IUCN Canid Specialist Group

01/11/2026

22/10/2026

"They go low, we go high."

In landscapes shared by people and wildlife, coexistence is not just possible, it's happening every day. 🐾🌿

These photographs capture everyday moments in the Golan Heights, one of the world's most important strongholds for the Endangered mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella). Here, gazelles, grey wolves (Canis lupus), golden jackals (Canis aureus) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) share a landscape shaped by nature reserves, livestock grazing, military training areas and recreation. Despite all these human activities, wildlife continues to find ways to coexist and navigate the same spaces. 🌍

A 2025 study explored how mountain gazelles and wild canids use this complex, human-modified landscape. The researchers found that gazelles were most active in protected areas where wolves were also active, and least active in areas with high jackal activity, regardless of land-use type.🌿

The findings also suggested that wolves can continue to fulfil their ecosystem functions, even in landscapes heavily influenced by people. However, when human pressures become too intense, these natural ecological relationships may begin to break down.🌱

An unlikely wolf-gazelle alliance? Although wolves sometimes prey on gazelles, their presence may also indirectly benefit them by keeping jackals in check.

🔍 Can you identify all four species? 💬 Which photo is your favourite?

Read the full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21402-x

📸: Shlomo Preiss-Bloom (Tel Aviv University)

15/10/2026

🌐🐺 Welcome to the new canids.org!

The IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group has a new home online.
Our redesigned website brings together information on the world’s wild canids, the work of the CSG and its Working Groups, conservation resources, Canid News, and much more.

A huge thank you to Raimundo Pizarro for designing and building the new site.

📚 We’re also pleased to launch a new online submission platform for the CSG’s scientific journal, Canid Biology & Conservation. The journal is now indexed, articles receive DOIs, and manuscripts can be submitted through the new portal.

🌐 Explore the new CSG website: canids.org
📖 Submit to Canid Biology & Conservation: canidbiologyandconservation.org

And if you’d like to help support the redevelopment of canids.org, our website fundraiser is still open: https://gofund.me/6303dd9d2

We hope you enjoy exploring our new home for wild canid science and conservation!

14/10/2026

13/10/2026

🐺🦊 The latest issue of Canid News is out now!

Volume 2026(3) brings together research, observations and conservation news from across the global canid community.

In this issue:

🐺 A rare observation of Arctic wolves hunting ringed seals on sea ice
🦊 The first confirmed photographic record of a Tibetan fox in Bhutan
🐕 The first satellite tracking of Javan dholes in Indonesia
🐾 An extraordinary 4,126 km African wild dog odyssey across Zambia
🎧 The first recorded vocalisation of a wild Short-eared dog
🧬 Bridgett vonHoldt on what North American Canis can teach us about conservation in a genomics era
🦊 New research on fox ecology, Iberian wolf morphology, Local Ecological Knowledge and more
The issue also remembers the late Gus Mills, founding member of the Canid Specialist Group and former Chair of its Lycaon Working Party, in a tribute by David Macdonald.

Edited by Shlomo Preiss-Bloom, with cover design by Raimundo Pizarro.

📷 Cover image by Katha Dittombée

🔗 Read Canid News 2026(3) on our website: https://canids.org/canid-news/2026-3/

23/09/2026

Extraordinary journeys by African wild dogs

How connected are Africa’s remaining African wild dog populations?

A remarkable new Scientific Naturalist paper in Ecology provides an encouraging, but sobering, answer.

Scott Creel and colleagues documented extraordinary dispersal movements by African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) across Zambia and neighbouring countries. Individual dispersing groups travelled thousands of kilometres through national parks, game management areas and unprotected human-dominated landscapes, demonstrating an extraordinary capacity to move between distant ecosystems.

Some journeys exceeded 2,000 km, and one group travelled more than 4,000 km after leaving its natal range.

Yet the study also highlights an important distinction between movement and connectivity. Reaching another population is not enough. Dispersers must survive, encounter potential mates, successfully integrate or establish a pack, and reproduce. Wire snares, in particular, pose a serious threat once wild dogs leave well-protected areas.

As IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group Chair Claudio Sillero puts it:

“Large social canids can disperse over remarkable distances, and advances in tracking technology are revealing just how extraordinary these movements can be. This report shows that African wild dogs can connect populations across vast, human-dominated landscapes, which is encouraging for their conservation. But movement is not the same as connectivity: animals must survive the journey, encounter conspecifics and successfully reproduce. The fate of these females is a sobering reminder of the lottery of dispersal: extraordinary mobility does not necessarily translate into demographic or genetic success.”

The findings underscore both the potential for maintaining a connected African wild dog metapopulation across enormous landscapes and the importance of protecting corridors and reducing mortality outside protected areas.

📖 Creel et al. (2026), Extraordinary movements connecting distant ecosystems by African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), Ecology.

Read the open-access paper here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70504

📷 Scott Creel, Daan Smit

22/09/2026

🐾 Help us build a new home for canid conservation online!

For decades, canids.org, the official website of the IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group, has helped make knowledge about the world’s wild canids available to researchers, conservationists and the wider public.

Now, it’s time for an upgrade.

We’re developing a completely new CSG website, designed to better showcase the science, conservation work and global community behind the Specialist Group. The new website is planned to launch in October 2026.

We need your help to make it happen.

We’ve launched a dedicated GoFundMe campaign to support the redevelopment. Every contribution, large or small, will help us create a modern and accessible platform for sharing knowledge and supporting canid conservation around the world.

🔗 Please consider donating and sharing:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-rebuild-the-canid-specialist-group-website

📷 Photo credits, top to bottom, left to right:
African wolf (Canis lupaster): Y. V. Jhala | Swift fox (Vulpes velox): Lou Carbyn | Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus): Rasmus Törnqvist, Swedish Arctic Fox Project | Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis): Rebecca Jackrel, EWCP | Indian wolf (Canis lupus): Mihir Goldbole, The Grassland Trust | Pale fox (Vulpes pallida): Tim Wacher, ZSL | Crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous): Rosario Arispe | African wild dog (Lycaon pictus): gnallen, iNaturalist | Dhole (Cuon alpinus): Y. V. Jhala

31/08/2026

👻🐕 What does the Amazon’s “ghost dog” sound like? 🔊

For the first time, researchers have documented a wild short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) vocalizing in its natural habitat.

Endemic to the Amazon basin, the short-eared dog is one of South America’s rarest and least-understood carnivores. Its elusive nature has earned it the nickname “ghost dog,” and until now, its wild vocalizations had never been recorded.

On 8 May 2025, a camera trap captured an adult male in terra firme forest near the Las Piedras Biodiversity Station in southeastern Peru.

During the seven-second sequence:

🎵 The call began with a soft whine
📈 It developed into repeated, high-pitched hoots and howls that rose in pitch and volume
🌳 The animal then scent-marked a small tree before leaving the camera’s field of view

💡 What might this unusual call mean?

The authors cautiously suggest that it could be a long-distance communication call, perhaps related to mating, and that its distinctive structure may be adapted to communication in dense forest.

A single recording cannot reveal the call’s function, but it provides the first reference point for studying vocal communication in this elusive canid. The recording could also help researchers develop bioacoustic tools to detect and monitor short-eared dogs across their Amazonian range.

🔬 Research by Holly O’Donnell of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and Department of Biology, University of Oxford, and Patrick S. Ch*****ne of the University of Queensland

📹 Camera-trap footage recorded by Holly O’Donnell using equipment provided by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
🌿 Field access and logistical support provided by Junglekeepers

📄 Read the open-access paper: https://doi.org/10.47603/mano.v12n2.600

23/07/2026

⚠️ Graphic content: images of natural predation

🐺🦭 Arctic wolves… hunting seals?

Near Eureka on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic, observers witnessed something quite unusual: a pack of Arctic wolves (Canis lupus arctos) attacking, killing, and consuming an adult female ringed seal (Pusa hispida) along with her whitecoat pup.

Ringed seals do occasionally show up in the diet of Arctic wolves, either through scavenging or active hunting. Still, actually seeing wolves hunt seals like this is extremely rare.

Over the course of roughly 50 minutes:
🐺 Four wolves worked together to attack and restrain the adult seal, with a fifth joining shortly after
🕳️ They repeatedly blocked her attempts to reach a nearby breathing hole
🦭 Her pup, about 40 metres away, had already been killed
🐾 A yearling that hadn’t taken part in the attack joined in once feeding began

The wolves stayed in the area for five days, eventually consuming both carcasses before moving on.
As far as the observers know, this is the first time a sequence like this, from attack to consumption, has been documented photographically.

💡 How often do Arctic wolves hunt seals?

It’s hard to say. Encounters like this are rarely seen on the sea ice, but observations like this one highlight just how adaptable wolves can be, and offer a rare glimpse into predator–prey dynamics in the High Arctic.

📍 Eureka, Ellesmere Island, Canada
📸 Photos: Patrick Meier and Katha Dittombée

📝 Observation submitted by Katha Dittombée, Patrick Meier and Sandra Lai

View more photographs from the event in North of North: Two Lives for the Pack: https://www.mywilderness.net/north-of-north-two-lives-for-the-pack