The taxonomy of all the canids, including Lycaon pictus, is currently under review by the Canid Specialist Group. Standard taxonomic texts recognise five subspecies: L. pictus pictus in southern Africa, L. pictus lupinus in eastern Africa, L. pictus somalicus in north-eastern Africa Africa, L. pictus sharicus in central Africa, and L. pictus manguensis in West Africa (Wilson and Reeder 2005). Morphological and genetic data from southern and eastern Africa initially tended to support the pictus/lupinus division (Girman et al. 1993); however, later analyses suggested greater mixing between the two regions (Girman et al. 2001). Ongoing genomic analyses over a broader geographical area (Ramage et al. in prep) will inform the Canid Specialist Group assessment.

Although African Wild Dogs occupy a large geographic area, their population densities are extremely low, leading to a global population estimate of fewer than 700 packs. Breeding is typically restricted to a single alpha male and female in each pack, and death of one of the alphas can lead the whole pack to fragment. Accounting for all alphas and occasional subdominant breeders, the global population of mature individuals is estimated at 1,676, with an estimated 16.9% population decline over three generations. Part of that decline reflects a sudden and major population crash in Kenya caused by an epidemic of canine distemper virus. Such crashes, with recovery facilitated by wild dogs’ extraordinary dispersal abilities and large litters, have been documented repeatedly over the past century, including the temporary loss of wild dogs from Kruger National Park in the 1920s, and from Serengeti National Park in the 1990s. Historical accounts (e.g. from what is now Virunga National Park in DRC) also document the sudden appearance of wild dogs, followed by equally sudden disappearance some years later. This evidence of “boom and bust” demography indicates that wild dogs should be considered to experience “extreme fluctuations” in population size. Since the last assessment (when the species was classified as EN C2a(i)), the discovery of additional packs in south-eastern Angola took the size estimate for the largest subpopulation (in and around the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area) above the EN threshold for criterion C2a(i). Hence, on the basis of small population size and extreme fluctuations, the African wild dog is classified as Endangered (EN C2b).

African Wild Dogs historically were distributed across Africa, south of the Sahara. However, as people degraded and destroyed natural habitat, wild dogs were extirpated across most of their historical range. Today, wild dogs are known to persist in just 8% of their historical range, with approximately two-thirds of this land lying outside IUCN Category I-IV protected areas (IUCN/SSC 2016, IUCN/SSC in review, IUCN/SSC in prep). The global wild population is estimated to number below 700 packs globally.

African Wild Dog status varies across different regions of Africa. Their numbers are most robust in Southern Africa, where approximately 17% of the species’ historical range still supports breeding packs, comprising roughly two-thirds of the global population (IUCN/SSC 2016). The single largest subpopulation inhabits the Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area, spanning northern Botswana, eastern Namibia, south-eastern Angola, south-western Zambia, and western Zimbabwe: KAZA alone supports nearly a third of the world’s African wild dogs (IUCN/SSC 2016). In eastern Africa, approximately 10% of historical range is still occupied by breeding packs, supporting nearly a third of the global population, the biggest subpopulation is in the Selous/Nyerere complex of southern Tanzania, which is thought to connect to Southern Africa via a corridor to northern Mozambique (IUCN/SSC in review). In Central Africa, wild dogs remain in just 5% of their historical range, with the largest subpopulation in and around Chinko National Park in the Central African Republic (IUCN/SSC in review). In West Africa the situation is even more serious, with a single remaining subpopulation in Sénégal’s Niokolo Koba National Park, covering just 0.2% of the region’s historical range and representing less than 0.5% of the global population (IUCN/SSC in prep-b). Most of North Africa falls outside wild dogs’ historical range, and the species is believed to be extinct in this region (IUCN/SSC in review).

Population estimates drew upon the best available evidence for each area of resident range. Where on-the-ground monitoring projects were in place, these projects were asked to provide up-to-date subpopulation size estimates (numbers of packs, and numbers of animals aged ≥12 months), for their areas of operation, these estimates drew on a range of data sources including tracking known individuals and packs with GPS-collars, visual monitoring, camera trap surveys, tourist photos, spoor surveys, and extrapolation from intensive study areas to nearby areas. Where there was no alternative data source, subpopulation size estimates were derived by multiplying the area of the resident range polygon by a conservative estimate of adult population density, with the number of packs then estimated using a mean pack size of 10 adults (McNutt and Silk 2008, Woodroffe et al. 2019).

Mature individuals
For African wild dogs, the estimation of numbers of mature individuals is complicated by the species’ cooperative breeding behaviour, which means that many sexually mature individuals do not reproduce and hence do not contribute genetically to the next generation (Malcolm and Marten 1982, Creel et al. 1997, Girman et al. 1997a, McNutt and Silk 2008, Woodroffe et al. 2019). For this assessment, the number of mature individuals was estimated from the number of packs, by assuming that every pack contained a single alpha female and a single alpha male, while a proportion of packs also contained subdominant breeders in addition to the alphas. We used published data to calculate, separately, the average number of subdominant females, and the average number of subdominant males, reproducing each year, in addition to the alpha pair. Across seven study areas in Botswana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and South Africa, behavioural observations indicated that 32 of 343 litters were born to subdominant mothers (Frame et al. 1979, Girman et al. 1997b, Creel and Creel 2002, Spiering et al. 2010, McNutt 2019). As there were 32 litters born to subdominants and 311 born to alpha females, we inferred that, on average, there were 32/311 (0.103) subdominant breeding females for every alpha female. This value compared well with available genetic evidence (from two of the study subpopulations, Girman et al. 1997b, Spiering et al. 2010) which showed that, in South Africa, 10 of 137 pups had subdominant mothers, indicating that subdominant females produced 0.079 pups for every pup born to an alpha female.

Male reproductive success can be measured only using genetics. In the same two genetic studies (Girman et al. 1997b, Spiering et al. 2010) 27 of 115 pups had subdominant fathers, indicating that subdominant males fathered 0.307 pups for every pup fathered by an alpha male.

On the basis of this evidence, we estimated the number of mature individuals per subpopulation from the number of packs as:

Mature individuals = Number of alpha females (= number of packs) + Number of subdominant breeding females (= number of packs x 0.103) + Number of alpha males (= number of packs) + Number of subdominant breeding males (= number of packs x 0.307).

The estimate for each subpopulation was then rounded to the nearest whole number, and summed across all subpopulations to give a global population estimate.

Trend in population size
The global estimate for the number of African wild dogs in the current assessment (2025: 1,676 mature individuals) exceeds the estimate for the previous assessment (2012: 1,409 mature individuals). However, this difference reflects two important changes, unrelated to real population trajectories. First, several additional wild dog subpopulations were discovered since the previous estimate, including those in south-eastern Angola (Funston et al. 2017), western Angola (Overton et al. 2020), and eastern parts of the Central African Republic (Aebischer et al. 2020). The addition of these subpopulations contributed to an increase in the global population estimate, but this change reflected a more accurate estimate rather than actual population growth.
Second, for this assessment we slightly altered our method for estimating number of mature individuals. In contrast with the previous (2012) assessment, we based our estimate on the numbers of packs per site, rather than the numbers of adults, both because pack number can be easier to estimate in the field, and because it is more meaningful as a measure of population size (Woodroffe, O’Neill and Rabaiotti 2019). Additionally, the number of genetic studies available to inform our estimates of the number of subdominant breeders per pack increased from one (Girman et al. 1997a) to two (Girmanet al. 1997a, Spiering et al. 2010). For females, the rate of subdominant reproduction reported in the newer study (7.0% of pups with subdominant mothers, Spiering et al. 2010) was similar to that from the older study (7.8% of pups with subdominant mothers, Girman et al. 1997a), and was also consistent with behavioural data from seven sites. In contrast, for males the rate of subdominant reproduction could only be measured from genetics (rather than from behaviour as for females), and was found to be much higher in the newer study (27.9% of pups with subdominant fathers, Spiering et al.2010) than in the older study (10.3% of pups with subdominant fathers, Girman et al. 1997a). Unlike the older study (Girman et al. 1997a), the newer study came from a small, isolated subpopulation (Spiering et al. 2010) where limited opportunities to disperse and form new packs may have encouraged subdominant reproduction, and it is not clear to what extent it was representative of wild dog subpopulations more generally. However, as both studies had small sample sizes, we chose to include them both to draw upon the widest possible array of data to inform our estimates. However, we are aware that, in so doing, we may have inflated the estimated number of mature individuals, the global total (1,676 mature individuals) would have been 8% lower (1,543 mature individuals) had we drawn only on the older study of subdominant paternity. Indeed, the global total would have been 17% lower (1,392 mature individuals) had we ignored subdominant reproduction, as in the 2001 assessment.

To avoid bias introduced by these methodological differences, we estimated recent population change by (i) restricting comparisons over time to sites with subpopulation size estimates in both 2012 and 2025, and (ii) comparing the estimated numbers of adults (animals aged ≥12 months) between the two time points, rather than the numbers of mature individuals, as this measure was estimated at both time points.

On this basis, we estimated a 17% decline over the past three generations (15 years). The comparison period includes the population crash in Kenya’s Ewaso ecosystem (Mutinda et al. 2017), loss of wild dogs from Zambia’s Liuwa Plain (Zambia Carnivore Programme 2016) and the WAP Complex in West Africa (IUCN/SSC in review), and multiple whole-pack deaths in South Africa (Du

Plessis 2016, Loots et al. 2017) and Tanzania (Grumeti Fund 2018). Across Africa, threats to wild dog populations are growing rather than declining, as human impacts on formerly wildlife-friendly habitats expand. As time passes, we expect there to be less habitat, fewer prey, more snares, more roads, and more domestic dogs and so more disease transmission. Facing this mass of threats, we expect wild dogs to continue the pattern of decline observed in recent years.

Extreme fluctuations
Wild dogs experience dramatic “boom and bust” population dynamics. Litter sizes are large, allowing populations to grow rapidly when conditions are favourable (e.g., Pole 2000, Woodroffe 2011a, Davies-Mostert et al. 2015). However, episodes of very high mortality are also relatively frequent, and are typically linked to disease outbreaks (e.g., Alexander et al. 2010, Goller et al. 2010). Since the last assessment there have been multiple episodes of this type (e.g., Du Plessis 2016, Zambia Carnivore Programme 2016, Grumeti Fund 2018, Loots et al. 2018, van Schalkwyk et al. 2019), including an epidemic of canine distemper virus which killed an estimated 20 packs in Kenya’s Laikipia County (part of the Ewaso ecosystem) within a three-month period in 2017 (Mutinda, Cook and Kinya 2017). For perspective, 23 of the 31 wild dog subpopulations remaining in Africa are estimated to number et al. 2000, Hofmeyr et al. 2004, Grumeti Fund 2018), as well as prompting two reintroductions to replace populations lost to disease (Masenga et al. 2017, African Parks 2021).

Historical accounts show that disease-related wild dog die-offs are not a recent phenomenon. The earliest accounts document the loss of wild dogs from what is now the northern part of South Africa’s Kruger National Park during an epidemic attributed to “pulmonary distemper” in 1920, thought to have been transmitted by domestic dogs and to have entered from neighbouring Zimbabwe (Stevenson-Hamilton 1939). This die-off in the northern part of Kruger was followed in 1926 by the emergence of another disease (thought to be rickettsiosis) which led to wild dogs’ disappearance from the southern part of the park by 1931 (Stevenson-Hamilton 1939). Wild dogs were reported to have recolonised from neighbouring Mozambique in 1934 (Stevenson-Hamilton 1947), but rapidly disappeared again, with population recovery only beginning in earnest in 1948 (Reich 1981). A similar pattern has been observed elsewhere. Hoier (1955), noted wild dogs’ sudden appearance in, and equally sudden disappearance from, Albert National Park (now Virunga National Park in DRC), and proposed infectious disease as the cause. Wild dogs disappeared from Kenya’s Laikipia County during the 1980s in association with a disease outbreak, before recolonising two decades later (Woodroffe 2011a). Likewise, wild dogs disappeared from the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem on the Kenya-Tanzania border in a disease outbreak in 1990-1 (Gascoyne et al. 1993, Alexander and Appel 1994), returning after a decade (Marsden et al. 2011). The disappearance of wild dogs from the northern sections of Kruger National Park in the late 1990s may also have been caused by disease (Endangered Wildlife Trust 2017), this subpopulation recovered recently, after remaining low for two decades (Nicholson et al. 2020).

These periods of very rapid disease-related decline, followed by prolonged absence and then recovery, are consistent with two other elements of African wild dogs’ life history. First, the very long-range movements of dispersers (Fuller et al. 1992, Davies-Mostert et al. 2012, Masenga et al. 2016, Cozzi et al. 2020, Woodroffe et al. 2020, Sandoval-Seres et al. 2022, Beytell et al. 2024) make it possible for them to detect and colonise (or recolonise) suitable habitat, even when it is located at some distance from resident populations. Second, wild dogs are capable of rapid population growth. Because litters are large, packs can easily double or even triple in size within a single breeding attempt (e.g., Mills 1993, Woodroffe et al. 2019) and, where environmental conditions are favourable, populations may grow rapidly. For example, wild dogs recolonising Kenya’s Laikipia County grew from one pack to 19 packs in eight years (Woodroffe 2011a), those establishing South Africa’s managed metapopulation grew from 17 individuals to 202 in seven years (Davies-Mostert et al. 2015), and two packs reintroduced to Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park in 2018-9 (Bouley et al. 2021) had grown to 11 packs by late 2024 (Mercia Angela, pers. comm.). Other species with excellent dispersal abilities and high reproductive rates are adapted to exploit environmental conditions which are unpredictable and ephemeral (e.g., pioneer tree species which colonise and rapidly exploit gaps in rainforest canopy), and it may be the case that African wild dogs’ facility for (re)colonisation may indicate a similar adaptation. While the ephemeral resource to be exploited is likely to involve habitat with abundant prey and/or few competitors, one source of such habitat is land vacated due to disease mortality.

Wild dogs’ “boom and bust” life history is relevant to their conservation (and hence to their red list assessment) for three reasons. First, rapid die-offs due to disease have occurred in large populations (e.g., Kruger in 1920 and Laikipia in 2017) as well as small populations, and inside protected areas (e.g., Serengeti in 1991 and Kruger in 2016) as well as outside, showing that neither population size nor protected status is sufficient to avoid sudden die-offs. Accounting for this additional risk is an important element of evaluating red list status. Second, although long-distance dispersal would, in the past, have allowed wild dogs to recolonise habitat vacated following disease die-offs, the habitat fragmentation typical of today’s human-dominated landscape acts as a barrier to dispersal (Cozzi et al. 2013, Jackson et al. 2016, Cozzi et al. 2020, O'Neill et al. 2020, O’Neill et al. 2022), impeding natural recolonisation and thus intensifying the impact of infectious disease on metapopulation persistence. Third, even if natural or assisted dispersal can return wild dogs to sites devastated by disease, other anthropogenic threats (including human-wildlife conflict, prey loss, climate change, and other infectious diseases) are all likely to hinder subpopulation recovery.

In our view, this evidence of repeated disease-related die-offs, followed by natural recolonisation and recovery, makes the “extreme fluctuations” criterion appropriate to this species.

African Wild Dogs are native to Africa, south of the Sahara, historically absent only from the dense rainforests of the Congo Basin. Wild dogs occupy a range of habitats including short-grass plains (Kuhme 1965), semi-desert (Fraser-Celin et al. 2017), bushy savannas (Creel and Creel 2002, Woodroffe 2011b), woodland (Alting et al. 2021), and even upland forest (Malcolm and Sillero-Zubiri 2001). When searching for new territories, young wild dogs range very widely (e.g., Davies-Mostert et al. 2012), including through unsuitable habitat (O'Neill et al. 2020); this behaviour means that occasional records from unusual habitats (such as the top of Mount Kilimanjaro (Thesiger 1970), and deep in the Sahara Desert (Monod 1928)) are unlikely to indicate the presence of resident packs.

Although wild dogs’ long-range dispersal behaviour is particularly extreme, resident wild dog packs also occupy much larger home ranges (Gittleman and Harvey 1982), and live at much lower population densities (Carbone and Gittleman 2002), than would be expected on the basis of their energy demands. These patterns are thought to reflect the impact of competition with larger carnivores such as lions (Panthera leo) and spotted hyaenas (Crocuta crocuta), which kill wild dogs and steal their kills (Fanshawe and FitzGibbon 1993, Creel and Creel 1996, Mills and Gorman 1997, Swanson et al. 2014, Groom et al. 2016).

Wild dogs’ low population density and wide-ranging behaviour helps to explain why they tend to have persisted only in extremely large areas of habitat (Woodroffe and Ginsberg 1998). Today, wild dog distribution is limited primarily by human activities, which have fragmented and degraded wildlife-friendly habitat, rather than by the loss of a specific habitat type.

African wild dogs mostly hunt medium-sized antelope, relying on speed, endurance, and strength of numbers rather than stealth. Across much of eastern and southern Africa their primary prey are impala (Aepyceros melampus), with greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii), Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) also important prey species (Fanshawe and FitzGibbon 1993, Pole et al. 2004, Dröge et al. 2017, Creel et al. 2018). Small antelope, such as dik-diks (Madoqua spp.) and Steenbok (Raphicerus campestris) are important in some areas, as are Warthogs (Phacochoerus spp.). Wild dogs also take very small prey such as hares and lizards (Woodroffe et al. 2007c), but these make a very small contribution to their diet.

African wild dogs are highly social, cooperating to hunt (Creel and Creel 1995, Hubel et al. 2016), defend themselves and their kills (Fanshawe and FitzGibbon 1993), and to breed (Malcolm and Marten 1982). Typically, only one female and one male produce pups in each pack (Malcolm and Marten 1982, Girman et al. 1997b, McNutt and Silk 2008), but all pack members may contribute to raising the pups. As females have very seldom been observed to raise pups to adulthood without assistance from other pack members (but see Woodroffe et al. 2009), packs, rather than individuals, are often used as the units of measuring wild dog population size. Larger packs consistently raise larger litters (Creel et al. 2004, Rasmussen et al. 2008, Gusset and Macdonald 2010, Woodroffe et al. 2017).

Dispersal behaviour is central to wild dog population dynamics. Because inbreeding avoidance is strong (Girman et al.1997b) yet joining a pack (rather than being born into it) is very rare (e.g., Woodroffe, O’Neill and Rabaiotti 2019), most young wild dogs cannot find a mate in their natal pack and instead disperse to find unrelated mates elsewhere and to form new packs (e.g., McNutt 1996, Woodroffe et al. 2020). For the same reason, when an alpha animal dies, the surviving alpha may find no unrelated mate remaining in the pack. Under such circumstances, packs tend to fragment (e.g., Woodroffe et al. 2020). Thus, packs have a finite lifetime which very seldom exceeds that of their founders, and the formation of new packs is essential to population persistence (Woodroffe et al. 2019).

Wild dogs’ decline has been related to their limited ability to inhabit human-dominated landscapes. Where human densities are high and habitat consequently degraded and fragmented, wild dogs encounter few prey, hostile farmers and ranchers, snares set to catch wild ungulates, high speed traffic, and domestic dogs harbouring potentially fatal diseases. These factors make it impossible for wild dogs to survive in areas heavily modified by people, especially those where settlement and cultivation have irreversibly destroyed former habitat.

Faced with this widespread habitat destruction, wild dogs are dependent on remaining patches of wildlife-friendly habitat. However, wild dogs’ low population densities mean that even quite large patches of habitat may be too small to sustain viable populations, and their wide-ranging behaviour means that they are often exposed to people, and the associated threats, on the boundaries of nominally protected areas (Woodroffe and Ginsberg 1998). Typically, areas of ca 10,000 sq km are the minimum required to support a viable population. Hence, habitat loss is an over-arching threat to wild dogs, through its direct role in reducing space for wild dogs to inhabit, and through its indirect role in exposing wild dogs to other threats.

In addition to this broad threat of habitat loss, wild dog populations face an array of local threats. Importantly, the relative importance of each threat varies between populations (Woodroffe et al. 2007a). Hence, the order in which these threats are presented below is not intended to reflect their relative importance.

As hunters of medium-sized ungulates, wild dogs are well-equipped to hunt livestock (importantly, there are no confirmed accounts of wild dogs hunting people). Where wild dogs kill livestock, or are perceived as a threat to livestock, they may be killed in retaliation or as a preventative measure. The resulting human-wildlife conflict can be locally severe (e.g., Rasmussen 1996, Woodroffe et al. 2005, Fraser-Celin et al. 2017).

Hunting of wild ungulates for meat threatens wild dogs both directly and indirectly. Indirectly, lack of wild prey limits food intake, constraining pack size and expanding home range size (Goodheart et al. 2021) while also encouraging predation on livestock (Woodroffe et al. 2005). Moreover, where people use snares to hunt wild ungulates, wild dogs are often caught as by-catch, causing mortality sufficient to drive population decline (Leigh 2005, Becker et al. 2013), as well as inflicting suffering through major injuries.

Infectious disease is another major threat to wild dog populations, sufficient to have temporarily extirpated wild dogs from what is now Kruger National Park in the 1920s (Stevenson-Hamilton 1939), the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in 1990-1 (Gascoyne et al. 1993), and Kenya’s Laikipia County in 2017 (Mutinda et al. 2017). These sites were all recolonised naturally, indicating that connectivity remained to other, nearby populations. However, such recolonisation will be increasingly unlikely as human activity constrains the movements of dispersers, exacerbating the metapopulation-level impact of disease. Domestic dogs have been implicated (albeit to different extents) in the transmission of both rabies and canine distemper to wild dogs (Alexander and Appel 1994, Prager et al. 2012, Prager et al. 2013), and were thought to have been the source of the (unidentified) disease which temporarily extirpated wild dogs from Kruger (Stevenson-Hamilton 1939). Hence, as human development encroaches on wild dog habitat, contact with domestic dogs is likely increase and, with it, exposure to potentially fatal pathogens (Woodroffe and Donnelly 2011, Woodroffe et al. 2012).

As coursing predators, wild dogs like to use roads for travelling (Abrahms et al. 2016, O'Neill et al. 2020). This behaviour exposes them to the risk of road traffic accidents, which can have a major impact where high-speed roads run close to, or through, key wildlife areas (e.g., van der Meer et al. 2014).

While other threats operate on a local (albeit extensive) geographic scale, and so could, in principle, be addressed through local conservation efforts, the threat posed by climate change results from global, rather than local, human activities. High ambient temperatures constrain wild dogs’ hunting opportunities (Rabaiotti and Woodroffe 2019), and periods of hot weather have been linked to increased pup mortality, extended inter-birth intervals, lower adult survival, and altered phenology (Woodroffe et al. 2017, Rabaiotti et al. 2021, Abrahms et al. 2022). These demographic impacts of high temperatures help to explain why the energy-intensive pup-rearing period coincides with the coolest part of the year (McNutt et al. 2019). Projecting the potential impacts of climate change indicates that even quite probable carbon emission scenarios may be sufficient to prompt wild dog population collapse (Rabaiotti et al. 2023). Unfortunately, although this threat is well understood and not reversible in the short term, wild dogs’ short generation time means that it is projected to operate too slowly to trigger threat criteria under “projected decline” (Rabaiotti 2019).

Across most of its geographical range, there is minimal consumptive use of this species. Evidence of localised traditional use has been reported in Zimbabwe (Davies and Du Toit 2004), but this is not reported from other areas. There is a low level of international trade in captive animals from South Africa to zoos worldwide, but no recent reports of animals being taken from the wild to support this trade.

Conservation action for African wild dogs is guided by regional strategies for southern Africa (IUCN/SSC 2016), eastern Africa (IUCN/SSC in prep), and North, West, and Central Africa (IUCN/SSC in review). These regional strategies each cover 10 years, and each has been updated at least once (IUCN/SSC 2008, IUCN/SSC 2010, IUCN/SSC 2012). Many range states have chosen to use their corresponding regional strategy as a template for developing National Action Plans (e.g., Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute 2016).

Given the central threat from habitat loss, habitat conservation is the most important action needed to prevent wild dog extinction. Wild dogs require habitat conservation at scales seldom considered for other species, making them an excellent flagship for very large protected areas (e.g., South Africa’s Kruger National Park), protected area complexes (e.g., Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve/Nyerere National Park), and Trans-Frontier Conservation Areas (e.g., KAZA). These three areas together support over half of the world’s wild dogs, and maintaining their integrity is the top priority for wild dog conservation. Wild dogs can also persist at scale outside protected areas, where land use is conducive, for example the pastoralist areas of northern and eastern Kenya support important populations almost entirely on community land, while combining private ranches in Zimbabwe into multi-owner conservancies fostered impressive recoveries, and persistence, of wild dogs on private land. Education, at all levels of society, is important to explain, justify, and promote the prioritisation of wildlife conservation at such scales.

Although wild dog conservation is compatible with some hunting offtake of other species (e.g., in well-managed hunting reserves), indiscriminate hunting with snares has devastating impacts on wild dogs, which are highly susceptible to accidental capture. Control of snaring is a vital element of wild dog conservation (Becker et al. 2013), while removal of snares from the environment, antipoaching, and support for alternative livelihoods may all reduce snaring impacts on wildlife, removal of snares from injured animals may also play an important role in preventing population decline (Banda et al. 2023). Where snaring is a major concern, close monitoring of packs fitted with tracking collars can help with detecting and removing snares.

Where wild dogs share the landscape with people, livestock farming is likely to be the primary human land use, creating opportunities for livestock predation and hence human-wildlife conflict. Approaches to mitigating human-wildlife conflict include conserving wild prey, as well as encouraging forms of livestock husbandry which deter predation (e.g., Rasmussen 1996, Woodroffe et al. 2005, Woodroffe et al. 2007b).

Infectious disease is a biologically complex and hence challenging threat to wild dogs. Across much of Africa, rabies persists in domestic dog populations, and mass vaccination of domestic dogs is an effective way to protect local people and domestic animals, as well as wild carnivores, from a devastating disease (Cleaveland et al. 2003, Cleaveland et al. 2006, Prager et al. 2013, Hayes et al. 2022). However, wildlife likely play a key role in the persistence of canine distemper virus (Craft et al. 2008, Prager et al. 2012, Prager et al. 2013, Viana et al. 2015), meaning that domestic dog vaccination is unlikely to be as effective for distemper as it should be for rabies. Vaccination of wild dogs themselves has been shown to be both safe and effective against both pathogens (Reuben et al. in prep, Woodroffe et al. in prep, Gold et al. in review), the Canid Specialist group is current preparing guidelines to support wild dog managers in deciding which intervention is most important under which circumstances. As for snaring, monitoring using tracking collars is a vital tool for detecting and responding to disease outbreaks.

Reducing the impact of road mortality on wild dogs is best achieved by avoiding routing major roads in and near wild dog habitat. Where such roads are already in place, measures such as signage and speed bumps may help to reduce impacts. Elsewhere in the world, over- and under-passes are used to reduce road mortality for both people and wildlife, such approaches are not yet widely practised in Africa, but could be valuable where road improvement or construction in or near wild dog habitat is unavoidable.

As climate change is a global phenomenon, only global action to reduce carbon emissions can entirely avoid or reverse its negative consequences for African wild dogs. However, analyses suggest that weather impacts on adult wild dogs operate, at least in part, by increasing their susceptibility to existing causes of mortality such as disease and human wildlife conflict (Rabaiotti et al. 2021). Hence, climate impacts might be mitigated, to some extent by addressing other threats to wild dog populations.

As is apparent from the narrative above, wild dog conservation action is often species-specific, hence it can only be implemented where wild dogs are known to occur. Important wild dog populations remained undetected in Angola and CAR until recent years, and it is possible that some other populations are yet to be confirmed. Surveys are much-needed, especially in areas identified in conservation strategies as “possible range” (IUCN/SSC 2016, IUCN/SSC in prep, IUCN/SSC in review). Likewise, monitoring of key populations is crucial to targeting conservation interventions, assessing their efficacy, and identifying new threats.

Participants in strategic planning have identified few areas of “recoverable range”, where natural recolonisation or reintroduction could be considered (IUCN/SSC 2016, IUCN/SSC in prep, IUCN/SSC in review). While conserving existing populations should be prioritised over attempting to restore lost ones, reintroduction may have an important role to play in certain areas. Methods for reintroduction have been developed and honed in South Africa, in the course of establishing and maintaining a "managed metapopulation" of very small subpopulations across an array of small, fenced reserves, none of which would be viable on its own but which, under intensive management, has proven very successful when viewed as a single unit (Davies-Mostert et al. 2015). The methods developed in managing the metapopulation have been applied to reintroductions outside South Africa, most notably the successful restoration of wild dogs to Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park (Bouley et al. 2021), which numbered 11 packs at the most recent estimate. Thus far, reintroductions have been restricted to southern Africa, translocations further afield should be guided by (ongoing; Ramage et al. in prep) studies of wild dog sub-specific taxonomy and evolutionarily significant units (Hoelzel 2023), as has been agreed recently for lions (Becker et al. 2022, Bertola et al. 2022).

While it is now well-established that wild dog translocations should rely on wild-reared animals which have the survival skills needed for life in the wild, captive populations also have an important role to play in wild dog conservation. Developing guidelines for managing disease would have been far more difficult had it not been possible to evaluate vaccines and vaccination protocols in captivity before trialling them in the wild (e.g., Connolly et al. 2013, Connolly et al. 2015, Wahldén et al. 2018). Likewise, accelerometry collars used to better understand the impacts of prey loss and climate change were evaluated first in captivity (English et al. 2023). Zoos play a vital role in educating and inspiring people worldwide to care about wild dogs, and provide a vital stream of funding to support conservation action in the field.