Dhole Influx

 

December is definitely dhole month as we continued to get an influx of dhole and even jackal photos. This is exciting because jackals have not been verified in the sanctuary for years.  My monthly goal was to place 4 GPS collars on domestic dogs.  This was not met due to a number of unforeseen problems including weeks of downed cell-phone communications in the area, a collar manufacturer sending me an incorrect data download cable, conflicts with software and drivers, and problems with battery life and programming schedules.  I did manage to put out two collars a week ago and I will follow-up with the dogs and download data at the end of this week.

At the end of November, my initial research permit of 2 years expired and we applied for an extension (which was supposed to take less than 1 month).  It is nearing the two month waiting period for my research project extension.  This has to be approved by the Thailand Department of National Parks (DNP) and passed on to the National Research Council of Thailand who then writes me a letter to enable me to apply for a research visa.  Therefore, I cannot get a research visa until my permit extension is granted and I am told this will be an indeterminate amount of time.  Because of recent changes in the DNP staff it does not look like I will have approval before my current tourist visa expires on January 14th.  I cannot enter the country again on a tourist visa because I have used up the maximum of concurrent visas of this type.  It appears it will be most useful for me to return to the US on the 14th of January and work at the Smithsonian’s GIS lab.  

I am currently scrambling to make a new plan that will allow me to finish my dissertation.  This may involve returning to Thailand this fall for further data collection.  I would still like to track movements of domestic dogs as part of the disease aspect of my project and we don’t have the full results from the blood analysis disease tests yet either.  I currently have 13 cameras out in the forest.  We were using the cameras to keep track of our focal dhole pack for future trapping.  Dhole collaring is now out of the time frame for my dissertation, but I would still like to pursue this as part of the overall project.  I am working on a plan to pull all these cameras or work with my assistant to keep up some data collection while I am away.  I also need to rapidly figure out how to store my supplies and personal belongings.