Recently our family adopted a pack of African Wild Dogs through African Wildlife Conservation Fund as a way to support the effort to save these wonderful and charismatic creatures from going extinct. African Wild Dogs, also known as Painted Wolves, are incredibly brave, intelligent, playful and loyal to each other. And they are also Africa’s second most endangered carnivore.
And although fortunately to them they aren’t on anyone highly priced list, African Wild Dogs suffer greatly as unintended victim of poacher’s snares. African Wildlife Conservation Fund, along with a number of other organizations, work relentlessly to patrol the bush in search of snares as well as any animals who are in need of help.
I also adopted a pack for our forest school, which has gave the children at the school a lot of joy and served as a springboard into a lot of fun games and learning activities, which if yo’d like you can read about here.
Who are African Wild Dogs
As this animal is not wildly known I wanted to share this beautiful documentary by Kim Wolhuter that is generously available for free from PBS NATURE.
If this video fails to load you can find it available for free here on PBS.ORG.
The snaring problem
Here I wanted to share with you a few videos showing the remarkable work of rangers saving animals from snares. Unlike real world, all of these videos have positive outcome. Thankfully to the work of rangers and veterinarians animals who were harmed by snares get assistance and are back with their families. And it is incredible to know that a small regular donation, that is about a cost of 2 cups of tea or coffee, goes a long way to make the invaluable work of these rangers and vets possible.
A beautiful nature series about Africa
At the end I wanted to recommend BBC’s Serengeti series. It is beautiful and engaging and you can see some incredible stories of loyalty, strength and dedication that people typically think of being human-only traits. As all nature shows it is not without some heartbreaks, but that is life. Yet it doesn’t get into gruesome detail, and instead shows you the incredible beauty and resilience of life, and incredible bonds between animal families.