Canine Detection Techniques in Wildlife Conservation

Canine detection techniques have emerged as a robust, non-invasive means of locating elusive or low-density wildlife and their biological traces. Trained scent-detection dogs excel in identifying target odours such as scats, eggs, fungi or live animals, often outpacing human surveyors in both accuracy and efficiency. Deployment of wildlife detection dogs facilitates rapid coverage of large or densely vegetated areas, reduces false negatives in presence–absence surveys and provides invaluable samples for downstream genetic or dietary analyses. Integrating canine teams with complementary technologies, such as thermal imaging or drone-borne sensors, further extends detection capacity across diverse habitats and target sizes. Canine methods have been applied globally, from temperate forests to arid deserts, and across taxa including mammals, reptiles and even fungi. Success hinges on careful dog–handler selection and training, appropriate sample collection protocols and validation of detection performance under field conditions. As conservation challenges intensify under habitat loss and climate change, canine detection offers a scalable tool to improve species monitoring, inform management interventions and enhance the precision of ecological models.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Foundational trials with a scat-detection dog trained for koala conservation demonstrated perfect detection rates off-leash, identifying faecal pellets more rapidly and accurately than human teams and reducing survey time by an order of magnitude. A cost-effective model for international scat-detection employed in primate conservation showed over 90 % accuracy in locating non-human primate faecal samples, highlighting in-country training approaches that build local capacity while keeping operational costs below traditional budgets. More recently, the combination of thermal imaging and canine detection has been tested for small, cryptic mammals: dogs were able to locate individuals in dense vegetation where thermal cameras and drones proved less effective, enabling balanced sampling across habitat structures and unlocking behavioural studies previously limited by detection constraints.

Canine Detection Techniques in Wildlife Conservation publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in canine detection techniques in wildlife conservation across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Wildlife detection dog (WDD): A dog specially trained to locate biologically relevant odours—such as scats, carcasses or live animals—under field conditions.

Scat sampling: The non-invasive collection of faecal pellets for use in presence–absence surveys and genetic or dietary analyses.

Thermal imaging: A technology that detects infrared radiation to visualise heat signatures, often used to locate animals in open or sparsely vegetated terrain.

Faecal DNA (fDNA): Genetic material extracted from animal scats, enabling species identification, individual genotyping and dietary reconstruction.

References

1. Accuracy and efficiency of detection dogs: a powerful new tool for koala conservation and management. Scientific Reports (2015).
2. Cost-effective scat-detection dogs: unleashing a powerful new tool for international mammalian conservation biology. Scientific Reports (2016).
3. Detecting small and cryptic animals by combining thermography and a wildlife detection dog. Scientific Reports (2020).
4. On the trail of a critically endangered fungus: A world-first application of wildlife detection dogs to fungal conservation. iScience (2024).
5. Using Scent Detection Dogs in Conservation Settings: A Review of Scientific Literature Regarding Their Selection. Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2016).
6. Back to the basics with conservation detection dogs: fundamentals for success. Wildlife Biology (2019).