In 1989, Dr J.Weldon (“Tico”) McNutt started the Botswana Wild Dog Research Project as part of his PhD in Animal Behaviour from University of California, Davis. At the time, there was virtually no information about this fascinating and endangered carnivore in any of its habitat outside the Serengeti Plains. The study focused on the important behavioural ecology of wild dogs including habitat requirements, prey species preference, prey density, dispersal patterns, reproduction patterns, and population health. His particular interest in social behaviour drove the research to look at individual life histories of now, more than 1000 wild dogs over 8 generations. In 1992 Lesley Boggs joined Tico in Botswana, while also pursuing her graduate work in Development Anthropology at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Lesley’s research has focused on issues of resource management conflict, specifically the relationships between protected areas and the various surrounding land uses that include professional hunting, community natural resource utilization, photographic tourism, and livestock farming. Assessing the viability of the existing Community Based Resource Management Program has become a focus of Lesley’s work.
The success of this research owing to personal commitment, longevity, consistency of data records, and the holistic nature of the field research, has allowed the project to evolve into a center for conservation research with an expanded goal. The project, renamed the Botswana Predator Conservation Program (BPCP) is now an umbrella program for large predator conservation research that will include leopard, cheetah, spotted hyaena, and wild dog as well as specific research projects focusing on the effectiveness of natural resource management systems, the development of management techniques for free-ranging predators with applied research, and the training and supervision of Batswana citizens to be the conservationists of the future. Furthermore, we have come to recognize that sustainable resource management by the citizens of Botswana can only stem from a more fundamental respect for self, environment, and the existence of hope for the future. This principle has become the foundation underpinning the development of our program and is the basis for another important current associated initiative: youth development and education through organized team sport in northern Botswana.
Read the full 2005 Project Brief.
Botswana Predator Conservation Program
Private Bag 13 Maun, Botswana
Lycaon@info.bw