Prophylactic campaigns

Africa's population recently reached 1 billion people. It doubled in just 27 years!! The biggest threat to wildlife in Southern Africa is loss of habitat through encroachment by the ever expanding human population. Protecting a wildlife area in Zimbabwe is pointless without buy-in from adjacent local communities. The communities must experience benefit from the conservation area.

AWARE believes that improving the health of domestic animals adjoining wildlife areas will benefit:

• The domestic animals directly by improving their standard of health and welfare and preventing diseases through vaccination and population control;

• The owners of these animals by improving their livelihoods (they depend on their animals for their livelihoods). This should reduce encroachment into the Parks for the purposes of subsistence poaching and harvesting wood by cutting down trees. It also reduces the occurrence of zoonotic diseases (those that can be transmitted from animals to man), e.g. rabies in man.

• The wildlife in the adjoining area by reducing poaching, hunting with dogs, and limiting the spread of disease into wildlife populations. Through education human-wildlife conflicts can also be mitigated.

These conservation areas are invariably remote, without electricity or running water, in which both humans and animals survive the toughest conditions Africa has to offer without access to even basic health care. Most of the people living in these remote regions are extremely poor and use cattle as their main currency. Donkeys are used for draft power and dogs are mainly used for guarding goat kraals against wild predators. There are even cats to keep rodents away from stored grain. Therefore, providing a much needed health care service to these animals, with an emphasis on population control, can have a direct effect on the quality of both human and animal life.

Keeping a check on the disease status of domestic animals adjoining Parks is also important as diseases are often transmitted between domestic and wild animals and vice versa. This is particularly important for wild carnivore populations, which are vulnerable because of their relatively small sizes and susceptibility to fatal viral diseases like Distemper and Rabies. An example of the latter is in the Kgalagadi in Botswana where lions recently succumbed to a fatal canine distemper outbreak thought to originate in domestic dogs living in the surrounding areas.  Whilst performing prophylactic campaigns, blood samples are taken from the animal population in an area so that exposure to disease pathogens can be detected.

Working in these marginal areas also provides good first hand knowledge of other threats to wildlife, which are mainly borne out of conflict with ‘problem animals’, e.g. poisoning of hyaenas. 

Latest updates

AWARE has performed a total of 145 sterilisations in 2009 in the Limpopo Shashe TFCA. A further 254 dogs were vaccinated making a total of 419 vaccinated dogs this year. We believe this has prevented approximately 450 puppies being born, and stopped the potential transmission of fatal diseases into wild carnivore populations. We feel our sterilisation and vaccination programme has enormous conservation value, as well as improving the welfare of village dogs, and raising awareness of animal welfare to rural people .

Second successful sterilisation and vaccination campaign

In November 2009 the AWARE Trust team went to Machuchuta Communal Land in the LSTFCA where it successfully completed the second of its dog sterilisation, vaccination and health care clinics. Machuchuta, which is 140km west of Beitbridge, is adjacent to Maramani Communal Land where the first spay campaign was run, and 24km east of the Tuli Circle Safari Area. It is more remote and less populated than Maramani. A further 55 dogs were sterilised. All dogs were vaccinated, de-wormed and Frontlined as before, and received food and their owners received a T-shirt.  Blood samples were taken from each dog that was sterilised in order to determine its haematocrit (percentage of red blood cells in the blood), and to study what pathogens the dogs have been exposed to. A normal haematocrit for dogs is considered to be between 30 and 50%, below which a dog is considered to be anaemic. We were horrified at some of the haematocrit readings, which were as low as 14%, with an average of 23% and only 20/55 dogs having a haematocrit above 25%.  The extreme state of nutritional stress in these animals arises mainly from being left to scavenge, lactation in females, internal and external parasites (worms, ticks and fleas), and possibly other diseases. Transmissable venereal tumour (TVT) was particularly prevalent in the dogs in Machuchuta. Read more in our November 2009 newsletter.

Groundbreaking sterilisation campaign 

In May 2009, the AWARE Trust team set out for Maramani Communal Land to perform its pilot dog sterilisation and vaccination programme. Maramani, which is 110km west of Beitbridge, was chosen because of its location within the Limpopo-Shashe (or Greater Mapungubwe) Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (LS/GMTFCA).  Between the 5th and 12th of May 2009 AWARE spayed 44 bitches and castrated 46 male dogs in Maramani making a total of 90 sterilisations. 165 dogs were vaccinated, Frontlined and de-wormed and several more were treated for illness. Dogs were blood sampled for further study on exposure to pathogens. All dogs went home with 1kg of Fetch dog food to help them through their convalescence and their owners received a free T-shirt.Two cases of accidental poisoning were seen where dogs had eaten poisoned bait that was set for hyaenas. This is just one incidence of human-wildlife conflict which AWARE intends to address by means of education campaigns. Read more in our May 2009 newsletter

SPANA funded donkey clinics well attended

AWARE has run the third of its SPANA funded donkey clinics in lower Gweru accompanied by Inspector under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, Nadia Marabini, and Robert of the Gweru SPCA. The clinics are now regularly attended by 65 donkeys belonging to 34 individuals. Cruelty is still being perpetrated on these animals when they try to eat vegetables planted by crop-growers within the confines of the township. Several donkeys have been treated for axe or burn wounds. Other predominant veterinary ailments include lameness and eye problems, and the donkeys are also routinely de-wormed, dipped and vaccinated. Read more in April, July and October newsletters.