A sniffer dog is being
trained to detect the presence of harvest mice, one of Britain’s smallest and
most elusive mammals, in a novel approach to conservation
No one really knows how many harvest mice there are
currently in the British countryside, but that could be about to change with
the help of a flat-coated retriever called Tui.
Tui is a sniffer dog that has been trained by PhD
researcher Emily Howard-Williams at Moulton College, Northamptonshire to detect
the scent of the secretive rodents.
This novel approach to small mammal
conservation has been funded by the People’s
Trust for Endangered Species (PTES). The charity
believes numbers of harvest mice (Micromys minutus) have
significantly declined over the last 40 years, due to changes in farming
practices and habitat loss.
“Given
that other mammals on farmland are experiencing a decline in numbers, there is
serious concern that the same is happening to harvest mice,”
says Howard-Williams.
But, problematically, there are no
reliable studies to prove this or what the species' population status is today.
Because of their minute size and secretive nature, explains Howard-Williams,
harvest mice are a lot harder to find than bigger mammals that leave more
evidence of their activity.
Currently it is very time-consuming and notoriously
difficult to find and track harvest mice, even for a trained expert. The most
common method involves identifying their presence from the nests they weave
among tall grasses and reeds, but it is also possible to survey bait pots for
faecal matter and hair tubes or analyse owl pellets for remains. Physically trapping individual mice is
another option, however this is very labour-intensive and not always reliable.
“None of these methods have any great success over larger spaces for
gauging harvest mouse numbers, so there is a clear need to develop an effective
monitoring method for this species,” says Howard-Williams.
Then there is the added complication
that it is not known how many nests each mouse builds, so when a nest is found
it suggests the animals are present, but not how many are in the area.
Tui the wonder dog
Enter Tui, a flat-coated retriever bred
from working gun dogs, whose extraordinary sense of smell, Howard-Williams
hopes, will help develop a much less time-consuming and more accurate method of
finding and cataloguing harvest mice compared with traditional survey
methods.
Howard-Williams was inspired by working
with conservationists in New Zealand who used detector dogs to sniff out black
petrels. And another encouraging project has seen two English setter dogs
successfully detect kiwi birds.
“Tui was quite challenging to train as she was easily distracted to
begin with. A lot of time was spent training to build up her concentration
levels and direct these towards the ‘game’, but in a controlled manner,” Howard-Williams tells BBC Earth.
Training a dog to find the scent of a
live animal is much more complex than a chemical substance as it involves
bringing lots of elements together. But Howard-Williams says she was confident
at Tui’s reliability at recognising harvest mouse scent.
If this method proves better than
others, it is hoped it could become a mainstream survey technique for harvest
mice. And if dogs are trained to particular scents, the method could work
with any species, as long as the animals’ scent can be collected.
This use of sniffer dogs could be the start of a
revolution in mammal conservation, as the PTES is already supporting work where
dogs are sniffing out pine marten scats more easily than people can see them,
and an ex-police dog that can detect water vole burrows without disturbing the
animal. According to Howard-Williams: “Done
well, with highly trained dogs, this method could be really useful."
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