Page 23 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #11
P. 23
PAINTED WOLVES
Hwange and its elephants
Gazetted in 1928, in an area devoid of Almost 40 years later, Hwange
permanent water, Hwange National National Park now has an estimated
Park can trace its success to the 46,000 elephants. The habitat is
decision to install the boreholes that already visibly sufering, and starvation
would keep animals in place. But there – not just for elephants but for other
are those who say that this decision species too – could be just around the
could turn out to be an environmental corner. Culling is no longer considered
disaster for Hwange. “There were fewer an option in Zimbabwe. Yet, as one
than 1,000 elephants in this area in the perceptive research o cer pointed
1920s,” wrote Dick Pitman in his 1980 out to Pitman in 1980: “It takes two
book Wild Places of Zimbabwe. “Today, hundred years to grow a forest, but
it is probably 13,000 or more.” only 20 to grow an elephant.”
A huge problem?
Hwange’s habitats
are sufering from
the impact of its
46,000 elephants.
extremes of evasion. As I travelled through often downright shocking to onlookers creeping up on a pack of sleeping painted
Hwange, I heard fireside tales of panicked – that formed the basis of some implausible wolves with a spear: “I had made a very
impala and kudu dashing into campfire legends of painted wolf ‘cruelty’. “A particularly careful approach, barefoot,” he wrote in the
clearings and even crowded lodge dining unpleasant characteristic,” wrote RM Beres, prestigious Look magazine, “and bagged, or
rooms to escape their would-be killers. director of Uganda National Parks, in 1956, rather killed, one out of the pack of vermin.”
Even defenders of the wolves often seem to “is that they will, without hesitation, turn Even at rest, painted wolves are extremely
be scandalised by the apparent brutality of a upon any member of the pack that falls by the vigilant, and with their large ears and acute
painted wolf hunt. These predators run their way through wound or sickness and show no sense of smell it seems unlikely that they
prey down mercilessly, with phenomenal reluctance to consume their own kind.” would have overlooked the arrival of an
stamina, disembowelling them with clinical No evidence has ever come to light to overweight American tourist (no doubt
speed and often feeding from the back end confirm this claim by Beres. In fact, painted liberally scented with gin). Hemingway’s
before the prey is completely dead. wolves are, if anything, altruistic. Often they report probably illustrates more than
“In Hwange the substantial elephant regurgitate food to keep a sick or wounded anything the typical scorn with which
population has affected the habitat, making pack member alive. Likewise, when a pack’s safari aficionados viewed painted wolves
it unfavourable to impala, which is usually alpha female is confined to the den with her during that period.
the dogs’ preferred prey,” Nick Murray pups (typically only the dominant pair breed),
explains. (To put this in perspective, there her mate and the subordinate animals will Living on the edge
are almost 300 elephants for every painted also deliver sustenance to her this way. Ishenesu Chidaya owns a small-holding on
Painted wolves were once considered
wolf in Hwange). “Increasingly the dogs are a liability to stockmen and ranchers, and the outskirts of Hwange National Park, in
Elephants: Mark Eveleigh as these species are much larger the hunt can throughout old Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe used human-animal conflict. He protects his
forced to hunt kudu or even wildebeest, and
a region that has immense problems with
crops from elephants with fires, chilli spray
be extended over several kilometres. So often
to be known, bounty hunters were paid for
and a clever network of elephant-deterrent
the final kill is not so clean.”
every wolf tail they brought in. Keen hunter
Perhaps it was witnessing kills like this –
BBC Wildlife
November 2018 Ernest Hemingway wrote in 1954 about beehives, but he’s had less luck with his 23
