It’s not always easy to locate our precious native animals like geckos so we can conserve and protect them. So that’s where the services of a lizard dog come in handy:

Gecko watch.

Border collie-cross Manu joined her owner, lizard expert Marieke Lettink, at the Denniston BioBlitz on March 2-4 to track down skinks and geckos. Manu reveals how she copes as a canine superstar. …

Q: why are geckos so hard to find/so few and far between?

A: There are heaps more geckos out there than the humans know about! They are hard to find because geckos have excellent camouflage and like to hide themselves away in tight spaces to avoid being eaten by predators. This fools the humans, but not my nose with its 220 million smell cells (a dog sense of smell is a thousand times better than a human’s). But even my nose doesn’t help in some places — I can’t find geckos in places where there are lots of predators that eat them (cats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, possums, rats, mice, and some birds like magpies and kingfishers).

[Via Forest & Bird » Blog Archive » My life as a lizard dog.]

I recently listened to a very interesting radio interview about New Zealand Kiwi birds, dogs and the work of the Save the Kiwi Trust:

Tahi, the one-legged Kiwi at Wellington Zoo.

Feature Guest – Hugh Robertson
Our national bird is under threat from predators, cars, dogs, environmental destruction, from poachers, you name it. (duration: 24′45″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis, MP3

Hugh Robertson, coordinator of the Kiwi Recovery Programme. What does the future hold for our national bird? Hugh is joined by his dog Kara, who’s in training to sniff out kiwi.

[Via Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Nine to Noon : 2010 09 23.]

One stunning moment in the interview was when Hugh told the story of how one farm dog massacred 500 Kiwi in the space of 6 weeks a while back.

On the other hand, properly trained dogs can help sniff out Kiwi so researchers can protect and study them.

Listen to the interview (links above) to find out more.

A chocolate Labrador is sniffing out endangered animals to help researchers:

Eastern Indigo snake. Photo bybsx.

Researchers are using a popular breed of dog to learn how rare indigo snakes are faring in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

C.J., a 7-year-old chocolate Lab, has a nose for more than indigo snakes. He has sniffed for spider monkeys in Nicaragua, big cats in Brazil and bats in New Mexico. …

C.J., who was rescued from a shelter, is trained to track different animals, including individual species of snakes, without confusion, said Kara Ravenscroft,C.J.’s handler. …

The dog’s sense of smell is good enough to lead searchers to snake droppings and skin that has been shed.

[Via : Research dog sniffs out reptiles - Florida AP - MiamiHerald.com.]