Oct 6, 2026 |
Three African wild dogs monitored by a team of scientists covered 4,126 kilometres in Zambia in search of mates, and other animals from the same study entered Mozambique, in Tete Province.
The wild dogs, tracked by GPS over more than 16 years, linked all of Zambia's major populations of the species, and some crossed the border into Mozambique and Malawi, also coming within a few kilometres of Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola.
The results were published in the scientific journal Ecology, in a study carried out with the Zambian Carnivore Programme that followed more than 500 animals from over 50 packs. The record belongs to three brothers from the Mayukuyuku pack in Kafue National Park, Zambia.
One of the cases involving Mozambique is that of a female identified as EWD-1355, which left South Luangwa National Park in eastern Zambia in 2021 and travelled more than 2,300 kilometres in a year, crossing rivers and roads until she entered Mozambican territory in the north of Tete Province and headed towards the border with Zimbabwe. The journey ended badly, as the female, by then back in Zambia, failed to join a pack and eventually died in a wire snare in June 2022.
According to The Conversation, in an article by biologist Scott Creel of Montana State University, seven young dogs left the pack in 2025 and 2026, splitting into two groups that came close to the industrial areas of the Copperbelt, about 75 kilometres from the cities of Kitwe and Ndola.
One of the females, which was wearing a collar, died in a snare. The three males carried on alone to the Luangwa Valley, where they appear to have found females, after a 4,126-kilometre journey that the study considers the longest dispersal ever recorded for an African mammal. According to Reuters, the journey took eight months and the four groups tracked covered a combined 9,863 kilometres.
The cost of these journeys is high. Creel writes that more than half of the animals tracked did not survive, mainly because of snares set for bushmeat hunting, and that even those that reach other populations face fights, sometimes fatal, with unfamiliar packs. The author calls for anti-snaring patrols in parks and buffer zones and for support to neighbouring communities, in a country where about 40% of the land has some form of legal wildlife protection.
The African wild dog is listed as Endangered, with around 6,600 adults remaining across 39 populations, according to figures cited by Reuters. In Mozambique, the species returned to Gorongosa National Park in 2018, with a pack of 14 animals brought from South Africa in partnership with the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
A second pack arrived in 2019 and , according to the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the population already numbered 57 animals two years after the first release. Um estudo científico sobre a reintrodução A scientific study on the reintroduction concluded that it was the first successful one in a large, unfenced landscape in Mozambique, and that the recovery in Gorongosa could help rebuild a larger, connected population across the Gorongosa-Marromeu landscape.
Photo: Scott Creel/The Conversation
