Dogs trained to sniff out endangered animals
Published: July 26, 2006
Drugs, bombs and even criminals are found with the help of man’s best friend. Now conservationists are using dogs to find endangered animals and threatened plants.
In Nevada, dogs have helped find the endangered desert tortoise. And in the Atlantic Ocean a dog perched in the bow of a boat has helped find the feces of the endangered and elusive North Atlantic right whale.
A researcher hopes finding the whales will explain why only 350 are left in the world.
Closer to home, near the city of Wren in the Willamette Valley, a Belgian sheepdog named Chilko is helping researchers find the state’s rare Western pond turtle on private land along the Mary’s River.
Conservation biologist Dave Vesely trained Chilko with positive reinforcement, teaching the dog to identify a turtle and then detect water from a turtle’s aquarium out in a field.
Little by little, Chilko has become expert at tracking turtles.
Biologist Josh Cerra said Vesely is on to something.
“These dogs have a high ability to find the needle in the haystack,” he said. “When we are working with limited funds, this is a potential solution. It’s a new era in survey work.”
After turtle-nesting season, Chilko and another of Vesely’s dogs will be trained to find the rare prairie plant Kincaid’s lupine, the food of the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly.
The dogs will help the Nature Conservancy’s search for plants in the hills around Coburg, Ore.
Dogs like Chilko also are being used for simple wildlife surveys.
Packleader Dog Training, in Gig Harbor, trains high-energy dogs rescued at the Humane Society to find the scat of everything from bats and bears to cougars and lynx.
Owner Barbara Davenport said her company rescues dogs that wouldn’t normally find homes.
“They are unadoptable to the general public — they are such high drive, they are annoying to live with,” she said.
But it turns out they are perfect as search dogs.
Davenport leases her dogs to researchers for at least $1,500 a month. She also trains the researcher to handle the dog and read its signals — at about $1,500 per week for at least two weeks.
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