Merging my background in both dog training and conservation biology led me to becoming a Conservation Detection Dog handler. Skid, my Border Collie, is trained to detect various odours to assist researchers.

Conservation Detection Dogs are dogs trained to detect data by using their superb sense of smell. These data vary considerably but include collision mortalities at wind farms, scat, invasive species, plant disease, rare and cryptic species and even bird nests.

Why chose to include a Conservation Detection Dog in your team?

Having a well trained dog on your survey team can help boost sample sizes, as well as often yielding surprising results.

Using olfaction dogs have much greater search efficiency and efficacy in the field. This means that dogs are generally better able at locating cryptic samples such as very well camouflaged species, species that occur under the ground or in vegetation that makes a visual search challenging.

The unbiased search strategy of dogs too can lend itself to useful and novel research outcomes: finding signs of species in locations considered unlikely.

I am part of the Conservation Dog Alliance, a global network of Conservation Detection Dog handlers.

Are you working on a project that you think might benefit from having Skid and I on your team? Get in touch!