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The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is one of the world’s most endangered carnivores. Although reliable information is lacking for most populations of the species, the latest estimate places its total population at approximately 6,600 adults in 39 subpopulations (Woodroffe & Sillero-Zubiri, 2020).
The Selous-Nyerere landscape in Tanzania is thought to be home to one of Africa’s largest remaining populations of wild dogs, as part of the transboundary Selous-Niassa population which spans southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique. The Selous wild dog population was the focus of the first in-depth study of wild dog behaviour and ecology in the 1990s (Creel & Creel, 2002), but received little to no research attention in the subsequent 25 years.
Since 2020, we have been working to get a handle on the current status of this population as part of our wider large carnivore monitoring & conservation programme in Selous Game Reserve and Nyerere National Park. Through a combination of camera trap and spoor surveys across the nearly 50,000km2 landscape – an area larger than Switzerland – and in-depth discussions with Tanzanian collaborators from protected area management authorities TAWA and TANAPA, we have been able to start building a picture of how wild dogs are currently faring in the ecosystem.
Our findings show that Selous-Nyerere should still be considered a wild dog stronghold, with the area’s size and intactness making it an ideal home for this particularly wide-ranging species – Selous Head Ecologist Singira Ngoishiye Parsais (TAWA) will soon be publishing these findings as part of his Master’s research. However, the stark reality is that this population is threatened by a number of growing human impacts: habitat conversion in buffer zones is reducing the habitat available to wild dogs and their prey, while bushmeat poaching is suppressing prey populations and impacting wild dogs directly through snare injuries. There have also been cases of poison being intentionally used to kill wild dogs, which can wipe out many members of a pack in one fell swoop.
Wild dogs are facing a number of threats in Selous-Nyerere, including increasing encounters with humans (left) and injuries and death caused by wire snares used for bushmeat poaching (right).
These threats and the ecosystem’s importance for the species spurred us to intensify our efforts to monitor and conserve Selous-Nyerere’s wild dogs. In 2023, we began a programme to collar wild dogs in the northeastern part of the landscape, with the goal of improving our understanding of how these animals are moving and dispersing through areas where they are most at-risk. To date, we have collared seven wild dogs across four packs and one dispersing group.
While all of these collars are collecting valuable data, there are two cases that have given us particularly interesting insights. The first is the Kibesa female, a young wild dog collared in August 2024 who is part of a dispersing group of four females.
As you can see in the map below, in mid-October the Kibesa female suddenly travelled a very long way out of Selous, halfway to the Indian Ocean. We were concerned that something might have been wrong given the sudden movement out into unprotected land, including a point right next to a major road, but she soon headed back into the reserve. This journey took her a straight line distance of 123 km from where she was collared.
These kinds of long jaunts are not uncommon for dispersing wild dogs, who are looking to establish a new pack. Unfortunately, because these movements often take them into areas with higher levels of human impact, dispersers are particularly vulnerable to injury or death. Previous research in Kenya found that dispersers experienced a daily mortality risk three times that experienced by adults in resident packs (Woodroffe et al. 2019), while research in southern Africa found human-caused mortality to be responsible for more than 90% of deaths among dispersing wild dog groups (Cozzi et al. 2020).
Another interesting case is the Mtemere pack, who were first collared in June 2024. After denning in the main tourist area of Nyerere, the pack moved out of the national park and into unprotected village land – the area where our team is working to monitor and mitigate conflict – in September. Wild dog movements often change a lot once their pups are old enough to leave the den and travel with the rest of the pack; as this litter was born in mid-June, they were around 5 months old at the time the pack relocated.
The Lion Landscapes team worked very hard to keep an eye on the Mtemere pack while they were outside the park, including by sending Lion Extension Officers to help people strengthen their livestock enclosures and educate them about the dangers of using poison. This on-the-ground support was instrumental in helping this pack survive its time away from the protection of the park, before they moved back inside in November.
As we move into 2025, we are hoping to continue our wild dog programme through continued collaring and follow-up monitoring through collaborations with Frankfurt Zoological Society, TAWA, and TANAPA, which we will use to understand more about this important population and help inform protection activities. Two people who are key to this plan are Singira Ngoishiye Parsais and Leonard Haule, who have both been important members of our carnivore survey teams since 2020.
As Head Ecologist of Selous with TAWA, Singira has more than ten years’ experience working in the reserve, and his detailed knowledge of the landscape has been a huge strength for our work. Inspired by his passion for wild dogs, Singira embarked on his Master’s last year with the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Tanzania, with the support of a WCN scholarship. Singira’s research has included an assessment of the species’ population status, household surveys to understand community attitudes towards wild dogs, and a remote sensing assessment of habitat conversion around the boundary of Selous. Together, this work represents a huge step forward in our understanding of wild dogs and their threats in Selous-Nyerere.
Leonard Haule is a researcher with the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), and began his PhD studies in late 2024 at Washington State University in the US. Tapping into Leonard’s expertise in genetics, one aspect of his research will be an assessment of the genetic health of the Selous-Nyerere wild dog population using samples collected during collaring and follow-up monitoring, which he will hopefully be able to compare to the historical data from Creel & Creel’s seminal 1990s study. He will also be using the collar data to understand the species’ ranging behaviour and movements, which together with the genetic research will provide valuable insights into connectivity.
This work has been made possible by funding from the UK Government through the Darwin Initiative Capability & Capacity Fund, WWF Germany, Wildlife Conservation Network’s Lion Recovery Fund and Zoo New England. Financial and logistical support has been provided by Frankfurt Zoological Society through the Selous Ecosystem Conservation and Development Project funded by the United Republic of Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW).
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