Ecologists on infrastructure projects have some new team members: Conservation dogs. 

Their superior olfactory systems mean that they can sniff out a plethora of protected species from great crested newts and water voles, to bats and birds. Critically these canine detectives can do this more quickly, accurately and safely than humans. Thanks to pioneering work by consultant Atkins, the use of conservation dogs is increasing and infrastructure owners are seeing the benefits.

“So straight away, Willow is off, she’s not messing around. She’s searching specifically for either bat or bird carcasses,” says Aran Clyne. Aran is one of the UK’s leading conservation dog trainers and handlers. Aran is describing the work that Rachael Flavell of Paws for Conservation is currently carrying out with her 7 year old springer spaniel Willow in a field in North Wales. “When she’s on top of the carcass, that’s when you see the indication. So it’s non invasive, so she doesn’t lick it. She doesn’t touch it. She just gives an indication. So Rachael will know that there’s a carcass there.”

Amazing dogs

Aran has trained and handled a whole range of detection dogs but mainly focusing on conservation detection dogs detecting bat carcasses, bird carcasses, Pine Martin scats and Great Crested Newts. Bat and bird searches have become an important part of wind farm maintenance as many planning agreements require operators to conduct a mortality search. This is basically checking to see whether the operational turbines are causing harm to bats and birds, and if they are then the use of particular turbines can be curtailed, for example turned off at night.

Willow works in a figure of eight in front of Rachael, and Rachael will walk transect, like a square or rectangle, in five metre wide transacts. Willow will do a figure of eight in front of Rachael, and she will pause or she will change direction when she’s trying to figure out where the carcass is. On finding the bat, bird, or whatever particular species the dog is looking for, it will indicate to its handler that the scent has been located.

“You can just see there that Willow is indicating,” says Aran. The indication is really important because not only does it need to tell the handler that the mission accomplished, but it also needs to be non-invasive and not disturb or harm the animal that the dog is looking for. “Willow is sitting, pointing with her nose at a spot in the ground. So Rachael will wander up, she will check that Willow was correct, which she is. So when she’s looking at the bat, Rachael will then feed her a ball. So the ball is the dog’s reward.”

Traditional ecologists

The usual method for finding protected species is by human search teams but this is not easy. “If you send me out to a wind farm to look for bat and bird carcasses, and I probably come back and haven’t found any, as it will be very difficult to spot. Whereas if you turn a dog into that situation, it gets its nose to the ground and it will just take itself toward towards the carcasses,” saysLuke Gorman, he is an associate director in Atkins ecology practice who, like Aran is a member of the “Ecology Detection Dogs in Britain and Ireland” working group. “I’m very involved with detection dogs. I’ve been involved for the last few years training them up and trialling them on various species, mainly great crested newts. And going forward, we’ll be trying other species as well, such as hazel door mice, water vole, and some other, more cryptic species are difficult to find,”

Luke isn’t only an expert on ecology and conservation dogs, he knows all about infrastructure too and says that this is where dogs can really be a huge advantage in finding species. “So for example, you could have great crested newts using infrastructure and the rail environment such as track and ballast as refuge or you could have a bat utilising a highway as motorway bridge as a roost.”

Legal protection

Protecting them is not just the right thing to do. It is also a legal requirement under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations of 2017. There is also the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 and between them these pieces of legislation enforce the requirement to protect certain species, a list that contains mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, insects and plants. The list is only expected to grow as biodiversity loss becomes a higher priority for government. “If you don’t check for your species, and you do encounter them on your scheme, and you either kill, injure or disturb the habitat, depending on what the legislation is, you could get an unlimited fine, and you could get up to six months in prison,” says Luke.

Luke explains that Atkins first began using conservation dogs back in 2014 for windfarm searches, which Willow and Rachael demonstrated, but in 2017 he began working on widening the application of detection dogs. It was long term, detailed, challenging work and focussed on finding great crested newts. To do this Atkins paired up with Aran who at the time worked for Wagtail UK.“We wanted to find a way to prove that dogs could definitely do it,” says Aran. “ So we had two phases of the testing.”

Phase one was called odour ID when the dog has to locate the newt scent from one in eight tins. “The dogs have to locate the tin every single time,” says Aran. “And we also did what’s called discrimination training. So we had other amphibious species in the tins as well, so toads, frogs, palmate newts, and other amphibious species that the dogs have to ignore, and only find a great crested newt.”

World first?

Phase two was then the field searches where the ecologists hid the newts for the dog, a cocker spaniel called Rocky, to find. “He was good. And he passed all the tests,” says Luke “We eventually had him as a first scientifically proven great crested dog in the UK. In fact, I think it was probably in the world, well certainly the UK.”

Great crested newts are the largest native newt species in the UK growing up to 17cm long,

They play an important role in the ecosystem from improving soil quality to eating insects that have the potential to infect livestock with disease. But despite existing for approximately 40 million years, their numbers rapidly declined over the past century thanks to accelerating development destroying their habitats. This led to the introduction of both European and UK law to protect them. Detecting them is critical for both new projects and the maintenance of existing infrastructure, but finding them is difficult. “This year, in particular, we’ve used great crested new detection dogs a lot, especially on rail schemes, and on a couple of highway schemes,” says Luke.

One of the advantages is that by sniffing out the newts, ecologists don’t need to use huge amounts of plastic fencing to trap, relocate and exclude newts. Just as importantly the search is no longer time sensitive. Historically, you’d have to wait for the survey window to open which is March to June to carry out surveys. With dogs it can happen any time. “So in this way, we don’t have to wait for the survey window, we can pretty much instantly check if great crested newts are on your site or not. And if not, you can basically crack on with your work.”

How deep can dogs sniff?

Police have been using cadaver dogs for decades and trainers say that they can detect a dead body in 2m of concrete. So how deep in the ground can a dog detect a great crested newt? No-one knows for sure – yet. But Nikki Glover at Wessex Water is determined to find out. Nikki is an ecologist and a dog handler. Four years ago she began working with Louise Wilson of Conservation K9 Consultancy to train her springer spaniel Freya to detect great crested newts. Training Freya wasn’t enough for Nikki. She wanted to do some research too.

“I’m at the University of Salford. So I’m doing a Master’s by research at the moment with Dr. Robert Young. And he’s like this amphibian legend,”

Nikki is not exaggerating. Dr Young is a professor of animal behaviour and conservation and has published more than 100 papers on 50 species. For the past year they have done what Nikki calls discrimination studies which is detection in plastic pipe at a variety of lengths, where they found that Freya could sniff out a newt at 2m. The next step is to test in a variety of soils. This is important because the radio tracking of newts carried out at the University of Salford shows that the newts will sometimes hide in animal burrows.

In addition the research, which Nikki is hoping to turn into a PhD, will also create a scientific comparison between human visual location and dogs scent work so that the anecdotal evidence being reported on projects can be quantified. “So we’re just trying to see also of like vegetation density as well. So trying to see whether Freya is more effective when the vegetation is cut shorter in comparison to when the grass is quite long. And we’re putting her up against a hand searcher. So he’ll be looking through the grass using his eyes with Freya using her olfaction to find the newts as well.”

Speed is everything

Louise Wilson, who trained Freya and Nikki also has ten dogs of her own at Conservation K9 Consultancy. Years of experience has taught her just how much faster dogs are than people. “Years ago, when I was training dogs or search vehicles, whether it was explosives or drugs, we used to say that one dog who can search that vehicle in, say, five minutes, was doing the same job as what it would take six people 45 minutes.”

That is basically a 4 hour 25 minute, time saving. No similar research has been done yet for conservation where there are also other benefits. “But the dog covers a larger area, he carries that larger area in less time. And a dog can also be used out of normal monitoring season as well.”

Not only that, but dogs are also better at finding things thanks to their incredible olfactory systems. “Over 50% of their brain is dedicated olfaction, they’ve got over like 300 million scent receptors, we’ve got 5 million scent receptors. They’ve also got a better concentration span than us (as long as you pick the right dog) they can concentrate for much longer than we can.”

Louise also explains that it is non-biased as dogs don’t have preconceived ideas about where the newts might be. It’s non-invasive, it can be used out of normal monitoring season, it has less environmental impact on the area of search. Louise is so keen to prevent any habitat destruction, and to keep her dogs fit and well, that she has taught one dog, Hettie, to do her scent work in a very unique way. This was on another job for Atkins where the team had struggled to gain access to the survey site with human ecologists.

Paddleboards ready

Luke explains that this job was the first time that Atkins had used water vole detection dogs, and everyone was very eager to use them, but there were some limitations to that survey. “There were areas where we couldn’t get to, there were some areas where there’s a health and safety risk, because the water was too deep, the banks were too steep. And the vegetation was actually so dense that it was difficult to look for evidence. So we had to come up with a new approach.”

It was time to call in the dogs. Louise Wilson had a water vole specialist detection dog called Hettie. Not only was cocker spaniel Hettie a conservation expert, she is a paddleboarder, with webbed feet. “A paddleboard is a nice kind of platform for her to work from. So she’s safe. She’s not necessarily wading in the water for no apparent reason she’s not having to use up all her energy just swimming around,” says Louise. “I am literally her chauffeur taking her to different areas of the embankment, and then Hetty begins to search the embankment. So sometimes they’re very, very steep. And that’s what’s beautiful about it, she can cover that area at one point, she put her hind legs on the paddleboard and reached really far up. So she is covering a nice section of that area. Then she indicates to me if she comes across a burrow or a latrine, or any small evidence of water vole,” she explains.

After that Louise carries out the administrative work using GPS to locate it as well as photograph it, measure it, and keep Hetty occupied. Data collection is clearly a critical part of the process of detecting protected species.

As more and more countries seek to protect their biodiversity, the demand for conservation dogs is rising. “They are just saving so much time, they are more sustainable, more effective, and more cost effective. We’ve used them more this year than we’ve ever used before our clients want to use them again and again,” says Luke.

Rising demand means lots more opportunities for companies that train dogs to do this kind of work. Sadly not all of them treat their dogs well or have put in the years of training that Louise, Aran, Nikki and Rachael have. This is something that the Ecology Detection Dogs in Britain and Ireland working group is working on.”So at the moment, in that working group, we’re really focusing on an accreditation scheme, which makes sure that people will eventually be fully accredited, they’ll be tested, the dogs and the handler will be competent in that area and that species that they want to use a dog to detect,” says Luke.

What is important is that thanks to the work of companies like Atkins the use of conservation dogs is not only protecting important species but it is saving time and money for infrastructure owners. Rachael from Paws for Conservation says that for the dogs, many of whom are rescue dogs, it is a dream job. “Dogs are designed that they see things, they see the world through their nose, not through their eyes. So we use that to an advantage. And all they want to do is they want to please, they want to work, they want to be active, to go out and play and they get to do all of that within the detection world.”

Supporter: Atkins