De Wildt Wildlife Park
working to save species

by Nicole Mackie

IN 2004 I was privileged to go to South Africa and visit De Wilt Cheetah and Wildlife park near Pretoria. We stayed nearby on another safari park but visiting the cheetah park was something special to me because the park is also an African wild dog park. These dogs were once known as the Cape hunting dogs and the painted dogs of Africa (lycaon pictus).

I spent about an hour in the wild dog area of the park, an area of about seven acres of land for the one pack of about 20 dogs. I watched with amazement how the pack worked together to look after the seven little wild dog puppies they had at the time. The puppies were about four months old and interacted with the pack just like adult dogs. The pack also looked after its elderly, caring for their every need.

My interest took me back to the park in 2006, this time to film the dogs. This time there were no puppies but I spent another hour in the area with the dogs (in the protection of the jeep of course) and filmed their behaviour as they ate and settled afterwards.

After filming I went straight to the nearest bookstore and bought a book on the African wild dogs - they really are beautiful. Sadly not everyone thinks this way and many farmers in South Africa are hunting and killing these dogs to the point where there are now less than 5000 left in Africa - some statistics say there may be as few as 2000 dogs left. They are protected, but the animal protection laws are not very well policed.

De Wildt Cheetah and Wild Life Trust is trying to save and protect these dogs. Some of the animal-friendly farmers are setting humane traps for the dogs, rather than killing them and then handing them over to the wild life trust where they are placed in the safety of the park. This has helped to save the fast decreasing numbers of these lovely dogs. Unfortunately they cannot be released again because they will be at risk from poachers.

These dogs are very hard to find in the wild, because there are so few left and they cover many miles of ground each day just to find food for the pack. To be able to film them in captivity has been one my life's highlights that I want to share with others.