Southern Ground-Hornbill Project

Zaagkuilsdrift Bird Sanctuary and Lodge is part of  the  Southern Ground-Hornbill Breeding Programme. Our facility was  chosen for captive breeding to help build a conservation insurance population with adequate genetic diversity. The enclosures were specifically designed for the long-term housing of Ground-Hornbills.

African Wild Dog Project

The decline of the African wild dog populations is ongoing, due to habitat fragmentation, human persecution, and disease outbreaks. Zaagkuilsdrift has obtained a pair of African Wild dogs as part of a breeding programme.
The African wild dog is a highly social animal, living in packs with separate dominance hierarchies for males and females. Uniquely among social carnivores, it is the females rather than the males that scatter from the natal pack once sexually mature, and the young are allowed to feed first on carcasses. The species is a specialised diurnal hunter of antelopes, which it catches by chasing them to exhaustion. Like other canids, it regurgitates food for its young, but this action is also extended to adults, to the point of being the bedrock of African wild dog social life. It has few natural predators, though lions are a major source of mortality, and spotted hyenas are frequent kleptoparasites.