Contacts:
Ron Kalb, DRI Director of Public Information ron.kalb@dri.edu, Las Vegas (702) 862-5420 (office)
Heather Emmons, DRI PIO, heather.emmons@dri.edu, Reno (775) 673-7313
All DRI News Releases available at: http://news.dri.edu/
December 9, 2004
Man's best friend proves useful in detecting threatened wildlife
| |
|
| Handler Alice Whitelaw and German shepherd "Camas" demonstrate that dogs can find tortoises safely and reliably. Camas has picked up the scent of the tortoise in the air and is about to indicate this fact to her handler by doing her trained alert. | L to R: dog handler Aimee Hurt and "Fin," researchers Jill S. Heaton and Mary Cablk, dog handler Alice Whitelaw and "Camas" pose for a group shot. |
Las Vegas & Reno, Nev. — While drug-seeking and bomb-detecting dogs get a lot of headlines these days, Desert Research Institute has discovered a novel, new job for man's best friend — sniffing out threatened wildlife.
New research by Dr. Mary Cablk, DRI assistant research professor and colleague Dr. Jill S. Heaton at the University of Nevada Reno, reveals dogs are better than 90 percent accurate at finding desert tortoises. In fact, they demonstrated that dogs can locate tortoises at distances of more than 200 feet away, well beyond human capabilities.
This is good news for the U.S. Army National Training Center at Fort Irwin, near Barstow, Calif. The Army is looking to expand its training center by some 120,000 acres and needs to protect the desert tortoise, a threatened species native to the Mojave Desert.
Cablk and Heaton’s research, a collaboration with tortoise biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey, academia and the private sector, includes locating, moving, researching and ultimately protecting the terrestrial turtles. With such a large expanse of land to survey, it would take humans a long time to track and remove the thousands of tortoises estimated to need relocating to other protected areas nearby. Add to that the fact that humans have a limited success rate at finding tortoises — only 30 to 60 percent for two size and age classes of tortoises.
Using remote sensing technology and knowledge of landscape ecology, Cablk joined forces with the Redlands Institute, of the University of Redlands (Calif.); the U.S. Army Research Office; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Bureau of Land Management Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, located outside Las Vegas, to determine if certain wildlife detection dogs could be trained and relied upon to locate and correctly identify desert tortoises under controlled but relatively natural conditions.
Not only did the dogs prove themselves reliable and effective, but Cablk’s research also demonstrated that local environmental conditions were not a factor in how far the dogs could detect tortoises — finding that belies conventional wisdom about "ideal" scent conditions. The dogs found male and female tortoises of all sizes and age classes.
Rigorous training was key to the project's success, according to Cablk. "You wouldn't want just any dog checking an airplane you were getting on instead of a trained bomb dog," she said. "We employed the same rigor in researching appropriate wildlife detection dog teams as law enforcement does with bomb, arson and narcotics dogs."
Cablk said finding more tortoises will yield valuable information. "With this data we can make better estimates about population numbers and structure as well as be able to move more tortoises out of harm’s way once the Army expansion is implemented," Cablk said about why improved survey tools are being explored. "This is a unique opportunity to advance significantly our understanding of the desert tortoise in a very short time based on what we expect will be a great deal of new data. We hope the results will assist managers in reversing the negative trend in tortoise populations."
A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national and international scale. Nearly 450 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than 85 percent of DRI's annual $37 million operating budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.
Additional background:
Detection Dogs: Cablk brought in professional dog handlers who specialize in detection disciplines. Her team of handlers began the initial training in their native Montana, which involved introducing their dogs to tortoise scent. The transition to live tortoises was done on site at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in the Mojave Desert where tortoises live.
Tortoises: Cablk and Heaton were able to use research tortoises at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center for the study. All work was done with a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In each trial, a known number of tortoises were tethered at spatially random locations to prevent them from moving from their known location during the trial. Hundreds of dog-tortoise interactions were carefully logged using an extensive relational database designed to record and maintain spatial and statistical data.
The Study: The dogs and their handlers were fitted with GPS units to record their exact locations in one-second intervals. Each time a dog found and communicated that it had found a tortoise, the event was recorded. During the trials, environmental conditions at dog nose height were recorded using specially designed meteorological stations to determine if there were identifiable trends in environmental conditions, such as wind speed, wind direction, air temperature and relative humidity that correlated with detection distances.
-END -