Celebrating 20 years saving painted dogs together.

The Ngamo Rescue: In Mpindo

Peter Blinston and Jealous Mpofu

On their 20th anniversary of working with PDC and saving painted dogs, Peter Blinston, our Executive Director come painted dog expert, and the experienced Jealous Mpofu our Chief Tracker are doing what they love and one of the most critical exercise in the field they met, saving painted dogs.

We received news of two unknown painted dogs that are denning in a communal land in Phindo, 20 km past Ngamo village along the railway line. The two dogs pack is reported to be hunting down and killing local people's goats in Phindo which has triggered the community to report the issue to us and Zimparks.

Zimparks have since instructed us to move the dogs from the area and our team is now on the ground trying to trap and capture the dogs for possible relocation to a safe area. On the ground in Phindo right now is Peter Blinston, Jealous Mpofu, scouts from our anti-poaching team led by Enock Zulu their supervisor and our APU's longest serving scout Lephius Muyuni.

It's a very volatile situation with an unknown outcome, the team has reported that it's almost impossible to dart these dogs because they are too shy and impossible to get close enough to, which is typical of painted dogs living in communal lands. Capturing and moving the dogs is how we can save them, locals have threatened to kill the dogs.
More details to follow...

Jealous Mpofu, Chief Tracker, 20 years experience tracking painted dogs.

Peter Blinston, Executive Director, 20 years leading a team with a sole purpose of saving painted dogs.

PDC Rehabilitation Facility: Saving painted dogs one at a time.

Vusile's Story

By Peter Blinston

Vusile at our Rehabilitation Facility

At Painted Dog Conservation (PDC), we have always placed immense importance on each individual dog. Vusile is perhaps the best current example that illustrates this point. She had a troubled start to life following the death of her parents and she ended up as an orphan in our Rehabilitation Facility for a while with her two brothers. She was successfully released back into the wild but after some months she vanished as her release pack (the Bambanani) floundered

The Rehabilitation Facilty

Occasional sightings told us that she was still alive and well though. Until the day she emerged with her new mate, Temba, and six pups. 

The alpha female of the Nyamandhlovu Pack, was Socks. She is Vusile’s daughter and Socks had had 33  pups,  16 of them still alive as I write.

Socks a.k.a 'Queen of Hwange'

Socks pups have formed the BaNyayi pack which have had 23 pups.

The BaNyayi Pack

Vusile's two sons Whitetail and Kisser, have formed the Broken Rifle Pack, who have had 23 pups to date. Her other sons Vusela and Painted formed the Sammalisha pack and we have reason to believe that they are south of the Wilderness concession, about 50 kilometers from PDC.

The Broken Rifle Pack

Vusile's plaque at the Rehabilitation Facility

Vusile was killed by a lioness when she was seven years old.

The intervention by PDC to help one dog has resulted in the formation of five functional packs in Hwange NP and we can trace 137 individual dogs back to Vusile. These constitute more than half of the estimated Hwange NP painted dog population. 

The name Vusile translates roughly as “being clever” in a street smart kind of way. Hard to argue with that, and something I can relate well with.

Peter Blinston is the Executive Director for Painted Dog Conservation. Read his profile on our Meet The Team page. To contact him, kindly use our Contact page.

#EndangeredSpeciesDay

Today is #EndangeredSpeciesDay, an opportunity for people of all ages to learn about the importance of protecting endangered species and everyday actions they can take to help protect them.

Painted dogs are one of the most endangered species in the whole of Africa. They are native to Africa and are not found in the wild anywhere else on the planet. Fewer than 7,000 painted dogs are left across the entire continent. There are roughly 700 painted dogs in Zimbabwe, and we work with local populations of both humans and dogs—via conservation, education, and outreach programs—to help them not only survive here, but thrive.

To learn more and get updates about painted dogs, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To support our work, you can donate via our Wildlife Conservation Network partner:
https://donate.wildnet.org/…
OR
Support our #SponsorAChild #SaveThePaintedDog campaign for the Iganyana Children's Bush Camp here:
https://www.bonfire.com/pdc-bush-camp-15th-anniversary/

📷@Nick Dyer

Broken Rifle's Simon snared.

Deep into the Hwange National Park (HNP), the Broken Rifle pack thrives with nine fully fledged hunters and four pups led by Cusp, the alpha female, and Kisser the alpha male.

Inevitably trouble struck, Peter received an email from Tinashe who works with Wilderness Safaris’ Davison Camp. A painted dog has been seen with a snare wire around its neck at Back pans. Given the location we knew it was one of the 13-member Broken Rifle pack. Without wasting time, the team organised and took off to assess and act accordingly to the urgent situation.

It didn’t take time for our team to locate the pack when they drove south of the Mani Camp. Cusp is collared; Jealous picked the signal after Linkwasha on the Back pan between Davison Camp and Linkwasha Camp. Indeed Simon, one of the males of the pack had a visible copper wire snare around his neck. Every time we see a painted dog with a snare wire around it but walking freely we thank the higher powers and regard the individual as strong and a hero. Certainly a struggle occurred and it paid up, surviving the jaws of an excruciating death but leaving wounds and pain. Sadly we know we will be called out again.

After taking all necessary considerations, Paul successfully darted Simon and the life saving ritual began. The wire was removed, breathing another chance to Simon in the HNP. Our Anti-poaching team has also since been deployed in the area where the pack ranges to scan for more snare wires and remove them.

The grass is currently tall in HNP; it’s not easy to see the pups from any angle now.  The kudus and impalas are fit as ever in this time of plenty food and water, it only takes good hunters like the rare and unique painted dogs to take one down.

The K9 Patrol Dogs Roadshow Press Statement

Painted Dog Conservation (PDC), Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZNPWA) , Forestry Commission (FC)and Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) Dete  conducted a series of K9 patrol dog awareness roadshows in communities neighboring Hwange National Park from the 20th to the 24th of March 2018, running under the theme “connecting people to conservation”.  The objective of this strategic joint operation was to bring together wildlife conservation sector players in the area to speak in one voice against poaching and show the communities what we as sector players are doing to secure the wildlife heritage this region is endowed with.

 The exercise which saw dogs performing formation drills, sniffing contraband, obedience, crawling, weaving, tracking and attacking techniques, covered the following communities, Chimwara, Gwaai, Mabale, Lupote, Chezhou, Makwandara, Mambanje, Dete and Cross-Dete. The community responded well in attendance.

The collaboration with government entities encouraged and helped to bring the best out of both parties. We are excited about the potential these collaborations have in spreading information to communities and one can not deny the benefits of economies of scale this entails, four organisations sharing a platform and driving important messages, especially zero tolerance to wildlife crime to communities surrounding Hwange National Parks

Our conservation model in anchored on working with communities in an effort to retard the rate at which the endangered species is moving towards extinction. They are involved in anti-poaching work in forestry, state, communal land and joint patrols with national parks. We have a children’s Bushcamp that brings 19 local primary school kids attending grade 6 for a four-day camp where they are taught pertinent conservation concepts that leave them better citizens and community members.

Head man, village heads, councilors and community dignitaries are among those who attended in solidarity with the cause as we showed our commitment, preparedness and zero tolerance to wildlife crimes stance in fighting the ill of poaching. This was a platform we used to connect people to conservation. Communities are critical stakeholders in natural resource management and more often than not they feel neglected in decision-making and progress in the management of the natural resources that are so close to them. The road show sought to involve these communities as partners in wildlife protection. It is through these communities that we can gather intelligence on poachers movements and people in possession of chemicals such as cyanide that have killed massive numbers of animals in the park in recent years.

Over 50 t-shirts bearing the theme and K9 dogs were distributed in the communities, 16 game drives were awarded to the roadshow environment and wildlife quiz winners and community volunteers identified by community members (courtesy of Zim Parks and PDC), fruit seedlings (courtesy of Forestry Commission) among other many more prizes.

For more pictures and further questions please get in touch with us on: info@painteddog.org