By Helen Sullivan

Photographs by Marcus Westberg

September/October 2026

Two white pickup trucks are parked beside a highway that cuts through the Waterberg, a South African municipality three hours from Johannesburg. Passing the trucks on foot, you might hear something that makes you stop: Their cargo is panting. Just visible through the holes at the top of three green wooden crates is fur over rib cages, mottled black, white and gold, rising and falling. 

The three sleeping female African wild dogs, sisters, have traveled a long way in the past few weeks, even by the standards of their species, which can cover 30 miles a day and occupy ranges of 1,000 miles. They arrived by plane from Karingani Game Reserve in Mozambique, courtesy of the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s African wild dog range expansion program. The project, which started in 1997, has increased the world’s wild dog population by more than 344 in 29 years. It introduces dogs to wildlife reserves in countries where they haven’t been seen in decades—for instance, Mozambique, where the species disappeared during a civil war that lasted from 1977 to 1992. The Mozambican packs have bred so successfully that the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is now bringing young dogs to South Africa to form new, genetically diverse packs here. The three sisters have been darted with sedatives, a risky but necessary step in moving them to their new home for the next few weeks—a state-of-the-art enclosure, or boma, the first designed specifically to hold their species—before they’re released, with tracking collars, into the wild.

The sisters represent a not insignificant portion of 6,600 African wild dogs left in the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the animals are among the world’s most endangered. Also known as Cape hunting or painted dogs, they resemble large, gangly mongrels with extremities picked from a safari odds-and-ends bin: big, disc-shaped black ears, large paws on skinny legs and fluffy white tails. Each dog’s fur has a clearly unique pattern of black, gold and white splotches—more Abstract Impressionist than the designs that cover snakes, zebras or leopards. 

Wild dogs are the most successful hunters in Africa, with a kill rate of 80 percent. Lions, by comparison, kill just 30 percent of what they hunt. The dogs’ superpower is also part of the reason they are so threatened. Owners of many private game reserves would rather kill them than lose expensive game. Subsistence farmers feel the same way about their livestock. A 2021 study published in Ecology and Evolution showed that human causes—including direct killing and diseases from domestic dogs—accounted for 44 percent of all wild dog deaths at study sites in Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe over a 15-year period. A lack of continuity between areas where the dogs are welcome means that without intervention, they struggle to find mates.

But there is much to love about the most hated carnivore in Africa. Ask a wild dog enthusiast what they enjoy the most, and they will likely say it is the dogs’ playfulness. Briana Abrahms, who researches wild dogs in Botswana, has seen the pups “bat around balls of elephant dung like a football.” Neil Jordan, a biologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, discovered that wild dogs are one of the few species on Earth that appear to vote. Before departing on a hunt, the animals hold “rallies”: At dusk, one or two will stand up after resting in the heat and pull their ears back, pretending to stalk prey. They’ll make strange, strangled barks and chittering noises, curling their tongues, playing with one another and urinating. 

“And then they kind of snowball socially, so then more get involved, and more get involved. It’s like a big merry-go-round, and they’re all running around crazy,” Jordan says. Typically they’ll do this once, then lie back down, then again, then lie back down. Only when they emit “rapid nasal exhalations,” or sneezes, will they actually depart. (“We still don’t know for sure whether the dogs are using that, or it just happens to be occurring around the same time as they’re signaling their intention to move in another way,” Jordan emphasizes.) Wild dogs also allow their pups to feed first, near-unique behavior among animals, says Jordan. When a member of the pack is injured or sick or heavily pregnant and can’t join a hunt, another dog will regurgitate food for it. Wild dogs look out for one another.

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While the sisters doze in the trucks, I take a seat in a hut nearby with Eugene Greyling, one of the EWT field officers transporting the dogs. We’re sitting at the entrance to the Welgevonden Game Reserve, which houses the enclosure that will temporarily contain the dogs. South Africa has four main wild dog populations. The first is in captivity in private zoos. Then there is the population in Kruger National Park, which is the only place in the country with enough dogs to maintain themselves genetically. The third is the free-ranging population, roaming across a patchwork of private and public lands in the Waterberg. Finally, there is a “meta population,” whose members are tracked as they travel through nature reserves such as Welgevonden or the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa’s largest privately owned nature reserve. EWT works with the reserves to create new, genetically diverse packs and expand their range.

Wild dog packs, which consist of between 5 and 20 individuals, have complicated social structures, says Greyling. At the top is the alpha female. She and the alpha male are the only dogs in the pack who breed. In order for populations to grow, dogs must form new packs. A group of sisters will set off in one direction in search of males from another pack, while a group of brothers does the same in a different direction. The EWT carefully monitors dispersal and the packs’ genetics. The lack of continuity between ranges means the animals are likely to get stuck without a mate. Conservationists can’t afford to let sleeping dogs lie. 

The three sisters in the truck, for example, had found males back in Mozambique who were too closely related. “We had to think hard about how to manage that, because technically the dogs had done everything right,” says Cole du Plessis, who coordinates the range-expansion project. “If you told people 20 years ago that we were going to be flying wild dogs under sedation to other countries—it’s just quite crazy.” 

At Welgevonden, Greyling and I are joined in the hut by Reilly Mooney, a biologist and the director of the Waterberg Wild Dog Initiative. Mooney has traveled farther than the dogs: She came from Wisconsin to South Africa, originally to study primates. During the Covid-19 pandemic, her regular research shut down and she attended a community meeting about free-roaming dogs that had been mostly left to their own devices. “It was a very volatile situation,” Mooney says. Locals were calling for someone to bridge the gap between communities and conservationists, and Mooney was the right person for the job. The first thing on her to-do list was to find out how many dogs there were. Their coats made them relatively easy to identify and keep track of. “We can say with pretty good confidence that in this entire Waterberg area, there are only 27 wild dogs,” she says.

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In the hut, Greyling gets a call from Joseph Hlako, his colleague at the EWT who has been keeping an eye on the sleeping dogs. Hlako, the EWT’s conflict mitigation officer, grew up in the area and has family who farm. He speaks Northern Sotho, among other South African languages, and has an insider’s knowledge about what will and won’t work when it comes to dogs and people. Building trust and maintaining relationships make the biggest factor, he says. “And, you know, a familiar face works better than any face.”

After Greyling leaves the hut, he drives back past us: One of the dogs seems to be overheating, he says. He wants to get her to the enclosure right away and cool her down. Mooney and I jump into her car and follow Greyling. We cross the highway, passing cattle and thick bushland until we come to the boma: a couple of shipping containers and a fence. 

It doesn’t seem like much, but du Plessis designed everything in the boma specifically, and simply, for wild dogs. At the base of the fences is a concrete wall that extends four feet into the ground—wild dogs are determined diggers. The enclosure is split so that males and females can be kept apart, bonding over time through the fence. And in each section is a feeding post. The dogs tend to eat facing you, Mooney explains, which makes it hard to dart them for transportation. But if their food is tied to a post, and behind the post is a small wooden wall, the dogs are forced to eat with their behinds toward you. Conveniently, they raise their hindquarters in the air while eating, which makes for a safer and easier shot. 

As we help Greyling and Hlako lift a crate off the pickup, a dusty paw flops out of one corner, and I think of something my uncle says: “You can smell the world in a dog’s paw.” Mooney and I back away, watching from inside a container as Hlako moves the car so that the overheating dog is in the shade. Though it is late afternoon, the temperature is still around 90 degrees. 

Hlako and Greyling release the dogs one at a time, opening the crate and waiting until a dog walks, then trots, out. The first is less sure on her feet, the second seems almost normal, until Mooney points out that she would have run much faster from the crate and people had she not still been a bit dozy. The sisters stand together in a grassy area, point their noses in the air, move their satellite-dish ears and lie down under a thorn tree; it has been a long day. 

The sun is about to set, and I need to leave before the park gates close. I prepare to say goodbye and walk over to the overheating dog, who is lying next to the water. She hasn’t stood up. She is breathing, her mouth is open, and Greyling tries to reassure everyone that she’ll be all right. But he doesn’t sound too sure. 

Later, he gives me news that the dog died. It is the first time this has happened on his watch, and it comes as a shock. The cause of death is determined to be “capture myopathy,” or “broken-­heart syndrome,” says du Plessis. It is caused by heightened stress. In this case, the known factors were the stress of being captured, which involved hours of people trying to dart her, and the high temperature that day. There may have been underlying physical factors, or there may have been predators like hyenas nearby in the nights before the move. But du Plessis is focused on what the EWT could control. “I would never accept the loss of a dog as fine,” he says. But if one of the surviving sisters goes on to have puppies, and the population grows by 20 to 30 dogs in her lifetime, “then it makes it seem a little bit better.”

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A year later, du Plessis updates me on the two surviving sisters. After keeping them for two months at the boma near Welgevonden, du Plessis sent them to a small private game reserve called Rietspruit, which is connected to Kruger National Park. He knew of an eligible bachelor living just nine hours away, in KwaZulu-Natal Province. Du Plessis darted the male and drove him to Rietspruit. “The bonding between those dogs went extremely well, and we had this new pack of three,” he says. “They were hunting successfully. Everything was really good. And then in October last year, that male was killed by a lion on the reserve.”

A couple more months passed, and du Plessis heard of two other males who had dispersed from a pack, looking for mates. He darted them, put them in the boma and waited for the sisters to show up. A few days later, the females, now roaming free and wearing collars, showed up near one of the reserve’s lodges. Du Plessis drove to where they were and attached two balls of hay from the boma, saturated with the males’ scent, to the back of his car. He performed “hoo-calls,” mimicking sounds the dogs make to find each other. The females emerged. Then he started to drive. “We were at one point going 60 kilometers an hour [about 37 miles per hour] while these females were keeping up, trying to get to this ball of grass,” he says. “It was one of the coolest things I’ve done in my wild dog career.” 

Relocations don’t work if the dogs’ range doesn’t keep expanding and community education efforts don’t continue. But over the past three decades, the amount of land set aside for the dogs has grown by 1.5 million hectares, and there are 30 more packs than before. “The genetic diversity within those packs is very good,” du Plessis says. “If we can keep this strong and working, and other organizations are doing their restoration efforts and community conservation efforts, it’s creating the space where we’re ready to jump when the time is right.” 

A short way from the enclosure, du Plessis dropped the hay and sped off, trusting that the females would find their way to the males. And they did. They wasted no time flirting through the fence as wild dogs do: ducking under each other, dipping their heads. Du Plessis decided to release the males from the boma. But instead of the males coming out, the females ran in, and all four refused to emerge. So he left them to get to know one another in the enclosure for three weeks. The week du Plessis and I spoke, the females had started estrus, and the males were showing mate guarding behavior. In a few months, with any luck: puppies. 

When we speak a few months later, du Plessis tells me one of the sisters did get pregnant. The pack of four made a den, something that happens only a day or so before a female gives birth. But in the next few weeks, a leopard attacked and killed the female. The puppies were too young to survive without her milk and died, too. And the remaining three went on the run again, all the way out of the park. The brothers were caught in a snare line and died, and the last surviving sister eventually joined another pack. 

I ask du Plessis how he manages to not get too discouraged. “To me it’s about population trend,” he says. “Even if half of them make it, the point is the trend is growing.” In 2025, the dogs the project looks after—in South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi—had 150 puppies altogether. With only 700 breeding pairs and 6,600 wild dogs left, 150 is “quite substantial,” du Plessis says. “You have ebbs and flows, but at the end of each year, if you’re either stable or increasing, for an endangered species, you’re doing pretty well.”