Wild dogs record 2,500-mile trek across Africa in search of a mate

Professor Scott Creel of Montana State University, the paper's lead author, who has been studying African wild dogs since 1991, said the study provides cautious optimism."It's plausible to believe that every major wild dog population in eastern and Africa" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="178700" data-entity-type="location">southern Africa, other than fenced ones, are potentially connected," he said.But he said, in conservation,"the glass is half empty and the glass is half full", highlighting the threat of poaching snares.While the three male wild dogs successfully completed their extraordinary journey, two of the three females died.Researchers identified a pattern in which surviving pack members repeatedly returned to the same location, a behaviour that often signals the death of a companion.The research, published in the journal, Ecology, adds weight to calls to create strips of natural land outside protected areas that connect separate wildlife areas broken apart by roads, towns, or farms.Bruce Ellender, one of the paper's co-authors and Kafue Conservation director for the environmental charity, The Nature Conservancy, said species that roam over large areas, such as wild dogs and elephants, need connected landscapes if they are to survive into the future."We can't see these protected areas as islands and expect them to be functional in the long term, we need to think much broader than that," he said.