No longer a dog's life: Wild dogs face extinction amid rising global heat

A pack of Wild dogs running around in Laikipia on September 14, 2022. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

The African wild dog, a colourful canine with a patchy coat, large wide ears and a white-tipped bushy tail, is one of the wild animals that are unique to sub-Saharan Africa.

However, many local communities associate the dog with all manner of atrocities, such that whenever livestock is killed by other wild animals, wild dogs take a majority of the blame.

This could be associated with the dogs' close-knit communal nature, albeit with a marauding side, due to their nature of hunting in packs.

They are also called hunting dogs or African-painted dogs and are often found in Kenya's national parks. However, some end up straying into communities, as encroachment spikes amid dwindling land occasioned by rising populations and climate change.

Despite being transient members of the African fauna, these wild dogs are facing a new threat.

They can no longer hunt due to rising temperatures, and a smaller number of pups are barely surviving the heat.

In the vast wilderness of Tsavo and Laikipia, a stark and heart-wrenching drama has been unfolding as these iconic dog’s grapple with an adversary they cannot outrun: climate change.

These creatures, known for their pack dynamics and unparalleled hunting prowess, now find their very existence hanging in the balance due to the relentless rise in daytime temperatures, which has left them struggling to hunt.

The effects of climate change have ushered in a grim reality for these once-thriving predators.

Studies indicate that African wild dogs leave their young pups in dens when they set off for their early morning and late evening hunts, avoiding the worst heat of the day.

Scientists found rising peak daily temperatures in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Botswana minimise the time the dogs are active, which affect the survival of the pups.

Alfred Mwanake, Chief Executive Officer of Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Associations (TTWCA), paints a grim picture.

“As temperatures surge due to climate change, African wild dogs are spending more time sheltering from the heat, leaving them with few hours for hunting. This shift in behaviour heightens the risks of their population facing extinction,” Mwanake says.

The impacts of ambient temperature, experts suggest, have far-reaching consequences that may already be evident, leaving limited opportunities for adaptation.

“It is possible that climate change will escalate extinction risks for this already-endangered species,” he cautions.

Data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that the number of wild dogs in Kenya ranges between 5,000 to 7,000 with as few as 15 packs remaining in the entire country.

Yet, climate change is not the sole adversary on this battlefield. Encroachment upon their natural habitats driven by human activities has resulted in conflict with local communities.

Furthermore, diseases such as rabies and canine distemper have exacted a heavy toll, with domestic dogs serving as carriers of infection.

While climate change may not introduce new causes of death for these wild dogs, it exacerbates existing threats driven by human activities. Patrick Odhiambo, an ecologist at Ecology Without Border elaborates the dire consequences of hot weather.

“High temperatures affect their reproductive abilities, endanger the survival of their offspring, and disrupt the availability of water sources and prey such as dik-diks and gazelles,” he says.

In 2017, a severe drought forced herders into Laikipia’s wild terrain, inadvertently leading to an outbreak of canine disease among the wild dog population that nearly decimated it.

In Botswana, the average number of pups surviving to a year old in each litter fell from 5.1 between 1989-2000 to 3.3 between 2001-2012, with temperatures rising 1.1 degrees Celsius between the two periods. In Kenya, a 1.0 degrees’ Celsius rise in the peak temperature cut yearlings by 31 per cent and in Zimbabwe 14 per cent.

“When people think about climate change affecting wildlife, they mostly think about polar bears,” said Prof Rosie Woodroffe, at the Zoological Society of London and who led the new research published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

African wild dogs need large hunting ranges to survive, about 800 square kilometres for the average pack of nine, equivalent to the area of New York City.

But the projected rise in maximum daily temperatures due to global warming is ominous, said Woodroffe: “It’s really scary. Some of these big areas may become too hot for wild dogs to exist.”

The dogs’ highly energetic lifestyles make them susceptible to loss of food when it is too hot to hunt antelopes.

“Wild dogs live fast and die young,” said Woodroffe. “They have these huge litters of up to 14 pups and then the mortality is quite high.

“If you are an animal who makes your living by running around really fast, obviously you are going to get hot. But there are not enough hours in the day anymore that are cool enough to do that. This is something which is genuinely suppressing population size," says Mwanake.

He, however, states that various ongoing strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change on wild dogs, including increased awareness of their habitats, safeguarding their crucial ecosystems, and reducing conflicts between humans and wild dogs, may help reverse the situation.