Conservastion: Dogs with the Right Stuff
A scout from the South Luangwa Conservation Society, Godfrey Mwanza, and Steven (the black lab). Both are in training to stop ivory smuggling out of the Luangwa Valley of Zambia.
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Working Dogs for Conservation in Bozeman, Montana trains dogs to help researchers in the field.
05—One in fifteen hundred dogs that we screen has what it takes to be a conservation detection dog.
Some of the program animals are rescues. Pete Coppolillo, Executive Director, says they train the dogs to detect everything from scat, to live animals, to invertebrates, and even invasive weeds.
12—We select for high drive so that they’ll want to do it and work really hard at it. And we also select for dogs that are toy obsessed – that are really excited about a specific toy. And that’s their reward, and that’s also how we train them.
At the time we spoke, Working Dogs for Conservation had just deployed animals to Africa to help fight the illegal ivory trade. Pete told me how they used toys to train the dogs for that assignment.
22—The ivory dogs were trained by hiding ivory with their toy. So, they’ll come in and they’ll sniff around and they’ll begin to associate the scent of ivory with their toy. And as soon as they discover the toy is sitting right behind the ivory, and they get a big whiff of ivory and then they get their toy – and so they get their reward. And then, gradually we separate the toy from the ivory; they learn as soon as they find it they get their toy and their reward.
Tomorrow: some positive results of working the dogs. Learn more about these dogs at Working Dogs for Conservation.
That’s our show for today… Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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