Kruger National Park Wild Dogs

[Lisbeth]

Seems to be a success

How come that there were no Wild dogs in the north? The pack where all died, was that in the north?

[Flutterby]

No, that was near Lower Sabie.

[Lisbeth]

So there ave never been Wild dogs in the north or.....?

[okie]

So there ave never been Wild dogs in the north or.....?

Not for a very very long time lis You must remember that probably even as recent as 1960/1970 , wild dogs were considered by farmers as vermin , and were hunted and destroyed on private farms

[Flutterby]

We saw 2 near Letaba about 7 years ago.

[Lisbeth]

How come? Do they not move around

[Richprins]

The North has always been a stronghold for them, Lis, especially Phalaborwa and Punda. Maybe the Punda bunch vanished? We've had this discussion before: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... &start=270

[Lisbeth]

[nan]

super nice news
well done

[Klipspringer]

https://cisp.cachefly.net/assets/articl ... t-2018.pdf

Some wild dog data from the last EWT report

Protecting Kruger’s Wild Dogs against diseases
In collaboration with South African National Parks (SANParks) and the State Veterinary Department, we continued our ambitious project a first of its kind for Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) – to collar and vaccinate Wild Dogs against the canine distemper virus and rabies in the Kruger National Park (KNP).
The project also looks to understand the prevalence of disease within this Wild Dog population, and to determine their immune responses to vaccinations.
We have successfully collared every Wild Dog pack in the park.
We targeted every pack for vaccination, a complex procedure that requires an initial vaccine, a booster vaccine 6–8 weeks later, and an annual top–up vaccine. To–date, we have sampled 77 individuals of which 71 were vaccinated from 23 packs, of which 60 individuals have received their booster vaccinations to date.
Our monitoring indicates that the populations contained 250 individual adults and yearlings in 24 packs, prior to the 2018 denning season – the largest it has been for the past five years and in no small part thanks to the vaccination project. We are proud to report the project has achieved its goal of protecting 30–40% of the Wild Dogs in Kruger against disease.

Since 1995, there has been a prolonged decline of Wild Dogs in the northern KNP. After many years of effort, we finally augmented this northern population through the reintroduction of a pack of eight Wild Dogs into the Shingwedzi area. The pack has since denned and had two pups, highlighting the success of this reintroduction. This pack has also enabled cross border collaboration with the Greater Limpopo Carnivore Programme, where the pack has spent time in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park.