Painted Wolf Wines (PWW) has been supporting the EWT’s Wild Dog Range Expansion Project (REP) since 2011, and ten years later, the number of individual Wild Dogs in the WDREP has increased from 150 to 250, and safe space for the dogs has grown from 500,000 to 1,2 million ha.
Wild Dogs are vulnerable to several threats, including snaring, retaliatory killing by farmers who have lost livestock to predation, and the spread of Canine Distemper and Rabies Viruses from domestic dogs. In addition, Wild Dogs were historically seen as vicious vermin. Even conservationists shot them because their method of killing was seen as gruesome and abhorrent to tourists. These threats led to targeted killing that reduced the global population to fewer than 6,600 individuals.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust works with a wide range of partners to address all these threats across southern Africa by expanding safe space through the REP, understanding the dynamics of the Kruger National Park (KNP) population (SA’s largest contiguous population), protecting dogs that roam into farmland along the western boundary of Kruger, and protecting free-roaming Wild Dogs from persecution in northern Limpopo.
Range expansion was identified as a key conservation intervention for this highly social and mobile species, and in 1998 the WDREP was established when the EWT and like-minded conservationists identified the urgent need to expand safe space for African Wild Dogs beyond the Greater Kruger ecosystem into feasible, protected areas across South Africa. The project started with just three reserves. “By restoring dogs to these ecosystems, we increased the numbers of these Endangered carnivores, restored ecosystem services this coursing predator provides, and began to reverse the negative perception people had about Wild Dogs”, says Cole du Plessis, EWT’s KZN Regional Coordinator.
Some milestones achieved by the WDREP in recent years include:
• In 2011, four reserves joined the Wild Dog Range Expansion Project – three reserves in KZN and one in the Kalahari.
• In 2014, Wild Dogs were introduced into Somkhanda Community Game Reserve – the first community-owned reserve reintroduction, where Wild Dogs have since thrived.
• In 2017, a pack of nine Wild Dogs (five females from the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park (HIP) in KwaZulu-Natal and four males from Tswalu) was introduced into the Shingwedzi region in the KNP to bolster the populations in the north of KNP.
• In 2018, the EWT’s WDREP and partners crossed South African borders into Mozambique, where we worked with the Gorongosa Project and the Carr Foundation to restore Wild Dogs to Gorongosa National Park. This population has grown from 0 to 104 individuals over the past three years and is a fantastic success story.
• In 2019, a pack of 13 Wild Dogs was introduced into Karingani Game Reserve (Mozambique), where the population has since doubled.
• In 2020, the EWT and African Parks initiated discussions to reintroduce packs of Wild Dogs further into Africa.
• In 2021, the EWT co-authored a paper on the successful reintroduction of African Wild Dogs into Gorongosa National Park, documenting the first-ever Wild Dog reintroduction into an open system.
To understand the Wild Dog population in the Kruger National Park, the EWT conducts a photographic census every five years, and in 2014-2015, Painted Wolf Wines supported this census through a generous donation of prizes, encouraging so many submissions that we were able to identify 236 individual Wild Dogs using photographs submitted by visitors to the park. The 2019 survey was delayed by COVID-19 but will launch later in 2021. PWW remains a critical partner, offering their delicious wines as prizes for the citizen scientists that make the Kruger Wild Dog census a success.
“We are absolutely thrilled to be celebrating ten years of supporting the Endangered Wildlife Trust. The work they do to build a better future for the remarkable painted wolf (African Wild Dog) is our inspiration, and every bottle of wine we sell means more money raised for this cause which is so close to our hearts. Here’s to the next ten years of making a difference together!” Emma Borg, Managing Director for Painted Wolf Wines.
We value all of our donors and partners, and the partners who recognise that Wild Dog conservation is a long-term commitment have the most significant impact on our success. The EWT, and the Wild Dogs, can attribute much of our conservation success over the last decade to Painted Wolf Wines, and we look forward to many more years of successful and innovative Wild Dog conservation in the future.
