How do you fence in Africa's extremely endangered Wild Dog (aka Painted Dog) population so that the animals can still roam and hunt, but they will also stay away from livestock and the edges of park boundaries where they might come to real harm from poison, snares, bullets and the rabies, parvo and canine distemper that can be picked up from feral village dogs?
It turns out that strategically placed urine packets can help do the trick. As the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust notes:
The "Keep Out !" signals are persistent through time, robust to dramatic changes in temperature and humidity, present in urine but not feces, and probably specific to African wild dogs.
Wild Dog urine markings seem to last much longer than those by other animals such as fox, raccoon, and coyote. No doubt this is an adaptive mechanism, as Wild Dogs have huge territories which they could not hope to mark off unless their urine marks lasted.
The BioBoundary project is funded by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation (yes, the Paul Allen of Microsoft fame) and is designed to help safeguard the Northern Tuli Wild Dog Project. >> To read more.
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1 comment:
The latest results on the chemical composition of African wild dog scents, which will form the basis of the artificial scent marks that will be used to build the BioBoundary can be found at http://www.springerlink.com/content/q25612243661l211/ .
There is a brief summary at http://www.bioquicknews.com/node/956
Best regards
Peter Apps
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