Conservation Dogs

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Conservation dogs are making a difference in conservation through their noninvasive ability to detect elusive species in the wild, flag illegal wildlife trade products, and help poachers fight wildlife crime. Whether you work with conservation dogs, you're interested in incorporating them into your work, or you just want to learn about how dogs can support and enhance conservation technology's effectiveness, you're in the right place!

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In recent decades, the use of dogs in conservation work has exploded. Deployed to detect things like invasive or elusive species, scat, poachers, illegal wildlife trade products, and much more, conservation dog teams are trained to aid teams in the field. With benefits like speedier searches over large areas, proven targeted detection accuracy, and ease of transport and surveying, conservation dogs also offer possibilities for enhancing other technological methods by confirming or providing results in real-time.

Conservation dog teams now provide scat, reptile, aquatic species, whale scat, and invasive plant detection, and plenty more. This expansion of use is partly due to refined training techniques that offer a broader capability in very specialized detection roles, and partly due to more people seeing the capabilities and benefits of trained dogs.

Specifically, the utilization of dogs in conservation has experienced a considerable increase in recent years as people realize what the capability brings to the field survey arena. The benefits of dogs offering enhanced detection to support surveys includes:

Speed of search
Covering large areas effectively
Proven detection capability
Calibrated on a variety of species, if required
Accuracy in the detection of targets and ignoring similar non-target specimens
And easy to transport to survey sites.

Whether you train, handle, use, or are interested in finding out more about conservation dogs, this is the community for you! This group is growing, so if you'd like to get started and make connections here, here are some suggestions:

Do you have advice to share with others who are interested in trying conservation dog work for the first time? Or do you need advice on whether conservation dogs suit your work?
Do you have resources or research to share on training or using conservation dogs?
Do you have a case study or project update that involves conservation dogs?
Do you have a question about how to access conservation dogs for your own work?

Your group manager is Paul Bunker. Direct message him through WILDLABS or email him here with any questions or suggestions.

Header photo: Bill, photographed by Stephanie O'Donnell

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@cassidyregan

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@msgunther1
| she, her

Micaela Szykman Gunther is a Professor in the Department of Wildlife at Cal Poly Humboldt. She applies studies on animal behavior of (mostly) carnivores and (some) ungulates to inform management of wildlife species.

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@AdventureScientists

Adventure Scientists is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Bozeman, MT that equips scientists and researchers with high-quality data collected from the outdoors that are crucial to addressing environmental challenges around the world.

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@Ben_Seleb

Georgia Institute of Technology

Grad Student

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@elliearmstrong
| she/her

I am an Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at UC Riverside. I use genomic technology to advance our understand of biodiversity and support conservation science.

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@rjharvey

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@rosalie.tribe
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Arm

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@JessieOliver

Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

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@EllieW
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@organicjo
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Program Strategist for the Conservation Dogs Collective and founder of Nose No Limit

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@jsevans
| He, Him

Senior biometrician, with the Nature Conservancy science team, attempting to bring vigor from diverse fields such as landscape ecology, spatial statistics, remote sensing and applied mathematics to answer practical conservation questions.

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@sarah_gluszek

Fauna & Flora

Senior Technical Specialist, Wildlife Trade

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Description	Activity	Groups	Updated
Research paper: Training and olfactory generalization in conservation detection dogs for an endangered stonefly species	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aqc.3531#aqc3531-bib-0028	Conservation Dogs	4 years 6 months ago
Invitation to join the FIT community on WildLabs	Hello Conservation Dogs group members WildTrack (wildtrack.org) has just joined WildLabs and we have a new community forum FIT (...	Conservation Dogs	5 years 3 months ago
List of grant opportunities for conservation dogs	Hi Yvan, My name is Jennifer Hartman and I work with Rogue Detection Teams, a program that works with and instructs conservation detection dog teams. Did you ever receive enough...	Conservation Dogs	5 years 7 months ago
Reptile Detector Dogs	Hi Steph and all, I don't work with detector dogs directly but colleagues of mine in the Pedernales province of the Dominican Republic have used a dog to locate iguana...	Conservation Dogs	7 years 2 months ago
Detection dogs used for border control	Hi Megan That sounds great, thank you! I will message you. Best Katrin	Conservation Dogs	7 years 3 months ago
Seminar: The power of non-invasive approaches to conservation science, Wednesday 1 November, 5pm (Cambridge)	The next Cambridge conservation seminar, on Wednesday 1 November, will feature Dr Sam Wasser, from the University of...	Conservation Dogs	7 years 9 months ago
Assessment of Detection and Tracking Dog Programs in Africa	Thanks!	Conservation Dogs	9 years 3 months ago

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