Dogs make sense for conservation

By Vanessa Parker

Dogs are trained for a variety of jobs including detecting drugs, contraband, exotic foods and plants but, have you heard about conservation dogs; they exist and coming to Moorabool.

A family friendly Conservation Dogs Workshop will be held at Mt Wallace in June, and it’s free.

These canines have highly sensitive noses that can sniff out everything from invasive weeds to wildlife detection.

Hosted by Moorabool Catchment Landcare Group, coordinator Jackson Cass said the dogs are very important for the conservation of not only plants, but endangered and near extinct species.

“I would say as threatened species continue to decline, the use of new innovative approaches including dogs, drones and AI are very important in stopping the decline of threatened species and ultimately improving their conservation status.”

The workshop will be delivered by Fiona Jackson from Skylos Ecology, who work with detection dogs to provide adaptive detection solutions for environmental projects spanning the agriculture, biosecurity, conservation and renewable energy sectors across Australia.

“Conservation dogs can sniff out target scents that are naked to the human eye, underground, in plants or even under water,” Mr Cass said.

“Skylos Ecology utilises this incredibly accurate and sensitive instrument to collect data for environmentally based projects.”

Mr Cass said the event will begin at 10am and run for roughly an hour and a half with afternoon tea provided.

“I encourage anyone that is interested to register for this free family friendly event now to secure your spot and learn more about conservation dogs.”

There are currently five working dogs ‘on the books’ with Skylos Ecology, Jimmy, Rexy, Sonny, Raasay and Oakley. Their abilities have a wide range of skills including working on threatened species re-introduction projects, fox management projects, wild dog monitoring projects, as well as his regular wind farm surveying.

Their target scents vary for each dog and overall include, fox scat, dens and scavenge sites; wild dog scat and scavenge sites; bird and bat carcasses (wind farm); tiger quoll; alligator weed; invasive grass; Powerful Owl; Kowari; feral cat scat; and koala.

Mr Cass said Skylos Ecology and their dogs are able to be hired by landholders.

“… if the project is appropriate, they can be contacted through their website https://www.skylosecology.com/”.

The Conservation Dogs Workshop will be held on Saturday 24 June from 10am – 12pm at the Mt Wallace Hall. This is a free event and to register your attendance, got to the events.humanitix.com website and search ‘conservation-dogs-workshop’.