By Lucy Ng’andu
African Parks says 18 African Wild Dogs have been found dead in Liwonde National Park.
According to a statement released by African Parks, the dogs are allegedly to have been poisoned through water holes near Mwalasi River in the Park.
Reads the statement in part: “The Liwonde team embarked on an extensive two-day search that emanated from delayed GPS location reports from some of the wild dogs between 02 – 03 November 2022.
According to the GPS collar fixes, the dogs were killed and moved sometime in the early morning of Tuesday, 01 November 2022.”
Liwonde Park officials say this is the first poisoning incident that Malawi has recorded in a number of years.
Some of the killed dogs were part of the 14 African wild dogs which were translocated successfully from South Africa and Mozambique to the park and Majete Wildlife Reserve.
Preliminary reports indicate that the dogs were allegedly killed by unknown people who had no intention of killing the dogs but birds.
“Preliminary reports indicate that some of the dogs had died in the riverbed and been deliberately dragged away and hidden. The carcasses were all in an advanced stage of decomposition, making identification of the animals challenging.
“The large number of maggots found on the carcasses also suggest that the poison the wild dogs were exposed to, wasn’t the commonly used Aldicarb (Temik / 2-step),” the report said.
Wild dogs are one of the African`s most endangered mammals with approximately 6, 600 left in the wild.
Meanwhile, both African Parks and Department of National Parks and Wildlife are currently working on sensitizing the masses surrounding the Park on comprehensive poisoning as one way of keeping the remaining species safe.
