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GPS Radio Collars Save Wild Dog Lives
African Wild Dogs in the Save Valley Conservancy (SVC) have been monitored intensively since 1996. Experienced professional trackers have provided accurate information on the animals’ behavior.
Wild dogs are wide-ranging predators that often move more than 25 miles in a single day. The dogs have nearly 1,400 square miles of open range in SVC. Much of SVC is made up of broken, hilly country so locating wild dogs is a daunting task.
To locate and document the lives of wild dogs in the Lowveld, we use radio collars. The collars let us find the dogs faster and more frequently so we can build better data sets of wild dog movements and behaviors.
We’ve learned that packs tend to range outside of SVC into areas difficult for us to access so even with radio collars, the dogs can be nearly impossible to track on foot. But GPS technology has made it possible to locate the animals anywhere, any time. We can log the exact locations of the wild dogs to determine how close they get to humans and other threats.
This information allows our teams to intervene when necessary to protect this highly-endangered species. Further, we are better able to develop species management plans based on real-world, real-time information. Collars also help us determine how far wild dogs travel inside and outside SVC. We learn about SVC dogs connecting with other populations in, for example, Kruger National Park in South Africa. More importantly, we are far better able to monitor conflict between humans and wild dogs — for instance, when wild dogs kill livestock or when poachers kill wild dogs with snares — and develop plans to reduce the conflict.
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