Telemetry, tracking collars, imitated wild dog calls played on a speaker, an impala – already killed – tied to a stump… All so clean and calculated. Unnatural even. Yes, a lot of people will criticise the level of human intervention that personifies the WWDI’s eco-tourism project. I may even have been one of those people. But then the little she-hero who coordinates the project opened her mouth and the sheer passion for and commitment to this species bubbled over.
Reilly Mooney, the pint-size eco-tourism project coordinator, came to South Africa about three years ago as part of research team tracking and studying the behaviour of baboons in the Waterberg biosphere. Spending hours, Reilly laid eyes on the highly endangered , or African wild dog, for the first time in her life. In fact, they are the second most endangered carnivore species on the African continent, only after the Ethiopian Wolf. She was immediately intrigued and when the Covid-19 pandemic prevented her from heading home to the United States, she got involved with the special project aimed at saving the wild dogs of the Waterberg. In fact, she fell head over heels in love with these dogs… And why wouldn’t she?
