The dog squad sniffing out the critically endangered Baw Baw frog

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Flaviemys purvisi

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By Rachel Carbonell, National Regional Reporting Team
June 9, 2018.

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PHOTO: Conservation dog Rubble has been training at Cape Otway. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


Rubble is a seven-year-old border collie — a classic working dog.

But the pooch has never herded a single sheep.

No offence to livestock, but Rubble has always had a higher calling — first as a search-and-rescue dog, and now as a conservation detection dog.

Rubble and brother Uda are employed to sniff out some of Australia's most elusive and endangered native animals.

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PHOTO: Luke Edwards and his partner also trained Rubble's brother, Uda. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


Owner and trainer Luke Edwards says the dogs are both perfect for the job.

"We know that border collies are really good at both searching and stamina," he said.

"That's what we're after for working dogs — their stamina both mentally and physically. Border collies are well known for that."

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PHOTO: Conservation detection dog trainers Luke Edwards, Tracy Edwards and Fiona Jackson. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


Mr Edwards and his partner Tracy Edwards run Canidae Development, an organisation that selects and trains dogs to search for animals.

"We sort of live a bit differently than most people with working dogs," Mr Edwards said.

"We've got five dogs … and they're all inside dogs with us. First and foremost they are working dogs but we live as a unit, as a pack.

"We spend a lot of time out in the field together, we spend a lot of time working away from home together … we've got a pretty close relationship."

The dogs have worked looking for koala and tiger quoll scat, as well as dead birds and bats as part of windfarm mortality surveys.

But last year, Rubble and Uda received their most difficult assignment yet.

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PHOTO: Finding the endangered Baw Baw frog is one of the toughest assignments for specially trained conservation dogs. (Supplied: Rick Hammond, Zoos Victoria)


The dogs were called upon by Zoos Victoria to help sniff out one of the country's most critically endangered species — the Baw Baw frog.

Elusive frog 'incredibly difficult' to find
The small brown frog lives only on the Mount Baw Baw Plateau in eastern Victoria.

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PHOTO: Baw Baw frogs tend to live underground in remote, mountainous and often snowy conditions. (Supplied: Rick Hammond, Zoos Victoria)


Like a number of other amphibian species, the Baw Baw frog has been hit hard by the introduction of the deadly chytrid fungus.

It is estimated that there are less than 1,200 Baw Baw frogs left in the wild. At the rate they are going, they are likely to be extinct in the wild within a decade.

Zoos Victoria amphibian specialist Deon Gilbert says up until now, the only way to find the elusive frog was to listen for their calls — but that can be very tricky.

"This species is incredibly difficult to detect in the wild," he said.

"They live predominantly underground … the males only call for about five or six weeks of the year, so that restricts our opportunities to actually locate the species."

Knowing where the frogs are is critical to Zoos Victoria's captive breeding program.

Dogs are often used to detect the presence of animals that live above ground. They've been used in northern Australia to detect cane toads.

But Mr Gilbert says using dogs to find a native amphibian species that lives underground is as rare as the Baw Baw frogs themselves.

"Dogs are very, very rarely used for amphibians. There's only a couple of examples worldwide that have utilised dogs and it's certainly a first for Australia," he said.

The first challenge is training the dogs.

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PHOTO: Rubble sniffing the scent board in search of a Baw Baw frog smell. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


To start with, the dogs are trained to locate the smell of a frog swab on a 'scent board'.

When they recognise the smell, the dogs drop and indicate with their nose. They are then rewarded with a treat.

After that the dogs are given limited and strictly controlled training with real frogs from the captive breeding program.

Ms Edwards says there is no actual interaction between the dogs and the frogs.

"As soon as they find that smell and do that drop they look to us," she said. "So they're not actually looking to the animal for the reward, they're looking back to us for the reward."

Unforgiving Mount Baw Baw 'hard area to search'
Finally, it's time to go up the mountain. And that's where the challenges really begin.

It's remote wild terrain. Mr Edwards says it's hard on everyone, including the dogs.

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PHOTO: Uda and Rubble had to brave the snow at Mount Baw Baw. (Supplied: Luke Edwards, Zoos Victoria)


"The first time we took the dogs up there we actually had about two inches of snow one night.

"It's the first time that the dogs have worked in the snow."


Simply reaching the frog's habitat is a major achievement.

"Going out to the sites in Mount Baw Baw is probably one of the hardest areas I've had to search," he said.

"Just to get out to the site we're trekking through alpine forest … it took us maybe 45 minutes to an hour just to arrive on site."

Then the dogs had to catch a scent of the frogs, which can live in burrows up to a metre underground.

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PHOTO: Luke Edwards and Uda on the trail of a scent. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


But the dish-lickers were not about to be licked. Both dogs found several frogs.

"The dogs were able to locate the exact site where the frogs were calling from much much quicker than we were able to do just by using ears," Mr Gilbert says.

Mr Edwards says it was exciting for everyone involved.

"I think the biggest surprise, particularly with Rubble there was … as he stuck his nose into a crevice the frog actually called," he says.

"And he's [like] ooh here's a frog there and that was one that no-one knew that was in that particular location so it was really cool."

Dogs crucial in conservation effort
The frog dogs not only have the potential to locate Baw Baw Frog populations, but also to help when it comes time to release captive bred frogs back into the wild.

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PHOTO: The dogs are also being used to detect frogs released at Mount Baw Baw. (Supplied: Luke Edwards)


Mr Gilbert says the frogs take years to mature, and are not likely to start calling for five or six years … meaning scientists have a long wait to find out if they've survived.

"We have a huge dark period or dark window where we don't know if those strategies we've put in place were successful or not," he says.

"So we're hoping to be able to use the dogs to indicate just presence or absence within that time period.

"If we release the frogs year after year we can use the dogs to just say 'Yep, they're there, they're alive' or 'No they're not there, do we change our strategy and look for another option?'.''


Research assistant with Zoos Victoria's wildlife conservation and science unit, Chris Hartnett, says the detection dog pilot is a success.

"We set up a challenge for those dogs to find a species that burrows in mud. It's brown, it's small, very cryptic, and the dogs actually detected Baw Baw frogs in the wild, so that was quite a thrilling development."

Zoos Victoria is now considering using detection dogs for other threatened species.

"The accuracy of a dog's nose is really unsurpassed, so they basically have a sense of smell or can have a sense of smell that's about 10,000 times stronger than humans so we really want to utilise that talent," research assistant Chris Hartnett said.

"Particularly for those cryptic and low density species, we think detection dogs might have a really important role to play. In fact that could be their niche as a monitoring technique."

Luckily for Zoos Victoria, there are more dogs coming up through the ranks that might be able to fill the new roles.

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PHOTO: Trainer Tracy Edwards with new detection dog Oakley. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


Detection-dog-in-training Oakley is now one year old and will start field work later this year.

Ms Edwards has been in charge of his training.

"He's only a puppy, or what we call a 'whuppy', a whopping big puppy," she says.

"He is just living life at the moment, learning the basics so obedience and recalls and environmental exposure.

"We're letting him have a puppyhood, letting him have a little bit of a life because he is going to work and work hard in his life so we don't want to add too much pressure at the moment."

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PHOTO: Trainer Fiona Jackson with rescue dog turned conservation detection dog, Jimmy. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)


Canidae Development also has its first rescue dog on the books.
The dog, Jimmy, belongs to trainer Fiona Jackson.

Jimmy is also a border collie and is working out really well so far, according to the team.

Ms Edwards admits it is not just the smarts and the stamina of these border collies that they all love so much.

"There's many different breeds that can do this, it isn't just one breed," she says.

"We just like border collies. We like their work ethic, we like the fact that they can go all day and we like the fact that they like to cuddle up at night on the couch."
 
Nice story, thinking about getting a border collie as the next dog and at least attempting to train it as a detector dog.
 
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