On Sunday 15 March, zoocrew.eu founders, Heiko and Natalie Carstens, visited Beekse Bergen Safaripark to attend a talk given by Greg Rasmussen and Peter Blinston from the Painted Dog Conservation Project (PDC) in Zimbabwe. This is the same project Heiko and Natalie visited during their trip to Zimbabwe in July 2008. You can read more about the project on http://www.painteddog.org.

It was great to see how the project is progressing but there is still much work to be done. As Greg stated, "long term support is what makes a difference to ANY conservation project". Beekse Bergen have been supporting this project for many years, and at the end of the talk Stichting Vrienden Safaripark Beekse Bergen presented a cheque for €15,000 euros! to support this important project.

Highlights from the talk:

* a mere 3000-4000 painted dogs remain in the wild
* Zimbabwe is the only country to see a population increase in the last ten years, added to that, Zimbabwe have one of the highest genetic diversity of dogs thanks to the maintenance of corridors
* 12,000+ snares have been collected since 2001
* 54 poachers were arrested in 2008
* 67 local staff are employed at PDC in Zimbabwe
* interpretive centre opened
* "Starvation Island" will broadcast later this year which follows five painted dogs from the rehabilitation centre at PDC as they prepare for release back into the wild
* large focus on training and development of local people, 3500 children have attended Bush Camp since May 2004
* snares are converted into art work to fund the project and to generate income for local families
* community outreach program to help the local community: boreholes created for fresh water supply, this now enables women to grow crops and sell surplus food for income for their familes

A lot of support for the project comes from the Netherlands, and in fact, last year the Netherlands raised the most money for the project. This is with much thanks to Ron van der A, chairman of Stichting Painted Dog Conservation, and during the talk he unveiled a new website for Stichting PDC: http://www.painteddogconservation.nl