Thirty-five years ago, Greg Rasmussen says he set out on a mission to tell people the truth about African painted dogs. It’s a mission that continues today, and this week it brought him to Missouri.
Rasmussen, the founder of the Painted Dog Conservation project in Zimbabwe, spoke to audiences at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka and the St. Louis Zoo.
During his appearance at the wolf center, he said that when he first started in the field people had so many false beliefs about painted dogs that “the only thing true about them was that they live in packs and they eat meat.”
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“When I started,” Rasmussen said, “if the dogs left the National Park for a week, they were dead,” meaning they would be killed by humans. “The general public, even wildlife societies, were against the dogs,” primarily because they were seen as a threat to livestock.
“I worked hard with the ranchers and we changed attitudes,” he said. “No dogs get shot in Zimbabwe now.” He said that African painted dogs are responsible for less than 2 percent of livestock losses.
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Away from Zimbabwe, Rasmussen said, the mission of changing hatred of the dogs into acceptance continues.
He said that less than 5,000 dogs are believed to remain in the wild in sub-Sahara Africa.
Rasmussen appeared at the Endangered Wolf Center on Monday night as part of its Speaker Series. It was his third appearance at the Center, and on Tuesday night, he spoke at the Center's volunteer meeting.
The Center has four painted dogs living there.
He spoke Thursday night at the Zoo, which will open a painted dog exhibit in 2014.
Rasmussen told the audience at the wolf center that “there’s no fighting, no aggression” among a pack of painted dogs.
“They have such a social system,” he said. “If only we as human beings could learn something from it.”