Limpopo Valley Carnivores

Category: Botswana, South Africa, Tuli, Wild Dogs | Date: Dec 02 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

The population of Wild Dogs on the South African side of the TFCA swelled enormously recently with a visit from a pack from the Tuli Block in Botswana. The visiting pack, numbering in the 20’s, came across the dry Limpopo River and spent a few days on farmland, some time on Mapungubwe National Park, and a short spell on De Beers Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve. They were within a few kilometres of the remaining members of the Venetia Pack, but as far as we can tell, they did not meet up.

The Tuli pack went back across the border to their normal range, but this visit shows how important the expansion of the protected areas is. Same sex groups of Wild Dogs break away from the packs of their birth when they become sexually mature and disperse in search of other dispersing groups looking to form packs. By having the space to do so, much less management intervention will be needed in order for the population to firstly stabilise and also to grow. While the population on the South African side is currently low, we are very optimistic about the future of Wild Dogs in the region as a whole.

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Category: Cheetah, South Africa | Date: Nov 17 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

I had a phone call from Azwifarwi, my field assistant, early one morning recently to say that there was a Cheetah stuck in his garden. Somehow it had come through the fence and could not get out. We are desperately trying to catch a Cheetah to fit a radio-collar, but this just was not the time. By the time a vet had arrived from town, an hour and a half drive away, we could not be sure the Cheetah would not be long gone, and valuable money would have been wasted. On top of this, the risk of free-darting a moving Cheetah is just too high. The risk of injury is great if the shot is even slightly off target. You have to shoot for the muscle on the rump, which is not a big area on a cat like a Cheetah, and as Cheetahs have very low density bones (to assist with speed), they are very susceptible to breaks. The dart guns that the vets use are powered by gas, which is adjustable in pressure. The problem is that you have to find the perfect trade-off between accuracy and impact. If the pressure is turned down too far, the impact may be less, but you sacrifice accuracy as the shot may arc through the air and be moved off course by the wind. On the other hand, the higher pressure required for an accurate shot means the dart hits the animal hard, and may cause injury if it is off target. It is not a job to be taken lightly, and we only use vets experienced in this work to help us.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity, but the welfare of the animals is paramount, so we are continuing with our trapping efforts.

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Category: Cheetah, Snoopy and Barclay, South Africa | Date: Nov 06 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We had a couple of reports of cheetahs on the roads around Venetia a couple of mornings ago, which always poses some concern as roadkill is a major threat to them. One of them went through the fence onto a carnivore-friendly farm and so was out of immediate danger, but the news in the other location was more grim. The report was of two cheetahs, one of which was dragging its back legs. I headed up to where the report had come from with Snoopy to see if we could find it. The location of the report was quite hazy and we found a spot where they had come through the fence from Mapungubwe National Park, but could not find the cat itself. The people who had seen it were later able to go back to the exact spot where they had seen it earlier and found the cheetah, sadly already dead.

There was some doubt about whether or not it had been ill before it died, so yesterday we performed a necropsy on the carcass to see if we could determine the cause of death and the health of the animal prior to its demise.

The Cheetah was a young female, that I would estimate at being about 18 months old. She was very slim, with no fat reserves on her body anywhere, suggesting she was struggling to find enough food, but this is not unusual. At this age it is highly likely that she was newly independent of her mother, probably travelling with a sibling, and they may still have been fine-tuning their hunting technique. During this stage, it can be expected that they would be burning more energy hunting for the amount that they manage to eat than an experienced adult would. If her sister can hang on for a few more weeks, then the Impalas will be lambing and so meals will become alot easier to find for a young Cheetah.

There were thankfully no signs of disease at all, and there was a ruptured spleen and badly bruised lungs, as well as trauma to the lower spine, so it seems she was clipped by a car on her back end, and died from internal bleeding. It is tragic so see such a beautiful cat killed like this, but from the level of her injuries, it seems unlikely that she would have suffered for long.

The place where she was killed is a particular danger zone as there are high electric fences on both sides of the road between Mapungubwe National Park and De Beers Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve. The good news is that, thanks in large part to the dedication of the manager of Venetia, Warwick Davies-Mostert, those fences should be removed in the next few months to create a more open area. The tar road will still be a public road, but with strictly enforced speed limits and speed bumps will be put it. It is sad that it is coming too late for this little Cheetah, but is a wonderful step in the right direction that will benefit the carnivore populations in the area immensely.

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Category: Cheetah | Date: Oct 24 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We were very lucky to see a male and a female cheetah spending some quality time together on Venetia recently. Adult Cheetahs of opposite sexes do not spend time together for any reason other than for making baby cheetahs, so we were quite excited by this development. With at least 3 litters having been born this year, the cheetahs in the area seem to be thriving.

We are trying to catch a cheetah to fit a GPS collar in order to track their movements, and thought this might be the perfect opportunity, and moved our trap to close to where the spotty couple were courting. Sadly, they were far more interested in each other and the trap remained empty. We are trying a new method of trapping, whereby we use scent from a female cheetah to bait the trap. Cheetah males are typically very interested in females, and females do not appreciate other females entering their range, so we are hoping this will attract them in and that curiosity may catch the cat. In this instance though, it seems they were far more interested in each other than in the scent of an unknown cheetah, and they moved on. We are keeping going though and will keep you posted.

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Category: Wild Dogs | Date: Oct 14 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

I am very sad to have to tell you all that we do not have even one surviving member of this year’s Wild Dog litter. Every single one has gone, and we think they were all accounted for by lions. Our pack has dwindled to just two adult females and a male yearling. We know there are a few groups in the area, but by “area” I mean quite a vast expanse of space. We are hoping that these ladies will attract in a group of dispersing males from elsewhere who will establish a new pack in time for next years’ denning season.

Our hopes were for this years’ litter building the next phase of strength of the Venetia Pack, we are bitterly disappointed by this setback. We are listening out avidly for any sightings of dogs in the area and will keep you informed of progress.

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Category: South Africa | Date: Sep 11 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

Our scent stations are taking a serious knock as we carry on with the work in Mapungubwe National Park. Swept areas of sand with scent pads in the middle to lure predators in for a sniff, and so leave evidence of their presence have been highly successful in counting carnivores in some areas, but we are struggling. High densities of gamebirds, elephants and now baboons are ruining our experiments by either trampling the scent stations and so obliterating the tracks before we get there, or by providing entertainment to passing groups of elephants and troops of baboons.

Squares of carpet fashioned into hair-snares are set out, and are now having to be retreieved regularly from the bush surrounding the scent stations, where they have been played with and left.

A little known fact…it seems elephants are particularly partial to catnip!

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Category: Snoopy and Barclay | Date: Aug 26 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We are lucky enough this week to have Louise Wilson, a specialist sniffer dog trainer from Wagtail UK Ltd, out to help with our sniffer dog programme. Having made good progress with Snoopy, I was struggling to get Barclay’s concentration and Louise has stepped in to help.

By assessing both the dogs and my training techniques, she has been able to help enormously already in just a couple of days. Snoopy is working better than before with more enthusiasm for the job and I feel more confident in what I am doing.

Scent-training with Snoopy in an enclosed area:

When Louise takes in dogs for training, she typically assesses them quite quickly, and her expertise allows her to tell quite quickly if a dog will be suitable. A very particular character is required for a sniffer dog. Very often they are dogs that are so hyperactive and obsessive that they do not make good pets, and are often animals that pet owners could no longer cope with. Both Snoopy and Barclay fall into this category, but unfortunately Barclay’s obsession is with the many game birds in the area. He is a hunting dog from hunting lines, and it seems that this may be too strong an instinct in him to allow him to concentrate on the scat sniffing. Dogs mature at different rates, and even at a year old, he is still very immature, so there is a chance he may gain focus with age. We will continue with his assessment for a few more days, and try to build his motivation for the scat sniffing work before making any decisions. If Louise feels that he is not a candidate for the sniffer work, he will simply be found another job to do here on the farm. Our dogs have jobs, but are also much loved members of the family.

The surprise of the week so far has been than Louise has spotted huge potential in one of our other dogs. Minki is an 8 month old Miniature Dachshund who I had never even considered trying due to her tiny size, but she shows all the character traits required for the job. Louise has suggested that I train her up for two reasons. Firstly, it will give me more experience in this specialised form of dog training, and secondly we can use her to double check on Snoopy. Leopard and Cheetah scats can look very similar, so if we train Minki onto leopard scats, we can test every sample Snoopy finds before we send it off for expensive analysis. If he says it is cheetah and she shows no interest, we can be sure that it is. If however, we see a scat that we think is cheetah and he doesnt indicate on it, we can get Minki to check it out. To fully test him, we need to train with samples from cheetahs on mixed diets, and from males and females of ranging dominance, and from females that are in all stages of their reproductive cycle. Obviously this can be hard to get all the samples to cover all bases, so by double checking with Minki, we can make our system more efficient, and pick up a need for more continuation training with Snoopy as early as possible.

Minki, our new superstar team member:

 

The scat sniffing is a relatively new field, but using a Miniature Dachshund as a sniffer dog I think is a worldwide first!

Minki enjoying a walk:

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Category: Cheetah, Wild Dogs | Date: Aug 08 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

Here it is! The first photo of this year’s litter of Wild Dog puppies. There are only six in the photo but there are in fact seven puppies. It is extremely exciting as not only are they remarkably cute, but they are the future of the Venetia Pack.

There were other babies seen yesterday as well, this time a group of three cheetah cubs. In a spot very close to where we saw the cheetah and cubs crossing our fenceline a few months ago, we were lucky enough to see another group, also split across the the fence. The mother was calling from the Venetia side to three small cubs on our side of the fence. It is definitely a different group as these cubs were only about three months old at most. This is very encouraging that they are doing so well. It must be another female as even if the first one we saw had lost her cubs, she would not have had time to have cubs of this size, so we are confident that they are two families using the area. This family were happily reunited when we watched the cubs slip through the wire strands of the fence onto Venetia.

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Category: Hyena, Leopards | Date: Aug 08 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

Our call-ups on Mapungubwe National Park took place over two very cold nights and, while we were chilled to the bone, they were a great success. We had good responses from Spotted Hyaenas at all sites, and on the second night we were lucky enough to see Brown Hyaena, Porcupine, 3 Bat-Eared foxes and a number of Black-backed Jackals. The big excitement for the evening, however, was seeing first one, then two leopards coming out of the bush and carry out an elaborate courtship ritual in front of us in the moonlight. The male was large and the female was a small one, perhaps breeding for the first time. As if this were not enough, we were treated to another female leopard appearing later on in the night as well, this time a  much larger one than the first.

Overall it seems the Hyaena population may be picking up, possibly from migration from over the river in Botswana where the density is very high indeed. When this area was all farmland on the South African side, Spotted Hyaenas were visciously persectued as stock thieves, but they are making a slow but steady comeback.

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Category: Wild Dogs | Date: Aug 05 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We have seen them at last! I am extremely pleased to report that there are seven new members of our Wild Dog pack. They are doing extremely well to raise so many with only three adults and yearling. Wild Dogs can be very resiliant and bounce back quite quickly in suitable areas. If most of these survive and there is another successful litter next year, this pack will have pulled back from the brink of extinction and re-established themselves as a force to be reckoned with here in the Limpopo Valley. Now that they are old enough to have left their first den site, we are hopeful that most, if not all, of these puppies will make it. This pack has had a rough ride of late, but things are definitely looking brighter. Watch this space for photos!

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