They say that the dog is man’s best friend – but one type of dog may become a thing of the past without a little help.The African wild dog is one of the world’s most endangered species, and one of the great conservation challenges for the 21st Century.
These canines are regularly targeted in the wild by larger predators – so they roam widely, seeking areas where the risks of encountering a lion or hyena are low. This leads wild dogs into contact with new threats; hostile people, high speed roads, and domestic dog diseases.
While lions, leopards and hyenas thrive in Africa’s parks, wild dogs have been lost from most protected areas and their numbers have dwindled terribly. Yet scientists aren’t quite sure how to help these pestered pups. Wildlife conservation efforts in Africa’s Serengeti and Zimbabwe’s Save Valley may offer some insight as to what to do – since both of these areas have experienced an upswing in wild dog populations over the last 20 years.
It appears that the survival of the wild dog will depend on the continued existence of wildlife-friendly landscapes which are large (and hence less likely to experience local extinction of wild dogs), and well-connected to one another (maintaining gene flow and offering the potential for breeding.)
However, in order to be certain that these conservation efforts will be effective, more hard data is needed. That’s where a new project headed up by the Zoological Society of London comes in. It will focus its efforts on analyzing wild dog movement patterns to identify likely landscape connections in eastern Africa. Since so few wild dogs exist, this information is extremely important. The project’s findings could help the species replenish populations, avoid infectious disease and, ultimately, re-colonize vacant land.
The SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund has supported this project since 2010 and is hopeful that the information it provides will influence local land use plans in a way that will preserve this valuable wildlife resource.
