Langley Advance Oct Fri 6,06

Animal welfare: Humans painted rare breed into corner

An expert on Africa's painted dogs visited Mountainview Conservation Centre last week.

by Matthew Claxton

Wild dogs at Mountainview Conservation Centre look content to lie around in the warm fall sunshine all day.

As Greg Rasmussen, one of the world's foremost authorities on the rare African carnivore, watches their pen, the dogs suddenly burst into activity.

With a series of high pitched yips, barks, squeals and growls, they get up and begin frantically running around.

Each dog will try to greet every other dog in the pack now, Rasmussen says.

They are one of the most social animals in the world, and this afternoon ritual is a way of keeping up their relationships with each other.

"They are actually more social than primates," Rasmussen said.

Mountainview is one of the few breeding centres that has enough animals to constitute a true pack, giving the dogs something close to their natural environment.

Rasmussen is here to see the work Mountainview is doing, to offer his advice, and to keep ties strong between his program and the breeding programs here. Those programs might some day see these dogs reintroduced into their native Africa.

Rasmussen began his work with the painted dogs in 1989, when he started a three-year research project into their status in Zimbabwe.

"Research gave us an understanding of the problem," Rasmussen said.

The dogs have been one of the most maligned predators in Africa, Rasmussen said, thought to be dangerous to both humans and livestock.

He blames that perception on European settlers who arrived in the 19th Century. They transferred their prejudices against European wolves directly to the wolf-like painted dogs.

In the 1980s, the painted dogs had been almost annhilated from ranchlands, because the farmers saw them as a threat to cattle. Not only that, the ranchers had lobbied for the dogs to be wiped out even in national parks and game reserves.

The theory was that wild dogs would slaughter their cattle in large numbers if they were allowed to make a comeback.

"It was absolute rubbish," said Rasmussen.

He found a pack of painted dogs that was living near ranchlands and followed them for three years, counting the number of cattle they took.

It amounted to about 26 cows in three years, from a herd of 3,800. Overall, dogs were responsible for 0.17 per cent of all the deaths in the herd.

The vast majority of deaths were caused by human errors, either in handling the cattle or because the cows were allowed to eat plastic bags or balls of twine they found lying in their pastures.

Rasmussen began publishing his results widely, trying to educate farmers, villagers and others.

"Ignorance," he said, "is one of our biggest enemies."

He also began a program that would placate the farmers. If a pack near farmlands grows too large, it can be tranquilized and moved to a non-farming area.

For long-term stability of the species, Rasmussen knew he also had to see poaching cut down. He needed a long-term, sustainable way for people living around national parks and in areas hosting the dogs to benefit from the animals' presence.

For many of the poorest people in Zimbabwe, there is a simple equation: wildlife equals food.

Poachers also made sure they provided some money for the villagers near parks. Rasmussen needed to make his economic incentive better than that of poaching.

Over the years, his society has founded a number of income-generating programs. It provided an overeseas market for local artisans, and pays them by the piece for their sculptures. The sculptures are made out of snare wire collected by anti-poaching units, or out of recycled fencing. There is a lot of old fence wire around Zimbabwe, much of it left over from badly-planned development projects funded by agencies like the World Bank, said Rasmussen.

"The only use they were was to provide wire for poachers," said Rasmussen.

Now, the Painted Dog Conservation Organization will offer to pay locals to tear down the old fencing, and then recycle it as art.

Providing jobs and education for people in the area has been the most important part of getting the locals on side in the struggle to bring back the painted dog, Rasmussen said.

It isn't enough to simply encourage tourism, or to ban poaching. There have to be benefits the community wants, and they have to be spread as widely as possible. Rasmussen said his group deliberately over-employs, providing small amounts of work for a large number of people.

"The community prefers us to employ more people, to spread the cake," Rasmussen said.

Education programs include computer training for locals, using old computers donated from the United Kingdom.

There is also a camp that hosts 1,000 children a year. Although they all come from areas around the national parks, many of them have never been inside the park boundaries before.

"Children get to see, for the very first time, the wildlife," he said.

Ultimately, the goal is to generate empathy for the wildlife in the children and the community at large.

All the work, on so many different fronts, has made things far more stable for the dogs.

"It's developing a situation where the community is behind us," Rasmussen said. "Our poaching has gone right down."

While the local work is necessary, Rasmussen said programs like Mountainview's bring the international community into the mix.

A captive population can act as an education outreach program for people who would otherwise never hear about the plight of the painted dogs.

Eventually, Mountainview and other programs like it might be a source of new animals for reintroduction.

The Painted Dog Conservation Organization had its first successful reintroduction of a pack last year. A group of dogs that had been taken into captivity when young were released onto a large island in the middle of an artificial lake.

The prey species on the island were so used to having no predators that the dogs could learn how to hunt as the prey learned how to get away.

The dogs have been relocated to the mainland and at least three of the four are still alive, Rasmussen said.

"The next step down the line is to take a captive generation of animals and take them to this island," Rasmussen said.

Which makes ensuring Mountainview's dogs have a proper environment even more important.

On Rasmussen's last visit, he suggested that a water hole be added to their pen. It's been a big hit with the dogs, who both drink from it and swim there to cool off.

The staff at Mountainview are also a boon to the program.

Wild dog keeper Renee Bumpus went to Zimbabwe earlier this year [Rare carnivore gets helping hand, June 6, Langley Advance] she was not only able to learn a lot to bring back to Langley, she brought new ideas of her own.

Rasmussen said the staff were also motivated to discover that people in distant Canada were energized about saving the painted dogs.

The local pack will see a few changes based on his recommendations.

Keeper Andrea Gielens said a clothesline-style feeding system will be rigged above the pen. Animal carcasses - cattle or deer supplied by wildlife officers - will be launched down the line, and the pack will have to work together to pull the animal down. It will more closely simulate what they will have to do in the wild, she said.

The centre will also try to feed the dogs more whole carcasses to build up their "gut capacity," said Gielens. In the wild, painted dogs make a kill every few days and eat a huge amount at once. They need the ability to keep down a large amount of meat between successful hunts.

Rasmussen is currently on a fundraising tour through the United States and the United Kingdom, before heading back to Zimbabwe.