Team of scientists has good results using dogs to sniff out threatened wildflowers

By Nancy Raskauskas


Gazette-Times Reporter

LUPINE MEADOWS — “Ready ... search.”

On a recent sunny morning, Rogue, a 4-year-old Belgian sheepdog, sniffed and snuffled his way across a field of tall grasses near Philomath ahead of his owner David Vesely.

To a passerby, it might have looked like the two were out for a stroll. But they were actually hard at work searching for Kincaid’s lupine, a rare native plant closely associated with the Fender’s blue butterfly, which uses the plant as a place to lay its eggs and later as a food source.

When Rogue suddenly stopped and sat back on his haunches, that was his tell that he’d found a new plant.

As the name suggests, at Lupine Meadows, an area owned by the Greenbelt Land Trust, it’s never long before Rogue finds another plant.

“Good boy Rogue. You found the best one,” said Vesely after Rogue sniffed out one of the distinctive dark green plants with palm-like leaves nestled in between the tall grasses. Rogue was immediately rewarded with a homemade beef-liver treat.

“We have a great big party every time he finds one,” said Vesely, who believes in positive reinforcement when he trains dogs. The other two dogs in the study are rewarded with about a minute of play time with their handler when they find a plant.

The rewards are well-deserved. Kincaid’s lupine is listed as threatened and Fender’s blue butterfly is listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Searching for them can be a difficult and time-consuming task for surveyors such as Vesely, a wildlife ecologist and executive director of the Oregon Wildlife Institute.

“Often, all that remains of the pristine prairie habitats are on really steep hillsides that the cows haven’t reached,” said Greg Fitzpatrick of The Nature Conservancy. Native prairies and savannahs are among the most endangered ecosystems in the United States, with less than 10 percent of these habitats still remaining in Oregon and Washington.

Without its tall cone-shaped clusters of blue or purple flowers, Kincaid’s lupine, which is found in these habitats is low to the ground and is often difficult to distinguish from the surrounding plants.

“I thought it would be great to use a four-legged creature for this,” said Fitzpatrick, who brought the idea to Vesely — who in turn teamed up with Deborah Smith and Alice Whitelaw of the Working Dogs for Conservation Foundation based in Missoula, Mont., to put together a study to test out the viability of using trained detector dogs to find the rare plants.

In addition to Rogue, there are two German Shepherds owned by Whitelaw, Tsavo and Camas, participating in the study.

“All dogs have the got the olfactory capability,” said Vesely. “We choose these breeds because they’re very trainable and big enough to cover rough ground.”

Vesely was no stranger to the idea of detector dogs. Before Rogue, he had another Belgian sheepdog named Chilko that he trained to find Western pond turtles, yet another endangered Willamette Valley species.

“Looking for turtle nests is just really tedious work. I thought if predators can find these nests with their noses, then I can train Chilko to do it,” he said, explaining how he first dabbled into using dogs for conservation work.

The research is funded by a grant from the Disney Conservation Fund and support from The Nature Conservancy. Other groups have helped with the project by donating plant materials, space for training and expertise. They include the Institute of Applied Ecology, Greenbelt Land Trust and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The dogs had one week of training last year and one so far this year.

“What we’re trying to accomplish this year is to solidify the training so we’re absolutely sure,” said Vesely. “We don’t expect people to use this method unless we can prove that it’s accurate.”

“We chose Kincaid’s lupine as the first target species because it’s a really big plant, pretty easy to find, even for humans,” Vesely said.

That gives the researchers the ability to lay out transects and carefully catalog all the Kincaid’s lupine plants before setting the dogs loose to search the area.

When the study is finished, the results will have to be analyzed and peer-reviewed. But so far, the dogs’ record has been nearly perfect.

There are however, a few mysteries of working with the dogs that the researchers will have to work out.

For instance, “they’ll sometimes pass up large clumps of plants and just choose a little one,” said Vesely. “We’re not sure what they’re picking up on. Maybe the smaller plants are faster-growing and giving off some kind of stronger scent.”

“Also, they’ll go over and take a look at a similar looking plant sometimes,” Vesely said.

They will also sometimes circle back to the same plant to get another treat. “We call it shopping,” said Vesely. It’s technically a strike against their accuracy level, but “They’re really just trying to game us into giving them more treats,” said Vesely.

The next steps will be to teach the dogs to identify Willamette daisy plants and Kincaid’s lupine plants that have had Fender’s blue butterfly eggs laid on them.

Searching for plants with butterfly eggs will be the dog’s biggest challenge yet. The eggs they will be attempting to sniff out are only about the size of a pinpoint.

“We’ll give it a try,” Vesely said.

“Our idea is to layer multiple species on each dog,” said Fitzpatrick, who hopes that the concept could also be used to search out nonnative invasive plants before they spread out of control.

“If you can catch these weeds, such as false broom and shiny-leaf geranium, at an early stage, you can save literally millions of dollars,” Fitzpatrick said.

Related links

Working Dogs for Conservation: www.workingdogsforconservation.org.

Oregon Wildlife Institute: www.oregonwildlife.org.

The Nature Conservancy of Oregon: www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/orego.

Greenbelt Land Trust: www.greenbeltlandtrust.org.

Institute of Applied Ecology: www.appliedeco.org.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife: www.fws.gov/oregonfwo.

Nancy Raskauskas can be reached at 758-9542 or nancy.raskauskas@lee.net