Loved at Home. Persecuted in the Wild.

Why painted dogs are vulnerable to snares

Painted dogs are especially vulnerable because they cover vast distances and move through landscapes where snares may be hidden in grass, bush and woodland.

Since 2001, Painted Dog Conservation has removed more than 30,000 snares from areas bordering Hwange National Park¹. Each snare had the potential to maim or kill.

The scale is shocking. Each snare reveals how easily suffering in the wild is treated as less urgent when it happens beyond our homes.

How one snare can affect an entire painted dog pack

This is not an abstract threat. DSWF-supported rangers have previously had to release every adult member of one painted dog pack, numbering 12 adults, from snares on multiple occasions. One male, estimated to be seven years old, hadhas been rescued four times².

A single snare can injure an individual. The loss of an individual can destabilise a pack. The collapse of a pack can have consequences that extends far beyond one animal.

This is what persecution looks like in the wild.

How the illegal wildlife trade affects lions

For lions, persecution often moves through international criminal networks.

Over the past decade, 67 countries have been linked to 296 publicly reported lion seizures. These seizures included a minimum of 4,066kg of lion bones, at least 225 live lions and various other lion body parts³.

Behind those figures is a trade that turns living animals into products. Lions are killed for their bones, teeth, claws and skins, which are trafficked across borders and sold for profit.

For traffickers, a lion only becomes valuable once it has been reduced to parts. We would never accept this happening to the animals closest to us. Yet for wild cats, a living animal can become a product, a shipment or a line in a seizure report.

The species change. The network survives. What remains constant is the assumption that a wildlife can be priced, traded or discarded.

This is what persecution looks like when it crosses borders.

Different threats. The same life at stake.

A painted dog caught in a snare and a lion killed for its body parts may seem to represent two very different conservation crises.

One threat is hidden in the landscape. The other moves through international trafficking routes.

But both depend on the same idea, that a wild animal’s life is worth less than what can be taken from it. This is the double standard this appeal asks us to confront.

Why would we never accept a dog being left to die in a snare, but accept it as a routine threat for painted dogs?

We would never accept a domestic cat being killed for its teeth, claws or bones.

So why should we accept it for their wild counterparts?

How DSWF helps protect painted dogs and lions

The threats facing painted dogs and lions are serious, but they are not beyond intervention.

For painted dogs, protection begins in the landscape.

The Painted Dog Conservation teams provide intensive, near-constant monitoring to help keep painted dog packs safe in high-risk areas. They track pack movements, remove snares before they can maim or kill, respond quickly when dogs are caught or injured and, where possible, help move them away from dangerous areas before conflict or injury occurs.

When painted dogs are injured, sick or orphaned, PDC’s rehabilitation facility, opened in 2002, allows them to recover with minimal human handling before they can return to the wild4.

This work matters because painted dogs are not just rare. They are highly social animals whose survival depends on the strength of the pack. Protecting one animal can help protect the structure, future and resilience of an entire group.

For lions, protection must also reach across landscapes, communities and borders.

In Tanzania, DSWF-supported partners employ local lion guardians, known as Ilchokuti, who monitor lion movements and help prevent conflict with livestock herders5. This is frontline conservation, but it is also long-term prevention. By supporting local people living alongside wildlife, DSWF helps fund programmes that strengthen coexistence, reduce conflict and create safer spaces for wildlife to survive.

But the trade in lion body parts cannot be stopped by patrols alone.

For over four decades, DSWF has challenged and disrupted the illegal wildlife trade through intelligence-led investigations, enforcement partnerships and policy reform. Wildlife crime is not only a conservation issue. It is organised crime, often operating across borders.

That is why protection must happen at multiple points in the system: removing snares, funding patrols, supporting emergency care, strengthening coexistence and exposing the criminal networks profiting from wild lives.

Because if these threats are human-made, then our response can be too.

Donate to protect painted dogs and lions

No life should be worth less simply because it is wild

We would do anything to protect the animals we love at home.

Now we are asking you to extend that same compassion to painted dogs and lions in the wild.

Your donation today could help remove deadly snares before they claim another painted dog. It could help fund anti-poaching patrols, protect threatened landscapes, support emergency care and expose the criminal networks profiting from lion body parts.

• £10 could provide rations for rangers patrolling snare-ridden landscapes.
• £50 could go towards undercover investigators looking to expose international lion traders.
• £100 could help provide emergency care for a snared and injured painted dog.
• £250 could go towards education initiatives aimed at ensuring greater human-wildlife coexistence.

Please donate today and help protect painted dogs and lions from persecution, from local landscapes to international markets.

Because where an animal lives should never determine how much its life is worth.