts, disinfecting the dart wounds and removing his radio collar.

After being doused with water to keep him cool, Rory was placed in a crate, loaded onto the back of a Land Rover and driven the 900km’s to his new home.

Sure, this kind of intervention can sometimes be stressful for animals but when we as humans have driven a species like the African Wild Dog to the margins of existence, it’s a good thing there are people prepared to sit and be bitten by mosquito’s in 35 degree heat for five hours and then drive 900km’s just to give an animal a fighting chance of survival.

Transcending boundaries – wild dogs in a modern landscape

In a region bustling with development and about to welcome one of the world’s largest sporting events in the FIFA World Cup, in a continent that has just counted it’s one billionth person, it is hard to see space for the expansion of safe habitat for a pack animal like the African wild dog. But new protection and landscape-scale conservation efforts may offer hope.

Wild dog packs utilise such huge areas that there are few reserves in Southern Africa big enough to home sustainable, stand-alone populations. When one or more dogs disperse to form a new pack, their reliance on safe and suitable habitat becomes even greater. Thankfully, the UN Environment Programme has made the move to upgrade the status of the species to migratory. This not only promises greater protection but also calls for further regional cooperation towards securing agreements over transfrontier conservation areas like the Greater Mapungubwe area.

The heart of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) lies at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers – the meeting point of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. If this vision of a cross-border haven can be realised then it may secure the future of the few wild dog packs living in the region. Lions, the wild dog’s greatest natural enemy, are low in numbers here but this does not mean the dogs can live without threat or fear.

Rural communities live off the land here through necessity as well as tradition. The snares left by poachers and the diseases carried by domestic dogs used by hunters are a real threat to wild dogs, as well as the ever- busier roads transecting the habitat and a local farming and hunting community that is largely unwelcoming to carnivores.

Despite such threats, the area has already received the vote of confidence as a safe habitat for wild dogs with the translocation of a pack from South Africa’s Marekele National Park to Botswana’s Northern Tuli Game Reserve in 2007. Since then, the pack has thrived in its Limpopo forest home with 25 pups in the last two years.

In KwaZulu-Natal in eastern South Africa, wild dog numbers are on the increase too despite a declining international population. The region’s jewel-in-the-crown, the Hluhluwe-imfolozi Park, can boast arguably the country’s most stable population and with new packs now established on geographically isolated reserves elsewhere in the province, the new challenge facing conservationists is how to maintain the genetic balance of the population.

Rather than imitating natural movements by physically darting and translocating wild dogs between these reserves, Endangered Wildlife Trust officers are working with local rural communities to establish safe routes of dispersal to link isolated populations.

They may be subtly different yet both the proposed Greater Mapungubwe TFCA and the KwaZulu-Natal approaches to African wild dog conservation offer solutions for the future of a migratory species in a changing landscape. In both cases, those responsible for the safeguarding and development of the species will have to deal with the challenges dished out by a constricting human world. Although by engaging with local communities, landowners and farmers, it can be hoped that both processes will allow for a wider understanding and appreciation of the wild dog. Though in some areas, simple tolerance would be a victory.

28 Stories exhibition round-up

The launch of the show 28 Stories and the first showing of my current project Underdogs kicked off in successful style on Wednesday the 9th in London’s Elephant & Castle. The exhibition was attended by Endangered Wildlife Trust representatives, renowned animal behaviourist and African wild dog expert Peter Neville, as well as photographers Ed Kashi and Simon Norfolk. Thank you to all those who came on the night. The first draft of the book Underdogs: the fight to save South Africa’s wild dogs was met with a favourable response. Keep an eye on this blog for more news about the book and this project in the new year.

‘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.