The successful reintroduction into Gorongosa of African wild dogs underscores the park’s position as one of the bright spots on an otherwise grim landscape of shrinking forests and accelerating loss of large, charismatic animals unlucky enough to not be our pets or livestock.ĭuring Mozambique’s civil war, which ended in the mid-1990s, Gorongosa’s abundant wildlife was almost completely destroyed.

du Plessis said, “looking at the prey numbers, the water, the topography - I thought, if you could sketch what wild dog heaven would look like, Gorongosa is it.” “At the beginning of last year there were no wild dogs in Gorongosa, and now we’re closing in on 50.”Īnd why not? “When I flew over Gorongosa,” Mr. “It’s incredibly exciting,” said Cole du Plessis, coordinator of the wild dog range expansion program at the Endangered Wildlife Trust. Not far from the Beira-Nhamagaia crèche, a group of four adult dogs that had split off from the original pack in the spring - three males and one female - appeared to be successfully rearing yet another litter of eight pups. Gorongosa’s pup eruption didn’t end there.

Wild dogs africa