Painted Dogs

The Pollyanna Pickering Foundation is aiming to raise £8,700 to build an enclosure for 14 orphaned Painted Dog pups at the N/a’an ku sê Wildlife Sanctuary in Namibia. Building the enclosure will ensure the safe and secure growth and development of the pups - which would otherwise have faced certain death - and allow their re-introduction into former areas of residence such as Etosha National Park. 50% of the proceeds from the sale of this picture will go to the appeal.

Conservationist Marlice van Vuuren, and her husband Dr. Rudie van Vuuren established the sanctuary in 2007 as a rescue and rehabilitation centre. They strongly believe that wildlife belongs in the wild and direct all of their efforts towards long term rehabilitation. In June last year Rudie received a call from the Director of Namibia Nature Foundation’s Wild Dog Programme, telling him of a litter of orphaned wild dog pups that had been discovered. 14 pups had been found in a den in a strip of farmland and were in urgent need of a home. Rudie and Marlice flew up the following morning to rescue the pups who were just a few weeks old. The pups are now in the safety of the Sanctuary, where they are fed three times a day on minced chicken mixed with calcium powder and they are growing quickly. N/a’an ku sê hopes that the pups will grow up to be a strong and healthy part of the Painted dog population in Namibia as part of a new release programme. As the pups grow, they will need a large enclosure to live in. The enclosure will form part of a large breeding and holding facility to allow supervised pack formation, long-term bonding of release packs from captive-reared and wild-caught dogs and enable the painted dogs to be re-introduced back into former habitats, while allowing essential data gathering on the growth, ecology, breeding and group structure of the pups while in captivity. Following the release of the initial 14 pups, the enclosure will continue to be used for the rehabilitation and reintroduction of future rescued dogs.

Painted dogs are Namibia\'s most endangered mammal species and continue to be widely persecuted - Only an estimated 200-250 painted dogs remain in the wild in Namibia and only 5% of their range is within protected areas. The African Painted Dog population in Namibia is under immediate threat of extinction and action is needed to reinstate and rebuild the remaining local population. The present surviving population of painted dogs is severely fragmented and is highly unlikely to re-colonise areas that they used to inhabit by natural migration. Conservation experts believe that in order to save the species from country wide extinction, planned and controlled re-introductions need to take place through the re-establishment of packs from captive reared Painted dogs. Together with Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, N/a’an ku se have successfully rehabilitated and re-introduced cheetahs, leopards and brown hyenas into different conservation areas in Namibia, over the past two years. None of the reintroductions have led to any human-wildlife conflict and an intensive post-release monitoring scheme has been successfully implemented allowing them to gather vital data for future conservation work. Building on this extensive experience and that of the captive management of painted dogs, N/a’an ku sê is planning a new rehabilitation and re-introduction programme for the animals.
Once distributed widely across most of Africa, African Painted Dogs also known Wild Dogs and Cape Hunting Dogs, have been persecuted by Man to the edge of extinction. The best estimate is that fewer than 5,000 African wild dogs now exist in the wild, and many packs no longer have viable breeding populations. They are dying out.

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Details:

Image size : 19.5cm x 56cm

There are just 750 prints in this edition, each individually numbered and signed by Pollyanna

Price : £95.00

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£95.00

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