African Wild Dog Critical Alert on Mkhuse

On Tuesday 14th November we received an email from our Wildlife ACT team contact, Bronwen Kelly. This is what she wrote - 

“one of our monitors has offered to work over those days due to the critical need to ensure daily sightings of the Wild Dog pack which is currently on Mkhuze Game Reserve. This pack has been through some absolute horrors over the last 6 months; two of the dogs have each lost a leg after being caught in poachers’ snares (… on just 3 legs they are surprisingly adept at keeping up with the pack! These are amazingly resilient although vulnerable creatures; I am sure you will both quickly find a special spot for them in your hearts just like we all have).

The pressing need to track this particular pack of Wild Dogs means that we are concentrating our efforts there (in Mkhuze) to ensure their safety and survival. Unfortunately Mkhuze Game Reserve suffers from an influx of poachers as ¾ of the reserve is surrounded by local rural communities who consistently trespass onto the reserve to set snares with the intention of catching bush meat (mostly antelope). Tragically, these snares have a large unintended by-catch, which includes any unsuspecting animal that walks into the snares – including rhino, elephant, and very often the Wild Dogs since they cover such large distances daily in search of food.

For this reason it is absolutely vital that the monitoring team locates the Wild Dog pack each morning and evening and ensures that all the dogs are accounted for and unharmed.”

Photo - National Geographic

We’ll be up at any time most mornings around 3.45am as the wild dogs need to tracked and found before sunrise when the awake. The dogs in the pack move very fast in search of food. We’ll be tracking them each morning and later in the day and often the evening.

& this is what we’ll be doing on Christmas day too ….. helping to save these amazing animals!