As part of our recent content collaboration with Wildlife ACT, we will be publishing a guest blog by one of their field experts on a monthly basis. The first of this collaboration sees conservationist Chris Kelly reporting on Africa’s endangered wild dogs.
“There is no fence that a wild dog can’t get through” is a comment heard often when African wild dogs are the topic of conversation. Yes, these highly intelligent creatures have been known to “break out” of reserves, and are known to cover huge distances, but what people tend to forget is that this is not the case for every wild dog out there, but usually only young, dispersing individuals.
Due to an instinctive urge, young wild dogs of about 2 years of age, will sometimes break away from their natal pack with their siblings (usually siblings of the same sex) and disperse to find new mates of the opposite sex.
By doing so, inbreeding within the original pack is prevented and it allows for new packs to be formed. These dispersers will cover huge distances and stop at nothing to find other wild dogs.
This determination means that when they do reach a fence they will spend hours – sometimes days – testing it until they find a weak point and slip through or under, often via a river crossing or a drainage line. It is these dispersers that give wild dogs the reputation of being fence creepers and are supposedly impossible to contain.
This reputation is, therefore, misleading. Let’s put it into perspective: What Wildlife ACT has recorded is that when a new reserve introduces a pack of wild dogs the pack first explores its new home extensively. They will usually cover the entire reserve within the first couple of weeks – and, of course, reach the boundary fence regularly.
However (and this is what people tend to forget) these roaming wild dog packs have never broken out during this initial period. In fact, most of these packs have never broken out. So it is clear that fences do keep wild dogs in.
When we break it down into numbers, there are 10 meta-population reserves across South Africa, which translates to about 188 wild dogs in 18 packs. Some of these reserves are as small as 5000 hectares. Of these 18 wild dog packs, a mere few of them have ever “broken out” in the last 5 years. Furthermore, the reasons for this was purely due to the poor standard of the fence, and/or too much pressure from other, more dominant predators.
Just like most other species in our smaller protected areas, this species can be contained quite easily. Proper fencing and proactive management is all that is required.
What a great read. I learned something new that can be really useful for future