A Day in the Life of a Wildlife Detection Dog Handler

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By Emily Luck, BSc (Hons), MCIEEM, MRSB - Managing Director of Imprint Ecology Ltd

A dog’s nose is an incredible resource for finding some of our rarest native wildlife or tracking invasive species. Their olfactory system – the part of the brain that processes smells – is 40 times larger than ours. This means they can detect and process the faintest odours with exceptional accuracy.

My two dogs are trained to find bat and bird carcasses as well as water voles. Together, we’ve worked across England and Wales for green energy companies and NGOs like the Wildlife Trusts.

In 2019, I hit a crossroads with my career aspirations. I’d always loved dog training and wildlife, but it never occurred to me that I could combine the two. That changed when my pet dog, Monty, turned things around for me. He has always been a busy boy being half spaniel, always on the go, obsessed with tennis balls and brilliant at recreational scentwork training. So it turned out I had the perfect wildlife detection dog candidate right in front of me. I was very lucky because pet dogs often don’t have enough drive for operational work. But even now, at nearly 12 years old and happily retired, his drive for tennis balls hasn’t faded.

It wasn’t a soft landing after leaping into what turned out to be a growing, unregulated field, so I had to figure a lot out on my own. I trained hard, put in lots of hours to set up my company Imprint Ecology, gain enough experience to be granted the licences required to undertake the work and keep bat carcass training samples, and learned as much as I could from building my network of friends in the industry. Then, springer spaniel Pip joined us and she quickly completed our little team.

When the dogs and I are working at wind turbines looking for dead bats or birds that may have been struck, the days start early because we need to be on-site before sunrise to beat any scavengers. By the time we arrive, the dogs have already had breakfast and a good walk to stretch their legs. We conduct a transect search beneath each turbine up to a radius of usually 50m, but we’ve worked as far out as 150m for England’s tallest turbine in Bristol. I try to work against the wind to help the dogs pick up scents more easily. When they find something, they will stop and freeze. Usually, they’ll sit or lie down. I’m not fussed as long as they are calm and we can preserve the specimen they found. To keep the dogs motivated, I’ll bring a few training samples with me because if it’s been a while since they’ve had a find, I’ll place one out during a search to reward them.

A typical day involves covering up to three turbines because I only have two dogs, so I don’t wish to take on very large wind farm projects. We’re usually finished by midday, especially in warmer weather, to avoid the heat. Rainy days are their own challenge, but we’ve trained for those too. Even practicing with buckets of water at home so the dogs can find bats in puddles. The dogs are regularly rested and swapped over so they can rest between searches in their TransK9 crates. These are nice and roomy for the dogs and around them goes all the clobber – coats, boots, harnesses, data collection equipment, and a few spare pairs of shoes and socks for me.

Training the dogs is one of my favourite parts of the job, and I’m always switching up the scenarios. Sometimes we’ll work with fresh specimens, and other times with badly degraded ones or even tiny pieces of bats - like a single wing bone. On-site, when we find a bat, I take some quick measurements, like the wing length, and have a closer look. If I can’t confidently identify the species, the ecologists working on the project usually send it off to a genetics lab for analysis. Each find is GPS-tagged and recorded in a results report that I send to the client if bats were found on-site.

The data we're collecting is quite fascinating. Last year, one of the projects we worked on in Somerset had had pre-construction bat surveys which suggested it was likely to be a low-risk site, but our post-construction monitoring painted a completely different picture. We discovered bats were using it as a seasonal flightline during spring and autumn as bats commute between their summer and winter roosts, which can often be several kilometres apart. There was something really satisfying about putting those pieces together and watching the pattern emerge, even though it can be sad to find them.

Once we had established the seasonal pattern, the turbine operators implemented curtailment measures - basically adjusting the turbine’s power during the crucial migration periods. They programmed the blades to only start spinning at higher wind speeds in spring and autumn, as bats are less likely to fly at higher wind speeds. I like to think it has already started helping bats while not impeding the production of renewable energy. We are heading back to that site this year to monitor the effects of the new measures.

Over the years, I've built up some wonderful connections in the ecology world. There's the amazing lab teams who can work miracles with the tiniest bit of degraded tissue, the ecologists who get just as excited as I do about interesting findings, and the conservation groups and local environmental record centres who receive our data. When you're working on long-term monitoring projects these associations become really important.

Afterwards, the dogs get another walk to unwind, a good meal and a nap back at our accommodation. I’ll try to pick somewhere self-catered with Wi-Fi so I can catch up on emails and admin before we all crash for the night.

As well as the wind turbine work, we’ve also had the privilege of working with conservationists to find water voles, one of the UK’s rarest mammals. The dogs are trained to detect water vole droppings, which might not sound glamorous but it’s one of the best ways to confirm their presence. We’ve managed to successfully search in more challenging environments like steep grassy banks, fenlands, boggy mires, and suburban canals. Unlike turbine surveys though, water vole work doesn’t require pre-dawn starts, and this usually makes me very happy.

Looking back, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come but not without quite a few challenges, long hours, and a willingness to learn and adapt.

Find out more about what Emily does at www.imprintecology.co.uk

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