For International Dog Day, a celebration about the use of 4-legged friends in conservation…..

Case study #1

Department of Conservation in New Zealand

Well trained dog-handler teams have successfully been used for conservation for more than 40 years. New Zealand was the first country to use dogs to benefit conservation as far back as the 1890s.

Today, conservation dogs are used all over New Zealand, for example:

protecting the Hauraki Gulf and other pest-free islands from introduced pests
helping monitor kiwi and whio/blue duck on the West Coast.
The dog-handler teams are trained to sniff out either:

protected species (mainly birds) for survey, to be monitored and/or moved to another place, or
pest species (eg rodents, mustelids, Argentine ants, weeds) that would destroy our native wildlife in pest-free areas.
Certain dog breeds are more suited for this work – indicators (setters and pointers) are often used to find protected species, while terriers are usually used to find pests. Dogs can pose a serious risk to protected species if they are not trained and handled correctly.

Kiwibank Partnership

From 2016 to 2022, Kiwibank joined forces with DOC to support the Conservation Dogs Programme. In its first year, the partnership funded two full-time dog-handlers and an advocacy programme.

“The dog-handler teams are trained to sniff out either: protected species (mainly birds) for survey, to be monitored and/or moved to another place, or. pest species (eg rodents, mustelids, Argentine ants, weeds) that would destroy our native wildlife in pest-free areas.”

(source: https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/conservation-dog-programme/)