Painted Dogs of Hwange: Where the Wild Pack Runs

About this episode

David Oakes explores the challenges of animal conservation in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, focusing on the efforts of Painted Dog Conservation and its team.

Recorded on the outskirts of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, this episode drops David into the high-stakes reality of animal conservation. Guided by Peter Blinston and his team at Painted Dog Conservation , David joins the people whose work keeps Lycaon pictus alive in the buffer zone: Belinda Ncube , PDC’s first female ranger, whose story runs from childhood bush camp to leading a unit of women in a landscape still shaped by patriarchal assumptions; Adraino Sitole , who began as a community volunteer after a Painted dog was killed in a snare just moments from his village, and now tracks poachers with trained sniffer dogs while helping remove thousands of wire traps from the bush; and David Kuvawoga, PDC's Director of Operations, who literally takes Oakes from patrol to rapid response - explaining how the team uses radio alerts and 24/7 tracking to push packs away from snares, highways and other anthropogenic threats, and why, in this context, the low risk of ‘...a habituated wild dog is better than a dead wild dog.’ Painted Dogs may be Africa’s most effective large hunter, but they cannot outrun snares, disease spillover from domestic animals, a barage of road vehicles, or the…

People in this episode

Host: David Oakes

Guests: Peter Blinston, Belinda Ncube, Adraino Sitole, David Kuvawoga

Topics covered

• animal conservation
• wildlife protection
• community involvement
• human-wildlife conflict
• female empowerment
• poaching prevention

Keywords

• conservation
• painted dogs
• Zimbabwe
• wildlife
• community
• poaching
• female ranger
• snares
• human economics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Painted Dog Conservation

Books & works: Lycaon pictus

Places: Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, Africa

More episodes of Trees A Crowd

• The Executive Branch: Beccy Speight (RSPB), Darren Moorcroft (Woodland Trust) and Craig Bennett (The Wildlife Trusts) · March 17, 2026 · 1h 22m
• Rakan Zahawi: Giant ambitions at the Charles Darwin Foundation · March 3, 2026 · 33 min
• Prof. Carlos Mena: Trust the Locals, Trust the Science, Protect the Galápagos · February 24, 2026 · 37 min
• Prof. Diana Pazmiño: Rays, Research and the Real Guardians of the Galápagos · February 17, 2026 · 55 min
• Abraham Joffe: The Secret Trade in Polar Bears (or, “How to Save an Animal Everyone Thinks Is Already Protected!”) · December 9, 2025 · 35 min
• Iris Ho: Primates, Policy, and the Power of CITES · December 8, 2025 · 31 min