Canine Conversations

In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla is back for part two with Kyoko Johnson from Conservation Dog Hawaii and Jennifer Hartman from Rogue Detection Teams to continue their talk about things to know before hiring a conservation detection dog team. This week’s science highlight: How Behavior of Nontarget Species Affects Perceived Accuracy of Scat Detection Dog Surveys. Covered in this episode: What hazards might the dog-handler team be facing in the field? How can these be mitigated or avoided? What levels or types of risk are unacceptable? How does the use of CDDs compare to other methods in its level of acceptability to the local community, esp. Indigenous cultures? Where are samples going to be sent/analyzed? What ancillary data, in addition to detections, should be collected by the handler (e.g., time, weather conditions, related field samples of vegetation or soil)? Can the dog teams access the study area to train and/or do risk assessments prior to project start? Is there funding secur