No, they’re not canine masters of jazzy nonsense, crooning in the moonlight. They’re the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology detection dogs Shrek and Max, who’ve been trained to sniff out northern spotted owl pellets (the undigested stuff they hack up after a meal) at the bases of trees (and thusly find the owls).
Hey, works better than humans hooting for them, explains Lawrence LeBlond, writing on redOrbit.com about the UW research, which recently was published in the science journal PLoS ONE. The research, conducted on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, compared the use of vocalizations to find owls to the use of the specially trained dogs. Notes LeBlond, though land managers and biologists have been hooting for spotted owls since the 1980s, “detection dogs have a much better track record at finding the species” — especially now, as barred owls increasingly encroach upon spotted owl habitat and affect their behavior:
Experts are concerned that spotted owls may be timid about responding to vocalizations for instinctual fear that they are opening themselves up to attack if they do. … The experts said the detection dogs improved the probability of finding the owls by 30 percent over the traditional vocalization methods.
The UW’s dog-detectives website profiles many of its highly trained smartymutts. Max, it reveals, is a 7-year-old Australian cattle dog adopted from the Everett Animal Shelter in Washington in September 2007. Besides the Northern spotted owl, Max can sniff out wolverine, barred owl, grizzly bear, black bear, American pine marten, tiger and leopard.
Holy cow.
This article appears in Occupy Broadband.
I did a really interesting interview for the EcoNews Report on KHSU with Sam Wasser and Lisa Hayward of the Center for Conservation Biology on their NSO research in the Shasta-Trinity NF that aired March 24 of 2011. If anyone would like an mp3 copy I’d be happy to forward to them; you can reach me through Friends of the Eel River at 707/822-3342.
At least as important as the use of dogs to find owls – far more effective than even the best human surveyors, as Heidi notes – is the CCR’s work with trace hormones in scat to evaluate critters’ stress levels. Hayward was able to show startlingly high levels of stress response to what one might’ve expected to be relatively minor intrusions in owl habitat by motorized vehicles, particularly OHVs.
As well, Sarah Potter, who interned with EPIC for a couple of summers, is now working with the CCR in Puget Sound, running around on motorboats with dogs trained to sniff out orca poop. Amazing work.
Thanks for the great article! I love these dogs (Max is my best buddy actually). To learn more about some of our other dogs, go to: http://conservationbiology.net/ or to https://www.facebook.com/ConservationCanines to see photos from projects from around the globe 🙂