Conservation implications of prey responses to wild dogs Lycaon pictus during the denning season on wildlife ranches

Abstract

The spread of game ranching in southern Africa provides opportunities for the reestablishment of populations of endangered wild dogs extirpated by livestock ranchers. However, this potential has not been realized, partly because of negative rancher perceptions. Some ranchers believe that wild dogs impart costs by killing wildlife that could be utilized consumptively. Others complain that wild dogs make ungulates 'skittish' and cause local reductions in prey densities while denning. We compared the skittishness and density of prey species inside and outside the denning home ranges of nine wild dog packs in Zimbabwe. Wild dogs had no impact on prey skittishness, but prey species did occur at lower densities inside denning home ranges. In some scenarios, and particularly on fenced game ranches, wild dogs could cause prey population declines during denning. On small game ranches, the use of fences as a tool by wild dogs during hunting can increase the proportion of large prey species in their diet by up to 11 times, and thus increase the minimum area required to support that diet. In addition, game fencing is typically permeable to wild dogs but not their prey, preventing the recovery of prey populations through the natural influx of prey animals into the denning area following departure of the dogs. Wild dogs could thus impose significant financial costs to game ranchers hosting denning packs. Our findings emphasize the importance of promoting the formation of conservancies, where neighbouring landowners remove boundary fences to create larger contiguous wildlife areas.

The impact of lions on the demography and ecology of endangered African wild dogs

“…This illustrates a behavioural change to avoid lions which, as the dominant carnivore, frequent habitats close to water with greater prey availability (Mills & Biggs, ; Creel & Creel, ). This has been observed before in SVC (Romañach & Lindsey, ), and further examined by Mbizah et al . (), who found that the wild dogs were in fact selecting areas with lower impala densities, rather than consuming or scaring away sufficient prey to cause the reduced density of impalas observed around their dens.…”

Testing the Prey-Trap Hypothesis at Two Wildlife Conservancies in Kenya

“…Although the empirical evidence is weak [ 38 ], anecdotal [ 39 , 40 ] or unsupportive [ 35 , 41 , 42 ], there is evidence that fencing can lead to behavioural changes in some predators. For example, wild dog ( Lycaon pictus ) will incorporate fences into their hunting strategy to significantly increase their ability to take down large prey [ 43 – 45 ]. These studies raise fundamentally interesting questions that have yet to be fully tested in different ecosystems although the possibility of prey-traps developing at passageways has been raised [ 46 ].…”

Human–Wildlife Conflict 10 Years Later: Lessons Learned and Their Application to Cheetah Conservation

“…In general, conservancies are more likely to use livestock management techniques (Schumann, Watson, & Schumann, 2008), require less management of game animals, suffer less impact from predation (Romañach & Lindsey, 2008) and due to economies of scale incur less costs (Lindsey, Romañach, & Davies-Mostert, 2009). Namibia has the largest number of conservancies within the cheetahs' range, with 76 communal conservancies and 20 commercial conservancies (Shaw & Marker, 2011;Shifeta, 2013).…”