In New Zealand, Shaka is about to make history as Northland Regional Council's first Certified Possum Detection Dog — a very important job in the work of conservation, reported The Northland Age.
Shaka has already undergone about 1.5 years of training with the Department of Conservation's Conservation Dogs Programme. An almost two-year-old Hungarian Vizsla and German short-haired pointer mix, he's on track to be a certified pest-detection dog specializing in possums.
Not every dog is capable of the task. Many canines and their sensitive noses are easily distracted by other animals, including birds, and the area Shaka is intended to survey has a high population of kiwi — an at-risk species.
If Shaka is able to complete the training successfully, he and his handler-trainer, Gaelyn Dewhurst, will become the council's first certified dog handler team. Shaka would be one of only a few Certified Possum Detection Dogs in the entire country.
In the 1890s, New Zealand became the first country in the world to incorporate dogs in conservation work, according to the report.
In the 1990s, Northlander Scott Theobald became the first person to use conservation dogs to search for pest species, coordinating a project to track stoat activity in Trounson Kauri Park.
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Following in the footsteps of those dogs, Shaka will sniff out possums while Dewhurst marks a GPS field map with a dog symbol at each spot indicated by Shaka that has one of the pests.
Dewhurst will indicate if the area is either low, medium, or high. If the area is high — for example, if Shaka indicates a possum up a tree — Dewhurst will leave a trap to catch the animal.
"Shaka is bred to use his nose and is already showing he knows what he's doing, so his training moving forward will be to refine that and for me to learn to read him and work on shaping his natural indication and pointing behavior," Dewhurst told the Age.
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Because Shaka's breed is nonaggressive, his natural inclination will be to stop and point his head in the direction of a possum instead of chasing it down. This is just one of the reasons Shaka is the right dog for the job.
Conservation efforts to save at-risk animals are critical for the health of ecosystems and the safety of our planet for future generations.
"Where uncontrolled, domestic dogs pose a risk to ground-dwelling wildlife such as kiwi; correctly trained and professionally handled dogs like Shaka can be a highly valuable and specialized conservation asset," Dewhurst said, per the Age.
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