On the 14th May the Naturally Native team gathered at the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust Margrove Centre and were treated to a delightful talk and display from Conservation K9 Consultancy.
Louise Wilson, the founder of Conservation K9 Consultancy, shared with us her experiences of her life time history of working with dogs, demonstrating how effective they can be in conservation. Louise also told us how people would only find up to 15% of animal signs but dogs may detect up to 96%, which is definitely impressive! She also told us about how she has trained dogs to work in all types of conservation, from detecting cadavers in South Africa, to showing animal presence in the UK. We also learnt what temperaments Louise looks for in her dogs, with full obedience not being the best trade a dog could have for working, she looks for keen, enthusiastic dogs who need no encouragement!
After some refreshments, we got to meet the star of the show, Hettie, the detection dog! She is a cocker spaniel and trained to identify otter and water vole. We all walked down to the burn at the Margrove Heritage Centre and Hettie was eager to start to the point of telling us we were taking too long! But once she got into the burn she started inspecting the banks and surroundings, with her nose sniffing frantically, she identified potential otter, but confirmed our suspicions that water voles were not present in this stretch of the burn.
We then moved onto the next site, the infamous, water-vole laden Ormesby Beck in Middleborough. We decided to walk away from the water vole hot spots to determine where the water voles began. Hettie started finding signs when we got out of the trees and there was a notable change in the habitat. When Hettie started finding burrows she alerted us by yipping and backing away from point of scent.
This was a fabulous display of how detector dogs can be useful in conservation and inspired us all with the possibility of using dogs to detect mink and water vole presence in the future!
