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African Wild Dogs are on the endangered list - how can we all help to sustain the species?


Nick Dyer, award-winning wildlife photographer, conservationist and African safari guide discusses his passion of African painted wolves and what led him to his calling, raising awareness of their plight and helping to protect them in the wild.

Nicholas Dyer took part in a recent interview upon the publication of his book: “Painted Wolves: A Wild Dog’s Life” which was co-authored with Peter Blinston, a renowned African wild dog conservationist. Originally published on Nick Dyer’s own website, we reproduce it here for your information and inspiration.

If you would like to learn out more about African wild dogs, their conservation, and even get up close to them in the wild, Nick Dyer is hosting a one-off expedition exclusively for The Explorations Company’s clients. This safari in July 2022 takes you into the wilderness of Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools and Savé Valley to track and observe local packs. If you would like more information about this exciting opportunity, please do contact Kate Pirie.

 

Listen time: 11:13 Recorded: 2019

Interviewer

Today I'm talking to Nicholas Dyer, photographer and author of the book Painted Wolves: A Wild Dog’s Life. To produce this book, he spent six years following three packs of wild dogs on foot in Mana Pools. Nick, your photographs are incredible. When did you first get into wildlife photography?

Nick Dyer 

So I haven't always been a photographer. But from the age of eight, I was absolutely passionate about it. I used to steal my mother's cameras, and I bought my first one at 16. But then we left Kenya where I grew up and went to the UK and I worked in the City of London. And after that, I ran my marketing company. It wasn't until 2012 that I came back here, and I realized that my passion was photography, and that I could make it a full time career.

So I went back to Kenya, and I bought a Land Cruiser, and I spent the last six years driving up and down Africa, loving and getting to know and photograph the wildlife.

Interviewer

And what made you choose mana pools?

Nick Dyer

So in 2013, I first found Mana Pools, and it's the only park in Africa where you can walk by yourself on foot. I walked and I met these animals called the wild dogs. I followed them on a hunt with a very experienced guide. I thought, ‘Gosh, I'll never be able to do this by myself.’

But it was absolutely just the most exhilarating, exciting experience I've ever been through. Then over the years with the help of guides, other photographers, I've learned to walk by myself in the bush, following the dogs. And that's been my life for the last six years.

Interviewer

So you obviously have fallen in love with the wild dogs. Why? And what do they mean to you?

Nick Dyer

So I think for me, the dogs, there's two aspects of them. One, they are renowned as the most phenomenal hunters, they're the most efficient predator in Africa, probably even in the world, 80% of their hunts result in kills, but not just that; they have such a life in packs, and they have this incredible bond.

They are deeply social, you can see that they care for each other, each member of the pack focuses on a specific role either a hunter or babysitter for the pups. And I think that's the other point as well. Right at the heart of this is the pups, and they just absolutely adore them.

Interviewer 

I found this book deeply personal that comes across as very emotional experience. What was it like being so close to these animals? Do you think they knew you?

Nick Dyer 

Well, I think, you know, your dogs know you, they are canids. And so I think whenever I walked or came with them after a while I would always talk and also click my finger, click my camera, you know, send off a few shots. And they became very familiar with that sound and they immediately relaxed.

Being with them, following them on the hunt in the early morning and seeing them make kills, seeing them in their family life. It is deeply emotional because you become incredibly attached, to each and every one of them. And I remember when there was a dog called Tequila, she got taken by a crocodile. Gosh, I was absolutely distraught that day.

Interviewer

These animals are obviously highly endangered. What are the challenges facing the species?

Nick Dyer

They are varied. So historically, if you go back 100 years, there were probably 500,000 wild dogs in the Horn of Africa. Today we're left with six-and-a-half thousand. Historically, they've been treated like vermin. They were exterminated because they thought they were taking out cattle and goats and so on so forth, so you actually got a reward for killing them.

But now they're a protected species but still they are regularly snared by communities. We were told that very poor communities that are trying to get bushmeat, they are overrun.

They're subject to distemper and rabies that they get from domestic dogs. Their numbers are at best stable, but probably still declining. And what has been done to conserve them, across Africa, there's some phenomenal programmes.

I work with Peter Blinston. He's the co-author of this book. He runs Painted Dog Conservation, here in South Africa. There's AWT and Wildlife Action. What they tend to focus on is, number one, obviously monitoring and studying the dogs and doing rehabilitation where possible. But more importantly, they work with the communities.

Interviewer

Most of your work has been in Zimbabwe, how does the situation differ between the dogs in South Africa?

Nick Dyer

So in in Zim, and in the rest of Africa, actually, north of Limpopo, all the wild dogs are what we call free ranging. So that means they're not fenced in, and they go wherever they want, which causes its own challenges, especially with communities and so forth.

But they move around, they form their own packs, there's dispersals, they get together. What you have in South Africa is that most of the wildlife areas are fenced, and so consequently, the packs need to be managed very, very carefully. And that's done very successfully, by organizations like the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the Wildlife Act, who really understand in terms of that management, better than anyone else, how to actually have the right number of packs for that ecosystem.

Interviewer

We South Africans really love the dogs, but here in South Africa, they are known as well, dogs. We’ll  even keep hunting dogs. Why have you chosen to call them painted wolves?

Nick Dyer

Yeah, that's a that's one of those questions that causes a bit of controversy, especially here in South Africa. Most of the people here know exactly what a wild dog is, they live with them. The problem with the species as a whole is that, not only do people not know what to call them, whether wild dog, painted dog or hunting dog or whatever, they don't even know they exist.

And in Europe, and in America, when you say wild dog, people just think there's some kind of breed of dog that just sort of like escaped, from a town or whatever, and have ended up in the bush; it's totally untrue, they are a complete separate species.

They are their own genus called Lycaon. Which actually translated means painted wolf. And when the BBC decided to call them painted wolf, we realized that there was no organization that actually does conservation on ‘painted wolf’. So one of the things that we did was to say, if we raise awareness of this creature called a painted wolf, we will gain a lot more support.

Interviewer

Tell us about the book. How did it come about? What are you hoping to achieve by publishing it?

Nick Dyer

So in 2014, when I met Peter Blinston for the first time in Mana Pools, it was quite a funny incident. He's sort of like my favorite photographer. And I went to Painted Wolf Conservation and absolutely thought what he was doing was a model of what a conservation organization should be.

So we decided almost instantly, let's collaborate and do a book. And that started a four or five year journey to actually produce this; this massive thing is far bigger than what we thought, originally, but what we wanted to achieve was to show them. In my section of the book, I really focus on how they live in the wild, naturally, how they live in Mana Pools, when they're not threatened by human beings.

Then in Peters section, it really is where he works on the side of Hwange National Park, where there's a huge threat towards them from local communities, mostly unintentional, but they cause devastation.

So consequently, it's really showing what can be done to save these animals. The other thing that we felt was really very important was that both of us really understood just how much these animals are threatened. So we didn't really want to do this of aspect of personal gain, we wanted to dedicate some of ourselves to these animals.

So we haven't benefited financially at all, as all the profits from the book, go to an organization we set up called the Painted Wolf Foundation, which is there to do three things. One, is to raise awareness of the species throughout the world. We're very active trying to do that. The other is to support those organizations doing conservation for the dogs in the field. And the third is to try and bring them together to actually encourage best practices, knowledge, share, and so on and so forth.

 

If you would like any more information about this podcast or our charitable projects, please do feel free to get in touch. Or, if you would like any more inspiration, you can find it at our Video Library.

 

 

Images by kind courtesy of and copy right to Nicholas Dyer. Video originally published by HPH Publishing. 

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