African wild dog demography & dispersal
In collaboration with Wild Entrust (formerly Botswana Predator Conservation), we studied the demography and dispersal of African wild dogs in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.
The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is one of Africa’s most endangered large carnivores. Fewer than 6,000 free-ranging individuals survive, in small and increasingly isolated subpopulations. Dispersing individuals connect these subpopulations: they found new packs, rescue small groups, and recolonise unoccupied areas. Yet dispersers travel long distances and are hard to follow, so their fate has largely been missing from population models.
We fitted GPS/satellite collars to young wild dogs that left their natal pack and recorded where they went, whether they survived, and whether they settled and bred. We combined this information with three decades of individual-based life-history data on resident packs in spatially explicit demographic models. These models allowed us to assess population viability and landscape connectivity across the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), for which the wild dog is a flagship species, and to inform national and international management plans.
Video
A three-minute introduction to the project (in Swiss German).
Years: 2016–2026
Funding: University of Zurich, Swiss National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, Idea Wild, Jacot Foundation, Parrotia Foundation, Temperatio Foundation, Basler Foundation for Biological Research, Albert-Heim Stiftung, and Wilderness Wildlife Trust.
People: Lukas Bierhoff, Lucy Novovitch, David Homoláč
In collaboration with: Tico McNutt