Way of the Dhole

Chapter 6: Conservation

Like many animals around the world, dholes are in danger of going extinct. The IUCN lists them as Endangered. How endangered? It's believed there are fewer than 2,500 mature dholes left in the wild, and because one breeding pair has offspring in a group, the number of individuals reproducing is even smaller. 

For a perspective, there are more people in small country towns in the United States than there are adult dholes in the wild. To make things more unfortunate, if you were to mention dholes to most people they would ask "What's a dhole?" or something similar. And this is the entire reason this book exists. But how did all of this come to be in the first place? To answer that question, we have to go back to the time when the British ruled India. 

During this time, big game hunting was popular among the wealthy in India. Some of the favorite quarries were ungulates such as deer, wild pigs, and gaurs. Dholes themselves weren't valuable trophies but were seen as vermin. Wildlife managers and hunters blamed them for destroying deer populations which was actually caused by habitat loss, competition with livestock for grazing, and poaching. Dholes were also hated because the way they kill their prey made people see them as bloodthirsty and ruthless killers, a view portrayed in Rudyard Kipling's second Jungle Book. 

As such, a bounty was placed on dholes, and this caused their numbers to decline dramatically. It wasn't until the 1970's that dholes received protection from the Wildlife Protection Act of India of 1972. 

(Art Credit goes to Sergey Artyushenko) 

In the 1980s, the government of Bhutan killed off dholes to the point of extermination. However, this caused the wild pig population to explode, and this caused lots of crop damage. Dholes were later reintroduced into Bhutan and the pig population shrank as a result, and this has caused local people to have more favorable attitudes towards, and some will admit that predators like dholes are important. Unfortunately, these individuals appear to be the minority as in a recent survey most respondents said they aren't fond of dholes due to attacks on livestock. 

However, the dholes still aren't out of the woods. Far from it. Today, they still face threats from habitat loss, the loss of prey species, diseases transmitted from feral and semi-domesticated dogs which are a big problem in India, and conflicts with people. 

When people lose their livestock to predators such as dholes, this can lead to revenge killings by people because their livestock is at least one way people make income, much of the time it's probably their only source of income. People in northeast India have a more negative view of dholes because in that region dholes eat livestock more often than anywhere else in the country. When dholes are hunting and they see a person, they'll actually give up a hunt because people in the past have stolen food from them. 

In the Western Ghats, the region with the biggest dhole population has seen a decline in dhole numbers over a ten-year period because of the pressures put on them by people. 

Add to this, fewer than 300 studies have been done on dholes, making them understudied. 

(Photo Credit goes to Ramki Sreenivasan) 

All this might make it seem like all hope is lost, but it isn't. 

In recent times, dholes have been getting more attention from scientists and conservationists, and now there are NGOs, The Dhole Project and the Wild Canids India Project that are working to better understand dholes and their needs in order to better protect them. A.J.T Johnsingh carried out the very first study on dholes in the 1970s and this was the one that pioneered dhole research, and lots of what many scientists know about dholes comes from his work. 

In Thailand, people living close to protected places in the southeast of the country have had a change in their attitudes towards them, with most people having favorable or neutral perceptions of dholes rather than negative ones. 

Because individual dholes look very similar, it can be difficult to tell dholes apart from one another, but scientists have developed a new method for estimating dhole populations: in this method, scientists use  DNA taken from hair that's been shed and scats to estimate dhole populations and with this, scientists were recently able to estimate a population of 50 dholes in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary of Kerala, India. 

(Photo Credit goes to Dhritiman Mukherjee)

And now, finally, a roadmap has been made by scientists and conservationists to protect dholes. 

This roadmap involves identifying areas with forest departments that are well equipped to recover prey numbers, improve habitat by decreasing the pressures placed onto habitats, and thus, make dholes populations rebound. The next thing is then identifying with areas that have forest departments that need more funding to be able to properly protect dholes. Then there's putting all of this into place, in part, by putting more focus and attention on dhole conservation, whether it would be more research or conservation policy. 

Regardless of how dholes are conserved, there's one thing we need to remember: Conservation must be inclusive. If it isn't, it just doesn't work because compromise wouldn't be possible. 

Humans have torn massive wounds into mother earth, and now we must be the ones to heal it. But in our own history, we have overcome some of the greatest of challenges, when we have worked together to achieve certain goals. And if we work together, rather than let our differences get in the way, we can ensure that the whistling hunters can make a comeback. 

(Photo Credit goes to Dhritiman Mukherjee)